[July 4, 2017] It is incumbent upon all leaders to remember and recognize important historical events for their present-day leadership value and for the significance in our society. To do otherwise would make us irresponsible, obviously ignorant, and ill-mannered. Such it is that we should remember the march of U.S. troops in Paris, France exactly 100 years ago today on the 4th of July, 1917.1
Today is the day that those of us in the United States celebrate our Independence Day; the day that on the 4th of July, 1776, the 13 colonies adopted the Declaration of Independence. We do celebrate, often with festivities ranging from parades, fireworks, and concerts to casual family backyard bar-b-ques. Personally, I will be in a small town parade and partake in hotdogs and soda afterwards.
Independence from Britain was no forgone conclusion and certainly not a universal idea among the colonists. The spread of revolutionary sentiments were published in many of the fledgling states, including a bestselling pamphlet “Common Sense,” by Thomas Paine (sales were high in France and Britain). The best part, in my opinion, of the Common Sense publication is Section III where Paine lays out the argument that the best course of action is for independence.
The year 1916 was the beginning of large numbers of U.S. troops to arrive in France to assist the Allies in their effort against the Axis Powers. Their commander, General John J. Pershing had the job of getting them ready to make a significant contribution to the fighting by the summer of the following year. This gave a major boost to the morale of the Allies that had been frustrated by the lack of progress on the battlefield.
On July 4, 1917, immense public enthusiasm greeted the first public display of American troops; a symbolic march through Paris, ending at the grave of Marquis de Lafayette, the hero of two worlds (France and the U.S.).2 Lafayette had commanded American revolutionary troops against the British empire and, by his own request, had been buried in Paris in soil brought from America.
To the cheers of Parisian onlookers in front of the tomb, the American officer Colonel Charles Stanton famously declared “Lafayette, we are here!” And so, now we remember the contribution of France and many of its citizens for their efforts to successfully help free America.
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- World War I was, of course, a brutish war and led indirectly (some say substantially) to conditions that precipitated World War II.
- https://www.biography.com/people/marquis-de-lafayette-21271783