Friday, August 21
Twentieth day of mobilization. Threatening weather with overcast sky. Northwesterly wind. Temperature at five P.M. 19 degrees centigrade. No clouds prevented the eclipse of the sun from being seen in Paris. Most people however were profoundly indifferent to the celestial phenomena.
Thousands of foreign volunteers assembled on the Esplanade des Invalides this morning to offer their services for the war. These young foreigners are mostly strong, active youths and have all received more or less military training. They marched through the streets in detachments of from two to six hundred, grouped together according to nationalities, bearing French flags alongside flags of their own countries. There were about five thousand Russians, five thousand Italians, two thousand Belgians, numerous Czecs, Slavs, Roumanians, and Armenians, together with smaller contingents of Americans, British, and Greeks. Mr. Arthur Bles and his second in command, Mr. Victor Little, are busy organizing the “Rough Riders” in a riding-school in Rue Avenue des Chasseurs.
M. Geissler, manager of the Hotel Astoria, who was recently reported as having been shot as a spy for arranging disks on the roof of his hotel to interfere with the French wireless telegraphy, was tried today, not by court martial, but by a civil judge, M. Tortat, to whom the court martial had referred the matter for further evidence. It appears that M. Geissler had been denounced on insufficient grounds by a clerk in his employment. His innocence was established, this morning, and he was released from the Santé prison and handed over to the military authorities, who will probably let the matter drop.