It was the tenth of May, 1917, in New York. The great city was alive—riotously, gloriously alive. Save for the narrow lane kept for the progress of the hero of the day her main artery flowed from building-line to building-line with a vibrant throng. It was a supreme demonstration of Democracy's melting-pot, a confusion of tongues, a medley of peoples, a human flood fed by every racial fountain of the earth.

I stood that day where the multitude was densest, and at the very edge of the throng, directly in front of the reviewing-platform at Forty-second Street. We had waited, it seemed, for hours when suddenly, as such a silence always comes, a pregnant quiet fell over all the people.

Obedient to the universal spiritual impulse, my eyes turned from the gray walls of the majestic library building, and followed where ten thousand billowing flags rolled back from Fifth Avenue like the parting of another Red Sea. Old Glory was everywhere, and everywhere flanking her were the Tricolor and the Union Jack.

I had scarcely recorded the shock of that emotion when sharp and high-keyed sounded the hoofbeats of horses, and drawing rapidly near were the outriders of a distinguished company.

The eager throng surged against the officers who guarded the open way; the voices of those about me joined the cyclonic thunder of cheers that rolled upon us; there was a bedlam of horns and bugles, and then—Joffre swept by!

Ah, I shall never cease to see him, a heroic portrait in red and white, painted against a great confusion and hung beneath a sun-goldened sky. I was very close to him, and his military cap was lifted; he was slightly smiling, and his eyes were shining islands in seas of tears. His white hair crowned his massive head rather than belied his full and ruddy cheeks; his shoulders were herculean and shaped for the load of a nation; his chest was broad and deep, to hold the heart of France.

In an instant he was gone, but in that instant the Gibraltar of the Marne, the rock against which the flood of absolutism rolled and broke, fixed his eyes upon the place where I stood. While the question, "Is he looking at me?" was shaping in my mind, clear and strong above the shout of the multitude rang the cry, "Vive la France! Vive la France! Vive la France!"

Three times it came, and from a position so close to mine that, when I swung about, I found myself breath to breath with the voice that had lifted it. The man was young and tall; his right arm was bound against his chest; his face was deeply scarred; and he was in the uniform of the French Flying Corps. As he flung up his unmaimed hand and cried, "Vive la France! Vive la France!" he was the incarnation of the chivalry of war.

The mighty Joffre leaned forward, gazed intently, replaced his cap, and then, as warrior to warrior, saluted.

It was a flash, an eternal moment that remains with you and in you and of you. From the souls of the two, the tender, iron hero of the Marne and the young American who had crossed the sea to help pay the debt a young Frenchman left us nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, I caught the gleam of brotherhood that will not die while a grateful Democracy remembers Lafayette and free men bear wreaths to the tomb of Washington.