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WILLIAM L. SHI RER
We look for the expression on Hitler’s face, but it does not change. Finally he leads his party over to another granite stone, a small one some 50 yards to one side. Here it was that the railroad car in which the German plenipotentiary stayed during the 1918 armistice negotiations stood from November 8 to 11. Hitler looks down and reads the inscription which merely says: “The German plenipotentiary.” The stone itself, I notice, is set between a pair of rusty old railroad tracks, the very ones that were there 22 years ago.
It is now 3 : 23 p.m., and the German leaders stride over to the armistice car. This car, of course, was not standing on this spot yesterday. It was standing 75 yards down the rusty track in the shelter of a tiny museum built to house it by an American citizen, Mr. Arthur Henry Fleming of Pasadena, California. Yesterday the car was removed from the museum by German army engineers and rolled back those 7 5 yards to the spot where it stood on the morning of November 1 1 , 1918. The Germans stand outside the car, chatting in the sunlight. This goes on for 2 minutes. Then Hitler steps up into the car, followed by Goering and the others. We watch them entering the drawing room of Marshal Foch’s car. We can see nicely now through the car windows.
Hitler enters first and takes the place occupied by Marshal Foch the morning the first armistice was signed. At his sides are Goering and General Keitel. To his right and left at the ends of the table we see General von Brauchitsch and Herr Hess at the one end, at the other end Grand Admiral Raeder and Herr von Ribbentrop. The opposite side of the table is still empty, and we see there four vacant chairs. The French have not yet appeared, but we do not wait long. Exactly at 3:30 p.m. the French alight from a car. They have flown up from Bordeaux to a near-by landing field and then have driven here in auto.
They glance at the Alsace-Lorraine memorial, now draped with swastikas, but it’s a swift glance. Then they walk down the avenue flanked by three German army officers. We see them now as they come into the sunlight of the clearing — General Huntziger, wearing a brief khaki uniform; General Bergeret and vice-admiral Le Luc, both in their respective dark-blue uniforms; and then, almost buried in the uniforms, the one single civilian of the day, Mr. Noel, French Am¬ bassador to Poland when the present war broke out there.
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