When he made his speech with Joffre, Viviani, and Balfour at his side, and delivered that famous message to the officials at Washington: “For God’s sake, hurry up,” and was greeted with the thunderous applause that followed, he reached the pinnacle of his career. As he stood there looking at that audience, radiating forth one of his beaming smiles, full of human sympathy, of hope and faith in America, it thrilled the audience and gave to the British and French representatives an unmistakable assurance that America was with them, and would stay with them to the finish. It was a glorious and most fitting close to Choate’s great career to be permitted to use his last thoughts and energies, in his eighty-fourth year, for the welfare of his country. A few days later, while the effect of his last speech was still penetrating into the farthest corners of the earth, he passed away, mourned by all.
In June, 1917, the President asked me to go abroad upon a secret diplomatic errand, which I am not even yet at liberty to disclose, further than to say that I learned that what the President hoped for could not be accomplished, and after a few days I proceeded to Paris.
This was one of the great hours of history. General Pershing had arrived with his little staff of officers and a few regiments of American Regular soldiers. This was America’s first pledge toward the promise of military aid, which was speedily to be redeemed in terms of two millions of American troops in France, and final victory in the war. I dined with Ambassador Sharp; and in his home I met General Pershing, Thomas Nelson Page, our Ambassador to Italy, and other prominent Americans. I renewed old acquaintances in the American colony at Paris, and soon learned the immense significance of the appearance of our soldiers in France. It was now the middle of July, and only a little earlier the French people had almost seemed to falter in their struggle. France seemed to have been bled white by three years of devastating war. Frenchmen were saying that it was as well to die on their doorsteps as to be led to useless slaughter at the front. The French Government was making a final desperate effort to restore the nation’s confidence. Joffre in May had pleaded at Washington for American troops--“No matter how few you send, only give us the sight of Americans in uniform on the streets of Paris.”