New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1917-04-26
France Day"

Il is fitting and an appropriate thlng
that the Legislature Of the State OF Ne"
York has done in setting aside to-day as
. dav in which to honor the French nation
through its representatives for what
France has done for all mankind and for
America more than for any other people
in the last three years.
Almost a century and half ago France
gave democracy to Europe. Some portion
Of that gift Americans like to think she
derived from our own country and some
thing of the spirit of 1889 from our own
struggle of 1775. Always from the day OF
these two revolutions to the present hour
Americans and Frenchmen alike have felt
a certain spiritual kinship growing out OF
equal loyalty to noble ideas.
To-day we salute the representatives OF
the French nation who come to us from
France still bleeding, still sOiled by the
nresence Of the servants of the foulest bar
barism civilized man has known. We see
in them the spirit Of the nation which for
three years has stood and faced and held
a food of savages, q storm Of tyranny
which threatened not alone France, but all
nations which held to democracy and all
peoples which believed in the doctrines OF
civilization, of justice and of humanity, as
eontrasted with those who believed in brute
mower as the only virtue, and the use OF
that power, without regard to the die
tates Of humanity, as the highest policy
Of a state.
Had France failed at the Battle of the
Marine; had the French people failed IN
August and September, 1914; had they
sunk under the renewed fury Of the Yer
dun attack in 1916, democracy itself would
have been imperilled, perhaps fatally. The
empire Of force and the gospel of ruthless
ness might have swept over all the world,
as it is now sweeping over the fields Of
Artois and Picardy.
During the long months when England
was unready and America blind France
opposed her body to the German beast
She accepted once more her mission as the
knight among the nations and in the spirit
Of the older Crusade fought to rescue
from the hands Of barbarians the sanct-
uary of all our civilization.
More than a million Frenchmen have
died since the first wave of German in
\ yasion entered Belgium. A dozen depart
y ments Of France have been desolated. A
score Of cities have been destroyed. Thou
sands Of women have been outraged and
many children have been murdered. All
that was beautiful, all that was sacred,
all that men Of the preceding centuries
have spared when they came as invaders,
has been swept into dust and ashes by the
Boche hordes. One has TO turn back TO
the days when the older but not more cruel
barbarians burst into the Latin world from
the north to find parallel for what has
happened before our own eyes in the TWEEN
tieth century in the fields of France.
and after three years, suffering much
hard bitten by the agony and the pain,
France still stands erect; French armies
are advancing, and French courage has
endured. "They shall not pass" the sol
diers of Verdun said, and they have not
passed. "They" have not passed through
French defences into the heart of all
our civilization. Not only have they not
passed, but they are no longer advanc-
ing. The crest Of the hill has been passed.
British millions have taken up the task
so well begun by the French. and, though
we may not yet measure the time that re-
mains Of suffering, we can no longer doubt
what the end will be.
For all the world France at the outset
Of this struggle typifed democracy. Be
cause Of France the struggle took from
the opening hour the character of fight
between liberty and despotism-between
democracy and autocracy; and had the
French democracy failed no man can say
how widely the course Of human affairs
would have been modified, or how greatly
the institutions which we love and the faith
70 which we hold would have been changed.
There was a splendor, there was q glory
about the French resistance at the Marine
unlike all else in modern history. II was
the triumph Of the idea over the animal.
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