Gentlemen: France greets and welcomes you and thanks you for having unanimously chosen as the seat of your labours the city which, for over four years, the enemy has made his principal military objective and which the valour of the Allied armies has victoriously defended against unceasingly renewed offensives. Allow me to see in your…

Gentlemen: France has just been the object of a violent and premeditated attack, which is an insolent defiance of the law of nations. Before any declaration of war had been sent to us, even before the German Ambassador had asked for his passports, our territory has been violated. The German Empire has waited till yesterday…