Mexico weekly ledger., 1914-12-10
FAMOUS FOREIGN LEGION

Perhaps Of all Frances alien troops
perhaps of all troops in the world,
over the Foreign Legion hovers the
greatest halo Of glamour and ro-
nance. There have been foreign le-
gions in most of the worlds greatest
wars, and, in modern times, have been
known as such.
The French Foreign Legion is said
to have originated in the Scottish
| Archers Of Charles the Seventh of
France, and from all the other ma
tionalties employed by his successors.
After the Napoleonic wars the for
eign regiments were disbanded, X
cept the Royal Foreign Legion created
in their place by Louis XVIII, gradu-
ally becoming merged into theEighty
Sixth Regiment of the Line.
The year after the Revolution
(1831) the present Foreign Legion
was formed, the French Chambers de-
creeing that it was not to be employ
ed on the soil of France. We find regi
ments of the Foreign Legion ordered
wherever French colonies need their
presence, yet the world identifies it
most closely with it's two North Afri-
can regiments.
So we find, clothed in the loose red
trousers, blue blouse, double breasted
black tunic, with red facings and wear
ing red fringed green epaulettes, and
the blue wooden cummerbund around
the waist, and a red KEPT on which
flares the seven-flamed grenade, the
badge of the legion, approximately
/, eight thousand legionnaires living OF
seventeen centimes (three and {
) half cents) a day.
: In many ways they represent tn
same types of men as u federal vol
: unteers, and, like the volunteers o
any country, include many adven
: ~turous spirits, deserters from armies
l men who have slipped a cog in life
men whose histories read like VERT
: able legends. In the Foreign Legion
. marching "side by EACH" are Frencl
n Poles, Italians, Belgians, Eurasiani
Levantines, Austrians, Russian
Greeks, Swiss and a very few Bri'
= ish.
= 1t has included as many as twent!
eight Americans at n time, bu
y strange to say, more than half the
IL gionnaires are "made in Germany"
we include those from Alsace al
Lorraine. Men are promoted to cor
missions from the ranks and son
of the most noted Of their office
y have borne German names, and o
company was led to the attack
Casablanca, Morocco, in 1907, by
Japanese captain.
ce The average French ~legionaire
rs of the working class, likely enough
Sc deserter of the French army, who b
III enlisted as a Swiss or Belgian.
sides these, as one strolls throu
!" their barracks at Sidi-bel-Abbes,
10 bit in the hinterland of Oran, or 81
ri them "Offduty" in a desert encan
ment, one may find in the sockl
,cil shoes of legionnaires ex-army OF
gu ers, barristers, professors, diploma
eal and even ex-bishops, perchance me
oy- balling" their black belts, and, amt
So those doing their washing, a prince
cen a banker; and if the missing scion
a noble house is wanted, the well-w
advice is-"Write to the ColoneI
the Legion"
But it is a life which either INA
or breaks" a man, generally in
ings march, which is the severest t
the hi Lo.4;uo ~ac,,;nn
G Of each mar carries MS en'ie ed
any the small tent d'abri going to m
IN the seventy to eighty pounds
Lo ons his back. Under this in the withe
1em- heat on burning Saharan sands he
been known to march thirty mile
vonr a day, with hourly 10-minute rest
100. has been well said that "the Legi'
a mercenary force in theory only.
legionary practically fights n W
who for nothing, so far as money is
a cerned, for a sou a day is all the
he GETS" Thus "France takes
:. from the Legion and gives littl
return."-World's Work,