Toronto Star Weekly/April 1, 1922
Paris.—Have you your cross of the Legion of Honor? If not, there is not much chance of getting it now for the boom days are past.
M. Raynaldy, of the French Chamber of Deputies, threw a handful of sand into the smooth-working distribution of decorations of the Legion of Honor when he placed some figures before a committee that was considering granting a number of honors on the occasion of the Moliere tercentenary.
Since the armistice, M. Raynaldy’s figures show, 95,000 decorations of the Legion of Honor have been granted. 72,000 of these decorations were exclusively military and 23,000 were awarded to civilians for work during the war. You cannot walk twenty yards on the Grands Boulevards without seeing the familiar red ribbon of the Legion in someone’s buttonhole.
After seeing M. Raynaldy’s figures, the committee unanimously rejected the proposal to grant any new decorations on the occasion of the Moliere festival.
(Source: William White, ed. Ernest Hemingway: Dateline: Toronto. Simon and Schuster, 2002.)
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