German or French?

"Mais, non. Impossible!" "Aber ja, das ist wirklich wahr!" screamed the French and Germans at each other.

The controversy arose when the Stahlhelm (steel hermet), Monarchist journal, said that France's unknown soldier, who occupies a place of honor under the celebrated Arc de Triomphe, is none other than August Schultz of Wuerttemburg. The Stahlhelm said that it had received the news from a Swiss source.

The French were furious. L'Eclair, Paris journal, fumed against the "Boche brain which could invent such a lie," defied the Germans to prove the story.

Indeed, the spectacle of Germanophobe France paying all-highest honor to a dead German would be rib-crackingly funny if it were not so heartrendingly serious. The French chose their unknown poilu at random and because of that very fact it has on occasion been hinted that he was a U. S. doughboy, a Senegalese rifleman. It has also been stated before that he was a German, but never proved. Suffice it to say that the decomposed body under the stone slabs of the driveway of the Arc de Triomphe is, to the minds of Frenchmen, a Frenchman and a Frenchman who gave his life that other Frenchmen might live in the liberty for which they fought.