OCR Text |
Show FRENCH AUTHOR LAUDS AMERICANS Gaston Riou Pays Eloquent Tribute Trib-ute to the Twenty-Five Killed in War. 300 BATTLE IN THE RANKS Majority Enrolled for Love of Nation and of Right Dead Were Men of Conscience and of Pure and Strong Characters. Under the headlines "Heroic Neutrals," "American Volunteers," the Petit Pa-rlsien Pa-rlsien printed on November 1, All Salntf day, the day the French people think . their dead and visit their tombs, the foU lowing eloquent tribute to American1 fighters for .France, written by Gaston! Riou, a well-known author, whose "Jour-, nal of a French Soldier" lias been one of the few really successful pieces of literature litera-ture produced since the war began. By GASTON RIOU. Paris. There are nearly 300 citii zens of the United States In the French army. More than 100 have been wounded and 25 have been killed. May a personal friend of several sev-eral of them be allowed to present, this company of brave men to France? Some very few have volunteered, from love of war ; for example, this youth of seventeen, already wearing a stripe, who confessed to a comrade, "I love fighting, I love to make a charge, but what a bore the trenches are I" Others, perhaps a dozen, have; welcomed a chance for adventures and, have taken service, far less to defend a cause than to. escape from a peaceful, peace-ful, gray, monotonous existence, too shut off Into divisions by laws andi customs. Why They Enrolled. But the great majority of thesej Americans, and it is their glory as much as ours, have enrolled them-j selves under our flag from love olj France and right. I have before me a pile of letters, that prove It. Those who wrote them legionaries or aviators, sleep now on. the Marne, in Artols, in Alsace, among our own dead. Witnesses who fight; till they are killed may be believed. Almost all belong to the intellectual class. The father of Chapman, who died for France at the age of twenty-six, twenty-six, is one of the first writers of his country, and his great-grandfather signed the famous Declaration of Rights which founded the American republic. Kenneth Weeks, who died at twenty-six, on June 16, 1915, at, GIvenchy, is the author of "Five Im-i practical Plays," "Science, Sentiments and Senses," works of art and philosophy phil-osophy which give the promise of a master thinker. Norman Prince belonged to one of the richest and most esteemed fnm Hies of Boston. Alan Seeger, died on July 4 at Belloy-en-Santerre, wrote some of the finest verse that the war has inspired. As for Kiffin Rockwell, that great soldier, whose loss his chief of escadrille, announced with the words, "The bravest and best of us is no more," he descended from ancient Anglo-Norman stock, the famous Baron de Rochevllle, companion of William the Conqueror, being his direct di-rect ancestor. Refined and Loved Life. All these young men, the elite of America's elite, were refined and loved life. They believed that the splendor of life was to struggle for justice and right. Sons of Washington and Lincoln, Lin-coln, they had the cult of democracy. They were modern in every acceptance accept-ance of the term, hating violence and revering the dignity of man and of peoples. Above all they were men of conscience, of pure and strong characters. char-acters. An American who knows men said to me: "Chapman and Kiffin Rockwell are two of the noblest types of men I have met in my life." And such Is the phalanx whose love we have won, love, body and soul, love to death. Kiffin Rockwell wrote to his brother who had been wounded : "If France should be conquered I would rather die I" Why this sacred enthusiasm among citizens of a foreign nation! Rockwell often said : "I am paying for La Fayette and Rochambeau." But the reason for their sacrifice is more profound. These young Americans gave themselves them-selves to France on August 4, 1914, because France was in their eyes a knight, the knight of the highest human hu-man ideal that has illumined the earth. So when a terrible horde loosened Itself It-self upon her they crossed the ocean as for a crusade. They were no swashbucklers dreaming only of wounds and bruises. No ! They were free and peaceful men who knew the price of liberty and peace. But the Teuton swashbuckVrs must be muzzled. muz-zled. The Huns from the Spree must be beaten down to save the beauty of living for all the world ! I knew Kiffin Rockwell, tall, straight and slender, full of nerves, but with a fierce will and something of a falcon in his looks. When cured of his first wound in August, 1916, he wrote: "More than ever 1 want to live, but not for any egotist reason. This war has taught me many things. I want to live now to do all the good I can. But should I be killed during the war, I have no fear of death, and I feel that there can be no finer death " |