" Washington was taught by France, in
these years of border warfare--for he went four times over the mountains--
he was spared by France in the end to help take from France the title of
the west, or so it seemed when, in 1763, the war which his command had
begun was ended in the surrender of that vast domain to England. But we
know now that the struggle had other issue.
The steep path of the years when the colonies were taught their first
lessons of federation by their common fear of the French and their allies,
led by the tall young man who emerged from the woods back of Fort Le Boeuf
and later assisted by the moral and pecuniary sympathy of France, by the
presence of her ships along their menaced coasts, by the counsels of her
admirals and generals, and by the marching and fighting of her soldiers
side by side with theirs, you know. It is a path so marked by memorials as
to need no spoken word. Only one vista in this trail of gloom with
overhanging clouded sky need detain us a moment. It lets us see Benjamin
Franklin rejoicing in Paris after the news of the surrender of Burgoyne at
Saratoga in 1777.
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