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The Dining Car. In this same car, in this same spot, in the bleak November dawn of another Friday 22 years ago tough old Marshal Foch received the German delegation with these words: "Qu'est-ce que vous désirez, messieurs?" ("What do you want, gentlemen?") Said the chief of the German Delegation, Mathias Erzberger:* "We have come to receive the proposal of the Allied Powers for an armistice." Foch (sharply): "I have no proposal whatsoever to make." Count Alfred von Oberndorff: "Tell us, Herr Feldmarschall, how you wish us to express ourselves. Our delegation is prepared to ask you the conditions of an armistice."
Foch: "Do you ask formally for an armistice?"
The Germans: "Yes, we do."
Foch: "Then please sit down and I will read the conditions of the Allies to you."
Last week German Army engineers removed the old car from a museum 75 yards away (built by Arthur Henry Fleming of California, who received the Légion d'Honneur for his beneficence) and rolled it down the track to the spot where Adolf Hitler wanted it for reasons of historical drama. Through the dusty windows the correspondents peered, saw Hitler sit down in the chair Foch had used, before a statue of the Marshal. At his right and left sat Göring and Keitel; at one end of the table Brauchitsch and Hess; at the other end Raeder and Ribbentrop. The far side of the table was empty, with four vacant chairs waiting.
At 3:30 p.m. four Frenchmen alighted from a car before the Alsace-Lorraine memorial. They were: General Charles Huntziger, wearing a khaki field uniform; Air General Jean Marie Joseph Bergeret and Admiral Maurice Athanase Le Luc, both in dark blue; onetime Ambassador to Poland Leon Noel, an old pro-totalitarian, neatly dressed in mufti. The French delegates gave the swastika-draped memorial a brief glance, then marched quickly down the avenue, escorted by three German officers. As they passed, the German guard snapped to attention..
As the French delegates entered the car, the German leaders rose, stiff with punctilio. Adolf Hitler gave the Nazi salute to each Frenchman in turn. Göring and Raeder raised their batons. Brauchitsch and Keitel gave the military salute, Hess and Ribbentrop the Nazi salute. The Frenchmen returned military salutes. Then Hitler sat down and nodded to
General Keitel. In a deeply solemn voice the German commander began reading, in German, Adolf Hitler's revision of history:
"On November n, 1918, there began in this train the time of suffering of the German people. ... On September 3, 1939 . . . England and France again declared war against Germany without any grounds. Now the decision of weapons has required that the Reich Government make known the German conditions for an armistice.
"If historic Compiégne Forest has been chosen for the handing over of these conditions, then it was done in order, once and for all, through this act of just retribution, to eradicate the memory which was not a glorious page of French history and was felt by the German people to be the deepest shame of all times. France has been beaten in a series of bloody battles, after heroic resistance, and has collapsed.