But this review was different. The intimacy, the sense of the soldiers belonging to the people and being of the people, had always been there. Added to it now was the knowledge of what the army had done for France. There is no country where _la patrie reconnaissante_ means more than in France. And the great danger was so fresh in our minds! From the standpoint of the soldier it was different, too. For five weary years the _poilu_ constantly on duty and not knowing which day might be the last saw in the soft blue rings of his cigarette smoke the _défilé_ under the Arc de Triomphe and prayed that he and his comrades would be there. That was the only uncertainty--whether he himself would be spared for the _jour de la victoire_. If France's soldiers had doubted that the day would arrive, they could not have continued to sing the Marseillaise--and the war would have been lost then and there. The Quatorze of peace days was fun to the spectators but a _corvée_ for the soldiers who marched. The Quatorze of victory was the realization of the dream that sustained the soldiers throughout the war. It was the reward for having believed what they muttered doggedly through their teeth, "_Nous allons les écraser comme des pommes de terre cuites!_"
One of our _poilus_, a boy to whom we had been through the war as next of kin, who wore the _médaille militaire_ and whose _croix de guerre_ carried several palms, came to us late in the night before the victory parade. He said with tears in his eyes,
"The chains around the Arc de Triomphe. They have been there since Soixante-Dix. Do you realize," he cried seizing my hands, "that the last time soldiers marched under the arch it was Germans? Ah, the Huns, I hate them! We are supposed to keep our eyes straight before us during the march, but I shall look up under that arch. I shall never forget the moment I have lived for."
"And Albert, the ideals that made you enlist, have they survived?"
"They are here," he replied, slapping his chest until his medals jingled. I made up a lunch for Albert, and off he went to get to the rendezvous at the Porte Maillot at two A. M.
We had determined that the whole family should see the _défilé de la victoire_. The younger children might not remember it, but we never wanted them to reproach us afterwards. How to get there was a problem that needed working out. The children had an invitation, which did not include grownups, from Lieutenant Mitchell whose window was in the American barracks on the north side of the Avenue near the Rue de Berri. Dr. Lines asked Herbert's mother and Herbert and me to the New York Life Insurance Company's office at the corner of the Rue Pierre-Charron on the south side of the Avenue. How take the children to the other side and get back to our places? There was only one answer. Taxi-cabs that could go around through the Bois du Bologne and Neuilly or the Place de la République.