The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-11-06
THE FRENCH s..
 FOREIGNLEGION

Perhaps of all Frances alien troops perhaps of all troops in the world. over the Foreign Legion hovers the greatest halo of glamor and romance There have been Foreign Legions in most of the worlds great 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 others na- tionalities employed by his successors After the NapoIeonic wars the foreign regiments were disbandeds except the Royal Foreign Legion created in their place by Louis XVIII, gradually becoming merged into the 86th Regf- ment of the Line! The year after the Revolution (1831) the present For eign Legion was formed, the French Chambers decreeing that it was not to be employed on the soil of France. We find regiments of the Foreign or dered wherever French colonies need their presence, yet the world identi- f1es it most closely with it's two North African regiments.
 Sosw find. clothed in the loose red trousers. blue blouse, double breasted black tunic, with red facings and wearing red. fringed green epaulets, and the blue woolen cummerbund around the waist, and red kepf on which flares the seven-f1amed grenade the badge of the Legion, pproximate- ly eight thousand legionnairesI Ivng on seventeen centimes 6three and a half cents) a day.
 In many way they represent the same types of men as our Federal Volunteers, and, like. the volunteers of any country, include many adventur- ou spirits, deserters from armies, men who have slipped a cog in life, men whose histories read like ver1table Ie- gends- In the Foreign Legion, march ing ..side by each,' are French, Pole. Italians, Belgians, Eurasians, Levan- tines, Austrians, Russians. Greeks, Swiss and very few British. It has included as many a twenty-eight Am orleans at one time, but, strange to say more than half the 1egionnares are made in. Germany, if we include those from Alsace and Lorraine. Men are promoted to commissions from the ranks and some of the most noted of their officers have borne German names, and one company was led to the attack of Caablanca, Morocco, in 1907, by a Japanese captain.
 The average French Iegionnaire is of the working class likely enough 8 deserter from the French Army. who has enlisted as a Swiss or a Belgian Besides these as one stroI1s through their barracks at Sfdi-bel-Abbes. a bit in the hinterland of Gran, or sees them toff duty" in desert encamp- ment, one may find in the aockIess shoes of 1egionnaires ex-arny officers barristers, professors, dip1omatists, and even ex-bishops. perchance s.heeI- ballng'' their black belts, and, among those doing their washing, a prince or a banker; and if the missing scion of a noble house is wanted, the well worn advice Write to the Colonel of the Legion..'' -
 But it is1a. life which either makes or breaks a man, generally in the march, which is the severest test each man carries his entire equipme ent the small tent sd'abri going to make up the seventy to eighty pounds of weight on his back. Under this in the whitening heat on burning Sahas- ran sands he has been known to march thirty miles in a day. with hourly minute rests. It has beeh well said that the Legion is mer- cenary force in theory only The legionary practically fights and works for pothing, so far as money is con cerned, for a sou a day is all the cash he gets Thus France takes much from the Legion and gives lit tie in return. = Charles Wellington F'urlong in e.The worlds Work
 Women who wear narrow skirts