which the dragon, on a yellow field, was shown 

 in the act of devouring a red sun. 



737. China's national flag, which is also 

 used in the merchant service, consists of five 

 broad horizontal stripes, the uppermost red, 

 the next yellow, the next blue, the next white, 

 and the one at the bottom black. These colors 

 stand respectively for China, Manchuria, Mon- 

 golia, Tibet, and Turkestan. 



738. The royal standard of Denmark con- 

 sists of a swallow-tail red fly with the dannc- 

 brog, or silver cross, upon it. The origin of 

 this cross is said to date from 1219, when King 

 Waldemar, at a critical moment in his career, 

 averred that he had seen this cross in the 

 heavens. He asserted that it became strength 

 for him and saved Denmark. At the intersec- 

 tion of the dannebrog is the coat-of-arms. The 

 first quarter of the shield represents Denmark, 

 with three blue lions, crowned, on a golden 

 ground powdered with red hearts. The second 

 quarter represents Schleswig, with two blue 

 lions on a golden ground. The third quarter 

 stands for modern Sweden and shows three 

 golden crowns on a blue field ; Iceland is rep- 

 resented by a silver hawk on a red ground ; 

 the Faroe Islands by a silver goat walking on 

 a blue ground, and Greenland by a silver polar 

 bear on a blue ground. The fourth quarter 

 proclaims Jutland, a blue lion at the top on a 

 golden ground with ten red hearts below ; Van- 

 dalia has a golden dragon on a red ground, and 

 Holstein is represented by three leaves of 

 nettle and the three nails of the Passion of 

 Christ. The supporters are two savage men 

 wearing green wreaths and holding wooden 

 clubs (see also 1172). 



739. Denmark's ensign is the same as the 

 royal standard (738), except that the national 

 coat-of-arms is omitted. It is the oldest na- 

 tional ensign in existence. 



740. The merchant flag of Denmark has a 

 red field with a white cross upon it, and omits 

 the swallow-tail feature of the ensign. 



741. The flag of Iceland is of the same di- 

 mensions as the Danish merchant flag, the field 

 being blue and the cross red, with thin white 

 stripes separating the red of the cross from 

 the blue of the field. 



THE REPUBLIC OF FRANCE 



742. The flag of the President of France 

 consists of the French tricolor, with the initials 

 of the President in gold on the white stripe. 



743. The familiar and inspiring tricolor of 

 France dates from the year that gave the 

 United States its Constitution — 1789. The best 

 authorities are doubtful as to the true story of 

 its origin, but there are three principal theories 

 as to the derivation of its combination of 

 colors. The first of these, and the most au- 

 thentic, is that after the taking of the Bastille, 

 when Lafayette had been appointed by accla- 

 mation commander-in-chief of the National 

 Guard, he devised for the Guard a new cock- 

 ade made of the white of the royal family and 

 of the colors of Paris time out of mind, which 

 were and continue to be red and blue. From 

 •this cockade, most historians believe, came the 



French national flag. Another version links 

 the tricolor with the three historic flags of 



France — the blue of the Chape de Martin, the 

 red of the oriflamme, and the white of the 

 Bourbons. It will be recalled that the Chape 

 de Martin was supposed to be the original 

 cloak which St. Martin divided with a beggar 

 at Amiens, which act was followed by a vision 

 of Christ making known to the angels this deed 

 of charity. The chape was in the keeping of 

 the monks of Marmoutier, and Clovis carried it 

 when he conquered Alaric, while Charlemagne 

 bore it at Narbonne. When the kings of 

 France transferred the seat of government to 

 Paris, the local saint, St. Denis, was held in 

 high honor, and gradually the plain scarlet 

 banner, known as the oriflamme, and kept in 

 the abbey church, supplanted the blue of St. 

 Martin as the national colors. The oriflamme 

 appeared for the last time at the battle of 

 Agincourt, in 1415. The Huguenot party in 

 France adopted the white flag, and when Henry 

 III, himself a Protestant, came to the throne 

 he made it the royal ensign. His successor, 

 Henry IV, the first king of the Bourbons, 

 adopted it as the national flag. The third ac- 

 count of the tricolor's origin is that it is copied 

 from the shield of the Orleans family, as it 

 appeared after Philippe Egalite knocked off the 

 fleur de lis. During the first and second em- 

 pires, the tricolor became the imperial stand- 

 ard, but in the center of the white, stripe was 

 placed the eagle, while all three stripes were 

 richly powdered with the golden bees of the 

 Napoleon family. The flag of France today 

 waves over territory nearly one and a half 

 times as large as that covered by the United 

 States. French colonies have a total of ap- 

 proximately 4,500,000 square miles. Among 

 the flags of the earth, only the Union Jack and 

 the banner of Russia float over more territory. 



744. The flag of the French Governors of 

 Colonies consists of a blue field with a canton 

 of white and red in the quarter next to the 

 flagstaff, a blue stripe as wide as the white 

 and the red stripe separating the canton from 

 the staff. This flag is to be flown below the 

 national ensign. 



745. The flag of French Indo-China and of 

 the Lieutenant Governor of Senegal is a dupli- 

 cate of the flag of the French Governors of 

 Colonies, except that it is swallow-tailed. 



746. The .flag of Greece consists of nine 

 alternate stripes of blue and white, four white 

 and five blue, with a canton of blue in the 

 upper corner next the staff, upon which is im- 

 posed a white cross bearing at its point of in- 

 tersection a Greek crown. The colors of the 

 flag, white and blue, were derived from the 

 arms of Otto of Bavaria, who was called to 

 the throne of Greece in 1833. The motto of 

 the nation reads, "My strength is my people's 

 love." 



747. The merchant flag of Greece is a dupli- 

 cate of the ensign, with the exception that the 

 crown is omitted from the cross in the canton. 



748. The ambassadorial flag of Italy con- 

 sists of a white fly, upon which is superim- 

 posed, in a line descending from the upper 

 corner next the staff to the lower corner of 

 the fly, three blue six-pointed stars. 



749. When a merchant ship is taken over 

 by the Italian navy, it flies a triangular pen- 

 nant, the base half of which next the staff is 



373 



