"The people of France fully understand the deep significance of the arrival of General Pershing in France," he said. "It is one of the greatest events in history that the people of the United States should come here to struggle, not in the spirit of ambition or conquest, but for the noble ideals of justice and liberty. The arrival of General Pershing is a new message from President Wilson which, if that is possible, surpasses in nobility all those preceding it." And Viviani said, a few minutes later: "President Wilson holds in his hand all the historic grandeur of America, which he now puts forth in this fraternal union extended to us by the Great Republic." These two speeches opened a flood-gate. Long after the cheering deputies had said their good-bys to General Pershing, the French writers, made articulate by the example of Ribot and Viviani, were busily preparing appreciations and commentaries of the Pershing arrival. The most picturesque of these was Maurice de Waleffe's, in _Le Journal:_ "'There are no longer any Pyrenees,' said Louis XIV, when he married a Spanish princess. 'There is no longer an ocean,' General Pershing might say, with greater justice, as he is about to mingle with ours the democratic blood of his soldiers. The fusion of Europe and America is an enormous fact to note." A more powerful speech was that of Clemenceau, now Premier of France, but then an earnest private citizen, writing for his paper. "Paris has given its finest welcome to General Pershing," he wrote. "We are justified. We are justified in hoping that the acclamation of our fellow citizens, with whom are mingled crowds of soldiers home on leave, have shown him clearly, right at the start, in what spirit we are waging the bloodiest of wars; with what invincible determination, never to falter in any fibre of our nerves or muscles. Unless I misjudge America, General Pershing, fully conscious of the importance of his mission, has received from the cordial and joyous enthusiasm of the Parisians that kind of fraternal encouragement which is never superfluous, even when one needs it not. "Let him have no doubt that he, too, has brought encouragement to us, the whole of France, that followed with its eyes the whole of his passage along the boulevards; to all our hearts that salute his coming with joy at the supreme grandeur of America's might enrolled under the standard of right. "This idea M. Viviani, just back from America, splendidly developed in his eloquent speech to the Chamber of Deputies in the presence of General Pershing. "General Pershing himself, less dramatic, has given us, in three phrases devoid of artificiality, an impression of exceptionally virile force. It was no rhetoric but the pure simplicity of the soldier who is here to act, and who fears to promise more than he can perform. No bad sign, this, for those of us who have grown weary of pompous words, when we must pay so dearly for each failure of performance.