day issued a proclamation naming Tuesday, November twelfth, as a
legal holiday, but this did not deter the people from celebrating on
the eleventh. In Boston all the talcum powder available was purchased
and thrown on people's hats and shoulders. When it was brushed off in
considerable quantities, it made the pavements look as if they were
covered with snow and even more slippery. The chief spectacular
feature of the celebration in Boston, however, was the burning on the
Common, on Tuesday night, of twenty-five tons of red fire in one great
blaze. Similar and perhaps more hilariously happy scenes took place in
New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Atlanta, Chicago, San
Francisco,--in every great city and hamlet in the country.

Soldiers and sailors marched, reviewed by mayors and governors and
generals and admirals. Speeches were made and songs were sung. It
seemed at times as if everyone had gone crazy. If a person could have
ascended high enough in an air plane and could have had the vision to
have seen the whole United States, he would have perceived a most
wonderful sight--a hundred million people yelling and singing and
parading in every nook and corner of this great country. Nothing shows
better the horror and hatred of war that was felt by the American
people than this wonderful joy at the knowledge that it was all over;
and nothing shows better how much liberty and democracy meant to them
than their willingness to enter upon war when they so detested it and
so much desired to see it done away with forever.

Imagine the joy on these days in France and England and Belgium with
their great cities lit up again after more than four years of darkness!
What wonder that the Belgian boys and girls in Ghent marched up and
down the streets singing, "It's a long, long way to Tipperary," the
song which was probably the last they had heard on the lips of British
soldiers as they were pushed back out of the city by the foe!
Meanwhile the adults gathered in groups on the streets and in the cafes
and sang "The Marseillaise."

No other war correspondent felt and described the war with as much
sympathy and power as Philip Gibbs. His description of the rejoicing
in Ghent on Tuesday, November 12, is a beautiful and touching story.
He writes of the lights and the singing as follows:--

"For the first time in five winters of war, they lighted their lamps
with open shutters, and from many windows there streamed out bright
be