"You men have come to France with disinterested motives. You came not because you were compelled to come, but because you wished to come. Your country always had love and friendship for France. Now you are at home here, and every French house is open to you. You are not like the people of other nations, because your motives are devoid of personal interest, and because you are filled with ideals. You have heard of the hardships before you, but the record of your countrymen proves that you will acquit yourselves nobly, earning the gratitude of France and the world." At the end of this speech General Sibert said to the men who had heard it: "You will henceforth be known as the Clemenceau Battalion." That was the first unit of the American Army to have any designation other than its number. Another civilian visitor was next, though he was civilian only in the sense that he had neither task nor uniform of the army. He was Raymond Poincaré, President of the French Republic, the leader of the French "bitter-enders," and sometimes called the stoutest-hearted soldier France has ever had. President Poincaré made a thorough inspection. He, too, began with the billets, but he was not content to see them from the outside. In fact, the first that one new major-general saw of him was the half from the waist down, the other half being obscured by the floor of the barn attic he was peering into. President Poincaré made cheering speeches to the men, for the force of which they were obliged to rely upon his gestures and his intonations, since he spoke no English. But his sense was not wholly lost to the doughboys. At the peak of one of the President's most soaring flights those who understood French interrupted to applaud him. "What did he say?" asked a doughboy. "He said to give 'em hell," said another. Fourth, and last, of the great Frenchmen, and greatest, from the soldier point of view, was Marshal Joffre, Marne hero, who came and spent a night and a day at camp. It was mid-October when he came, and weeks of driving rain had preceded him. In spite of their gloom over the weather, the doughboys were eagerly anticipating the visit of Joffre, and they were wondering if the man of many battles would think them worth standing in the rain to watch. A detachment of French buglers--buglers whom the Americans could never sufficiently admire or imitate, because they could twirl the bugles between beats and take up their blasts with neither pitch nor time lost--waited outside the quarters where the marshal was to spend the night. Half an hour before his motor came up the sun broke through the drizzle. "He brings it with him," said a doughboy.