The adventures of the fourteen points Author:Harry Hansen Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Concerning the relative importance of a peace conference and a foot-ball game, and how it feels to survey the great of the earth through a doorway... more ». A Company of buglers was drawn up just inside the tall iron fence of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Behind them stood a guard of honor of blue-coated Poilus. A black limousine rolled through the open gates. It contained a man of smooth-shaven countenance, wearing a high silk hat, and two women. At the front of the car flew a small blue flag, with the American eagle embroidered in white. The man alighted and walked up the steps of the ministry. The buglers put their instruments to their lips and blew a fanfare. The Poilus stood at salute. A second limousine drew up, containing a man and a woman. The man had a slight, rotund figure, and wore a white Vandyke beard. Their car, too, flew a flag — the tricolor of France. Again the buglers blew; again the Poilus came to a salute. From the crowd outside the iron fence rose a mild, polite cheer. The President of the United States and the President of the French Republic had arrived, and the greatest peace conference in the history of the world was about to open. It was January 18, 1919. I stood outside the tall iron fence and looked not atthe notables as they alighted within the inclosure, but at the crowd that waited more or less respectfully before the gates. At most there could not have been more than five hundred persons, men and women, well attired, many probably business and professional men. Here and there American doughboys on leave leaned against the plane-trees and smoked cigarettes complacently. American girls, wearing the long blue capes of the Y.M.C.A., walked by in pairs and stopped to scrutinize the building. A nurse girl pushed her perambulator up an...« less