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Show fAerry-Go-Round , Merci Train Ends ' Journey, but Good Will Grows By Drew Pearson HAYS, Kan. An old French boxcar ends Its journey In Kansas today. It haa crossed one ocean, carried troops to a score of battle fronts and toured every county In Kansas. Probably a Junk dealer wouldn't give more than 20 bucks for It, but this old car and the keepsakes Inside it represent a million dollars' worth of sentiment. - No one in France, when they went to all the work of loading up this boxcar, with 48 others, for their friends In America, ' ever dreamed what would happen when ' the ears arrived. One Is enshrined on the old state capitol grounds In Louisiana; another an-other stands In the capitol grounds at Bis- marck. N. D.; another is located at Olym-pla, Olym-pla, the capital of Washington; while Minnesota and Mississippi have enshrined their boxcars on their state fairgrounds. Nor did anyone In France dream that the . contents of these cars, ranging from the flag that flew over Verdun In 1914 to dolls given by the poorer children of Paris, would be displayed In museums throughout the land, from Louisville, Ky, and Newark, N. J, to the capitol rotundas of Wisconsin, Ohio and Arkansas, to the huge exhibit ar- . ranged by Grover Whalen In New York City, Into which thousands of people streamed every day. --isaashl KovsiksiaUs TI lies Smsj ; nine months now since the French people sent their boxcars to the people of America, Amer-ica, but the echoes of friendship are still reverberating through big city libraries and small country schools, or carried la exhibits throughout the states. Another by-product of this French Merci train haa been millions of letters sent from the children of the United States to the children of France. This may start a chain of friendly correspondence lasting Into the yesrs. It would take several newspaper columns to describe all the steps taken by all the 48 states to show their appreciation of France's appreciation. But the most significant part of this whole story la that almost no on of the many million of Americans who contrib- -uted to the Friendship train two years age this month had any Idea It would be reciprocated. re-ciprocated. Exchange ef Two Trains So on this Armistice day. the most Important con-' con-' elusion to be drawn from this exchange of 1 two trains between the people of France ' and the people ef the United State la that the ordinary folk from Kansas to -Normandy the folk who hav to go out , and do the fighting and the dying when war come are now determined to work at diplomacy. They don't entirely trust the diplomat And It may be that in the -long run they can do a much or more than ambassador when not hampered by Iron curtain. . This I in direct contrast to what happened hap-pened 31 years ago after the armistice of 1918. At that time th American people. Idealistic. Inexperienced In th field of foreign for-eign affairs, were Inclined to think that all they bad to do was sign a peace treaty . and then forget about It. Peace, they be- i lleved, was something Inscribed on, berib-boned berib-boned parchment which on left to diplomat. diplo-mat. But after the V-E and V-J day of this last war, It ha been different The American Amer-ican people, it Is true, are tired. Some of them ar worse than tired,. They ar discouraged and cynical. But they also know that If we had done our part toward the rest of th world la the 1930s, w would not be burying our war dead la th 1940s. Above everything else, th American people are determined that there shall be no more war. And they know that when they merely trusted diplomats in th past, w have had war. Therefor, individual Americana, tired as some of them are, ar quite willing to help the diplomats. Copyright, 1949, Bell Syndicate |