The Funeral of Foch
Paulding, Gouverneur
May 15, 1929 THE COMMONWEAL 45 THE FUNERAL OF FOCH By GOUVERNEUR PAULDING HERE is the evening paper. It gives the order of procession from Notre Dame to the Invalides where...
...It is obvious that we have not the unity of the French nation and this causes our improvisation to be less dramatic, less effective and less immediate...
...But I must not turn a difficulty...
...The paper tells how the procession left Notre Dame, reached the Concorde by the street of the victory of Rivoli, faced for a moment as if to salute the great reach of the Champs Elysees with the unknown soldier beneath the triumphant arch at the end of it— then turned to the river, a bridge, and came to the open space before the tomb...
...We saluted the body because it had been the habitation of a soul, and because Catholics can never forget the dignity of the body just as they may never forget the soul...
...The Paris Post of the American Legion marched by as individuals keeping step and not as a platoon made up of individuals...
...Sometimes it means the bravery and reckless expenditure of the Argonne...
...They are irreducible individualists...
...I say this because it is essential that we do not forget that after the priest comes the soldier—and then a long way after come the happy people of this world, and then the miserable people of this world, and then the artist...
...The Coldstream Guards with rifles reversed passed with a dignity that silenced a silent crowd...
...All of us along that long line of the procession saluted the dead body because in Europe the tradition of the Catholic faith has held and will hold...
...I must be frank in what I send The Commonweal...
...The French troops marched by very well...
...In 1917 our endless resources allowed waste in every direction, but it is possible that when our population becomes adjusted to its wealth we will not allow any waste at all...
...Perhaps, now, some commentary is possible...
...The French would have broken step: they would have taken cover: and by a violent military improvisation of prudence, experience and daring, they would have killed the machine-gun crew and restored whatever their temper chose to call order...
...By it the French have saved their country a hundred times...
...The many priests among them kept line except for one who had lost a leg at the hip and, who, starting at the head of the procession, lost ground until he finished at the end of it...
...And we all saluted the soldier...
...If a Communist machine gun had been turned on them, these British would have died without breaking step, without looking to see where the gun was...
...It was perhaps the most glowing refutation of the theory that the Academy has leveled all talents into a regiment of mediocrity...
...The Communist papers in Paris call every general a butcher...
...For everyone who saw it this picture was blurred by emotion, and the newspapers have told the story as well as anyone could have done...
...Herrick among them—the French Academy...
...That in a French, British, American crowd is plausible...
...We are a brave nation and it is perhaps fortunate for the world that we are not a military nation...
...Here is the order of march and I read it because one always reads in the paper the description of what one has seen...
...In the sincerity and strain of that long procession the only relief was the passage of the members of the French Academy...
...Waste is not always hideous...
...But the Academicians straggled anyway at all—in little groups or one by introspective one...
...It is a quality that puzzles the British as not being fair play—an 46 THE COMMONWEAL May 15, 1929 aptitude that astounds the Germans because it can never be taught...
...It gives the order of procession from Notre Dame to the Invalides where tonight Marshal Foch lies beside Vauban who fortified France until it was impregnable and Napoleon who expanded it like a balloon until it burst...
...Later on we compared them to other troops...
...In these days when the generous effort of every intelligence is directed to finding means for avoiding war, when every mind turns in horror against any possibility of a recurring war, we forget that war is one thing and that the selfless soldier is another...
...There were old men among the members of the bar and they kept line...
...It is not for nothing that we are the Church Militant and that Rome uses the term "soldiers of Christ...
...In that crowd there were people who disapproved of the terms of the Versailles treaty, there were people who during the war wanted the Germans to win it—there were Germans in that crowd...
...The wounded ex-service men kept line...
...The crowd knew it...
...First the muted bugles of the Republican Guard, then artillery, then infantry, then the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris walking robed through his city for the first time since 1870, then the gun carriage with its burden—General Pershing at one side—then the Prince of Wales, Prince Charles of Belgium, the ex-service men, the ambassadors—poor Mr...
...As we waited for the procession, the funeral of a poor man—a hearse with four or five people behind it—crossed the lines and every soldier presented arms and all heads were bared...
...But I go further...
...Catholics with the severe intelligence of their history must not leave the honor of arms to be defended by the Japanese and the Moslems...
...We saluted with the deepest and most moved respect the remains of Marshal Foch, Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Armies—the leader...
...Germans would not have broken a step which may seem stiff to us, but their police along the lines would have silenced the gun...
Vol. 10 • May 1929 • No. 2
