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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Foch the Man, by Clara E. Laughlin
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Foch the Man
+       A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies
+
+
+Author: Clara E. Laughlin
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 14, 2006  [eBook #17511]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOCH THE MAN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 17511-h.htm or 17511-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/5/1/17511/17511-h/17511-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/5/1/17511/17511-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+FOCH THE MAN
+
+A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies
+
+by
+
+CLARA E. LAUGHLIN
+
+With Appreciation by Lieut.-Col. Edouard Réquin
+of the French High Commission to the United States
+
+With Illustrations
+
+Revised and Enlarged Edition
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Marshal Foch at the Peace Conference.]
+
+
+
+
+
+New York -------- Chicago
+Fleming H. Revell Company
+London and Edinburgh
+Copyright, 1918, 1919, by
+Fleming H. Revell Company
+First Printing - November 11, 1918
+Second Printing - November 19, 1918
+Third Printing - November 29, 1918
+Fourth Printing - December 7, 1918
+Fifth Printing - January 9, 1919
+Sixth Printing - May 1, 1919
+
+
+
+
+  DEDICATION
+
+  TO THE MEN WHO HAVE FOUGHT UNDER GENERAL
+  FOCH'S COMMAND.  TO ALL Of THEM, IN ALL
+  GRATITUDE.  BUT IN AN ESPECIAL WAY TO THE MEN
+  OF THE 42D DIVISION, THE SPLENDOR OF
+  WHOSE CONDUCT ON SEPTEMBER 9, 1914,
+  NO PEN WILL EVER BE ABLE
+  ADEQUATELY TO COMMEMORATE.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Hand-written letter from Foch.]
+
+[Illustration: Page 1 of hand-written letter from Lt.-Colonel E. Réquin
+to Clara Laughlin.]
+
+[Illustration: Page 2 of hand-written letter from Lt.-Colonel E. Réquin
+to Clara Laughlin.]
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: The letter in the second and third illustrations
+is shown translated on the following page.]
+
+
+Dear MADEMOISELLE LAUGHLIN:
+
+I have read with the keenest interest your sketch of the life of
+Marshal Foch.  It is not yet history: we are too close to events to
+write it now, but it is the story of a great leader of men on which I
+felicitate you because of your real understanding of his character.
+
+Christian, Frenchman, soldier, Foch will be held up as an example for
+future generations as much for his high moral standard as for his
+military genius.
+
+It seems that in writing about him the style rises with the noble
+sentiments which inspire him.
+
+Thus in form of presentation as well as in substance you convey
+admirably the great lesson which applies to each one of us from the
+life of Marshal Foch.
+
+Please accept, Mademoiselle, this expression of my respectful regards.
+
+LT.-COLONEL E. RÉQUIN.
+
+
+
+
+  "THEY SHALL NOT PASS!"
+
+  Three Spirits stood on the mountain peak
+    And gazed on a world of red,--
+  Red with the blood of heroes,
+    The living and the dead;
+  A mighty force of Evil strove
+    With freemen, mass on mass.
+  Three Spirits stood on the mountain peak
+    And cried: "They shall not pass!"
+
+  The Spirits of Love and Sacrifice,
+    The Spirit of Freedom, too,--
+  They called to the men they had dwelt among
+    Of the Old World and the New!
+  And the men came forth at the trumpet call,
+    Yea, every creed and class;
+  And they stood with the Spirits who called to them,
+    And cried: "They shall not pass!"
+
+  Far down the road of the Future Day
+    I see the world of Tomorrow;
+  Men and women at work and play,
+    In the midst of their joy and sorrow.
+  And every night by the red firelight,
+    When the children gather 'round
+  They tell the tale of the men of old.
+  These noble ancestors, grim and bold,
+    Who bravely held their ground.
+  In thrilling accents they often speak
+  Of the Spirits Three on the mountain peak.
+
+        O Freedom, Love and Sacrifice
+          You claimed our men, alas!
+        Yet everlasting peace is theirs
+          Who cried, "They shall not pass!"
+
+  ARTHUR A. PENN.
+
+
+_Reprinted by permission of M. Witmark & Sons, N. Y._
+
+_Publishers of the musical setting to this poem._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I. WHERE HE WAS BORN
+
+Stirring traditions and historic scenes which surrounded him in
+childhood.
+
+
+II. BOYHOOD SURROUNDINGS
+
+The horsemarkets at Tarbes.  The school.  Foch at twelve a student of
+Napoleon.
+
+
+III. A YOUNG SOLDIER OF A LOST CAUSE
+
+What Foch suffered in the defeat of France by the Prussians.
+
+
+IV. PARIS AFTER THE GERMANS LEFT
+
+Foch begins his military studies, determined to be ready when France
+should again need defense.
+
+
+V. LEARNING TO BE A ROUGH RIDER
+
+Begins to specialize in cavalry training.  The school at Saumur.
+
+
+VI. FIRST YEARS IN BRITTANY
+
+Seven years at Rennes as artillery captain and always student of war.
+Called to Paris for further training.
+
+
+VII. JOFFRE AND FOCH
+
+Parallels in their careers since their school days together.
+
+
+VIII. THE SUPERIOR SCHOOL OF WAR
+
+Where Foch's great work as teacher prepared hundreds of officers for
+the superb parts they have played in this war.
+
+
+IX. THE GREAT TEACHER
+
+Some of the principles Foch taught.  Why he is not only the greatest
+strategist and tactician of all time, but the ideal leader and
+coordinator of democracy.
+
+
+X. A COLONEL AT FIFTY
+
+Clemenceau's part in giving Foch his opportunity.
+
+
+XI. FORTIFYING FRANCE
+
+How the Superior War Council prepared for the inevitable invasion of
+France.  Foch put in command at Nancy.
+
+
+XII. ON THE EVE OF WAR
+
+True to his belief that "the way to make war is to attack" Foch
+promptly invaded Germany, but was obliged to retire and defend his own
+soil.
+
+
+XIII. THE BATTLE OF LORRAINE
+
+How the brilliant generalship there thwarted the German plan; and how
+Joffre recognized it in reorganizing his army.
+
+
+XIV. THE FIRST VICTORY AT THE MARNE
+
+"The Miracle of the Marne" was Foch.  How he turned defeat to victory.
+
+
+XV. SENT NORTH TO SAVE CHANNEL PORTS
+
+Foch's skill and diplomacy in that crisis show him a great coordinator.
+
+
+XVI. THE SUPREME COMMANDER
+
+How Foch stopped the German drive that nearly separated the French and
+English armies.
+
+
+XVII. BRINGING GERMANY TO ITS KNEES
+
+The completest humiliation ever inflicted on a proud nation.
+
+
+XVIII. DURING THE ARMISTICE--AND AFTER
+
+How Foch carries himself as victor.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Marshal Foch at the Peace Conference . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+The room in which Ferdinand Foch was born
+
+The house in Tarbes where Foch was born
+
+Ferdinand Foch as a schoolboy of twelve
+
+The school in Tarbes
+
+Marshall Joffre--General Foch
+
+General Pétain--Marshal Haig--General Foch--General Pershing
+
+General Foch--General Pershing
+
+Marshal Foch, Executive head of the allied forces
+
+Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of France
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD TO REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION
+
+When the Great War broke out, one military name "led all the rest" in
+world-prominence: Kitchener.  Millions of us were confident that the
+hero of Kartoum would save the world.  It was not so decreed.  Almost
+immediately another name flashed into the ken of every one, until even
+lisping children said _Joffre_ with reverence second only to that
+wherewith they named Omnipotence.  Then the weary years dragged on, and
+so many men were incredibly brave and good that it seemed hard for
+anyone to become pre-eminent.  We began to say that in a war so vast,
+so far-flung, no one man _could_ dominate the scene.
+
+But, after nearly four years of conflict, a name we had heard and seen
+from the first, among many others, began to differentiate itself from
+the rest; and presently the whole wide world was ringing with it: Foch!
+
+He was commanding all the armies of civilization.  Who was he?
+
+Hardly anyone knew.
+
+Up to the very moment when he had compassed the most momentous victory
+in the history of mankind, little was known about him, outside of
+France, beyond the fact that he had been a professor in the Superior
+School of War.
+
+Now and then, as the achievements of his generalship rocked the world,
+someone essayed an account of him.  They said he was a Lorrainer, born
+at Metz; they said his birthday was August 4; they said he was too
+young to serve in the Franco-Prussian war; and they said a great many
+other things of which few happened to be true.
+
+Then, as the summer of 1918 waned, there came to me from France, from
+Intelligence officers of General Foch's staff, authoritative
+information about him.
+
+And also there came those, representing France and her interests in
+this country, who said:
+
+"Won't you put the facts about Foch before your people?"
+
+If I could have fought for France with a sword (or gun) I should have
+been at her service from the first of August, 1914, when I heard her
+tocsin ring, saw her sons march away to fight and die on battlefields
+as familiar to me as my home neighborhood.
+
+Not being permitted that, I have yielded her such service as I could
+with my pen.
+
+And when asked to write, for my countrymen, about General Foch, I felt
+honored in a supreme degree.
+
+In due course we shall have many volumes about him: his life, his
+teachings, his writings, his great deeds will be studied in minutest
+details as long as that civilization endures which he did so much to
+preserve to mankind.
+
+But just now, while all hearts are overflowing with gratefulness to
+him, it may be--I cannot help thinking--as valuable to us to know a
+little about him as it will be for us to know a great deal about him
+later on.
+
+My sources of information are mainly French; and notable among them is
+a work recently published in Paris: "Foch, His Life, His Principles,
+His Work, as a Basis for Faith in Victory," by René Puaux, a French
+soldier-author who has served under the supreme commander in a capacity
+which enabled him to study the man as well as the General.
+
+French, English and some few American periodicals have given me bits of
+impression and some information.  French military and other writers
+have also helped.  And noted war correspondents have contributed
+graphic fragments.  The happy fortune which permitted me to know
+France, her history and her people, enabled me to "read into" these
+brief accounts much which does not appear to the reader without that
+acquaintance.  And distinguished Frenchmen, scholars and soldiers,
+including several members of the French High Commission to the United
+States, have helped me greatly; most of them have not only close
+acquaintance with General Foch, having served as staff officers under
+him, but are eminent writers as well, with the highest powers of
+analysis and of expression.
+
+Lieutenant-Colonel Édouard Réquin of the French General Staff, who was
+at General Foch's side from the day Foch was made commander of an army,
+has been especially kind to me in this undertaking; I am indebted to
+him, not only for many anecdotes and suggestions, but also for his
+patience in reading my manuscript for verification (or correction) of
+its details and its essential truthfulness.
+
+And I want especially to record my gratefulness to M. Antonin
+Barthélemy, French Consul at Chicago, the extent and quality of whose
+helpfulness, not alone on this but on many occasions, I shall never be
+able to describe.  Through him the Spirit of France has been potent in
+our community.
+
+Thus aided and encouraged, I have done what I could to set before my
+countrymen a sketch of the great, dominant figure of the World War.
+
+The thing about Foch that most impresses us as we come to know him is
+not primarily his greatness as a military genius, but his greatness as
+a spiritual force.
+
+Those identical qualities in him which saved the world in war, will
+serve it no less in peace--if we study them to good purpose.
+
+As a leader of men, his principles need little, if any, adaptation to
+meet the requirements of the re-born world from which, we hope, he has
+banished the sword.
+
+Not to those only who would or who must captain their fellows, but to
+every individual soul fighting alone against weakness and despair and
+other foes, his life-story brings a rising tide of new courage, new
+strength, new faith.
+
+For the young man or woman struggling with the principles of success;
+for the man or woman of middle life, fearful that the time for great
+service has gone by; to the preacher and the teacher and other moulders
+of ideals--to these, and to many more, he speaks at least as
+thrillingly as to the soldier.
+
+This is what I have tried to make clear in my simple sketch here
+offered.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+WHERE HE WAS BORN
+
+Ferdinand Foch was born at Tarbes on October 2, 1851.
+
+His father, of good old Pyrenean stock and modest fortune, was a
+provincial official whose office corresponded to that of secretary of
+state for one of our commonwealths.  So the family lived in Tarbes, the
+capital of the department called the Upper Pyrénées.
+
+The mother of Ferdinand was Sophie Dupré, born at Argèles, twenty miles
+south of Tarbes, nearer the Spanish border.  Her father had been made a
+chevalier of the empire by Napoleon I for services in the war with
+Spain, and the great Emperor's memory was piously venerated in Sophie
+Dupré's new home as it had been in her old one.  So her first-born son
+may be said to have inherited that passion for Napoleon which has
+characterized his life and played so great a part in making him what he
+is.
+
+There was a little sister in the family which welcomed Ferdinand.  And
+in course of time two other boys came.
+
+[Illustration: The Room in Which Ferdinand Foch was Born.]
+
+[Illustration: The House in Tarbes Where Foch was Born.]
+
+These four children led the ordinary life of happy young folks in
+France.  But there was much in their surroundings that was richly
+colorful, romantic.  Probably they took it all for granted, the way
+children (and many who are not children) take their near and intimate
+world.  But even if they did, it must have had its deep effect upon
+them.
+
+To begin with, there was Tarbes.
+
+Tarbes is a very ancient city.  It is twenty-five miles southeast of
+Pau, where Henry of Navarre made his dramatic entry upon a highly
+dramatic career, and just half that distance northeast of Lourdes,
+whose famous pilgrimages began when Ferdinand Foch was a little boy of
+seven.
+
+He must have heard many soul-stirring tales about little Bernadette,
+the peasant girl to whom the grotto's miraculous qualities were
+revealed by the Virgin, and whose stories were weighed by the Bishop of
+Tarbes before the Catholic Church sponsored them.  The procession of
+sufferers through Tarbes on their way to Lourdes, and the joyful return
+of many, must have been part of the background of Ferdinand Foch's
+young days.
+
+Many important highways converge at Tarbes, which lies in a rich,
+elevated plain on the left bank of the River Adour.
+
+The town now has some 30,000 inhabitants, but when Ferdinand Foch was a
+little boy it had fewer than half that many.
+
+For many centuries of eventful history it has consisted principally of
+one very long street, running east and west over so wide a stretch of
+territory that the town was called Tarbes-the-Long.  Here and there
+this "main street" is crossed by little streets running north and south
+and giving glimpses of mountains, green fields and orchards; and many
+of these are threaded by tiny waterways--small, meandering children of
+the Adour, which take themselves where they will, like the chickens in
+France, and nobody minds having to step over or around them, or
+building his house to humor their vagaries.
+
+Tarbes was a prominent city of Gaul under the Romans.  They, who could
+always be trusted to make the most of anything of the nature of baths,
+seem to have been duly appreciative of the hot springs in which that
+region abounds.
+
+But nothing of stirring importance happened at or near Tarbes until
+after the battle of Poitiers (732), when the Saracens were falling back
+after the terrible defeat dealt them by Charles Martel.
+
+Sullen and vengeful, they were pillaging and destroying as they went,
+and probably none of the communities through which they passed felt
+able to offer resistance to their depredations--until they got to
+Tarbes.  And there a valiant priest named Missolin hastily assembled
+some of the men of the vicinity and gave the infidels a good
+drubbing--killing many and hastening the flight, over the mountains, of
+the rest.
+
+This encounter took place on a plain a little to the south of Tarbes
+which is still called the Heath of the Moors.
+
+When Ferdinand Foch was a little boy, more than eleven hundred years
+after that battle, it was not uncommon for the spade or plowshare of
+some husbandman on the heath to uncover bones of Christian or infidel
+slain in what was probably the last conflict fought on French soil to
+preserve France against the Saracens.  And there may still have been
+living some old, old men or women who could tell Ferdinand stories of
+the 24th of May (anniversary of the battle) as it was observed each
+year until the Revolution of 1789.  At the southern extremity of the
+battlefield there stood for many generations a gigantic equestrian
+statue, of wood, representing the holy warrior, Missolin, rallying his
+flock to rout the unbelievers.  And in the presence of a great
+concourse singing songs of grateful praise to Missolin, his statue was
+crowned with garlands by young maidens wearing the picturesque gala
+dress of that vicinity.
+
+Some forty-odd years after Missolin's victory, Charlemagne went with
+his twelve knights and his great army through Tarbes on his way to
+Spain to fight the Moors.  And when that ill-starred expedition was
+defeated and its warriors bold were fleeing back to France, Roland--so
+the story goes--finding no pass in the Pyrénées where he needed one
+desperately, cleaved one with his sword Durandal.
+
+High up among the clouds (almost 10,000 feet) is that Breach of
+Roland--200 feet wide, 330 feet deep, and 165 feet long.  A good
+slice-out for a single stroke!  And when Roland had cut it, he dashed
+through it and across the chasm, his horse making a clean jump to the
+French side of the mountains.  That no one might ever doubt this, the
+horse thoughtfully left the mark of one iron-shod hoof clearly
+imprinted in the rock just where he cleared it, and where it is still
+shown to the curious and the stout of wind.
+
+It is a pity to remember that, in spite of such prowess of knight and
+devotion of beast.  Roland perished on his flight from Spain.
+
+But, like all brave warriors, he became mightier in death even than he
+had been in life, and furnished an ideal of valor which animated the
+most chivalrous youth of all Europe, throughout many centuries.
+
+With such traditions is the country round about Tarbes impregnated.
+
+It has been suggested that the name Foch (which, by the way, is
+pronounced as if it rhymed with "hush") is derived from Foix--a town
+some sixty miles east of St. Gaudens, near which was the ancestral home
+of the Foch family.
+
+Whatever the relatives of Ferdinand may have thought of this as a
+probability, it is certain that Ferdinand was well nurtured in the
+history of Foix and especially in those phases of it that Froissart
+relates.
+
+Froissart, the genial gossip who first courted the favor of kings and
+princes and then was gently entreated by them so that his writing of
+them might be to their renown, was on his way to Blois when he heard of
+the magnificence of Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix.  Whereupon the
+chronicler turned him about and jogged on his way to Foix.  Gaston
+Phoebus was not there, but at Orthez--150 miles west and north--and,
+nothing daunted, to Orthez went Froissart, by way of Tarbes, traveling
+in company with a knight named Espaing de Lyon, who was a graphic and
+charmful raconteur thoroughly acquainted with the country through which
+they were journeying.  A fine, "that-reminds-me" gentleman was Espaing,
+and every turn of the road brought to his mind some stirring tale or
+doughty legend.
+
+"Sainte Marie!" Froissart cried.  "How pleasant are your tales, and how
+much do they profit me while you relate them.  They shall all be set
+down in the history I am writing."
+
+So they were!  And of all Froissart's incomparable recitals, none are
+more fascinating than those of the countryside Ferdinand Foch grew up
+in.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+BOYHOOD SURROUNDINGS
+
+The country round about Tarbes has long been famed for its horses of an
+Arabian breed especially suitable for cavalry.
+
+Practically all the farmers of the region raised these fine, fleet
+animals.  There was a great stud-farm on the outskirts of town, and the
+business of breeding mounts for France's soldiers was one of the first
+that little Ferdinand Foch heard a great deal about.
+
+He learned to ride, as a matter of course, when he was very young.  And
+all his life he has been an ardent and intrepid horseman.
+
+A community devoted to the raising of fine saddle horses is all but
+certain to be a community devotedly fond of horse racing.
+
+Love of racing is almost a universal trait in France; and in Tarbes it
+was a feature of the town life in which business went hand-in-hand with
+pleasure.
+
+In an old French book published before Ferdinand Foch was born, I have
+found the following description of the crowds which flocked into Tarbes
+on the days of the horse markets and races:
+
+"On these days all the streets and public squares are flooded with
+streams of curious people come from all corners of the Pyrénées and
+exhibiting in their infinite variety of type and costume all the races
+of the southern provinces and the mountains.
+
+"There one sees the folk of Provence, irascible, hot-headed, of
+vigorous proportions and lusty voice, passionately declaiming about
+something or other, in the midst of small groups of listeners.
+
+"There are men of the Basque province--small, muscular and proud, agile
+of movement and with bodies beautifully trained; plain of speech and
+childlike in deed.
+
+"There are the men of the Béarnais, mostly from towns of size and
+circumstance--educated men, of self-command, tempering the southern
+warmth which burns in their eyes by the calm intelligence born of
+experience in life and also by a natural languor like that of their
+Spanish neighbors.
+
+"There are the old Catalonians, whose features are of savage strength
+under the thick brush of white hair falling about their leather-colored
+faces; the men of Navarre, with braided hair and other evidences of
+primitiveness--vigorous of build and handsome of feature, but withal a
+little subnormal in expression.
+
+"Then, in the midst of all these characteristic types, moving about in
+a pell-mell fashion, making a constantly changing mosaic of vivid hues,
+there are the inhabitants of the innumerable valleys around Tarbes
+itself, each of them with its own peculiarities of costume, manners,
+speech, which make them easily distinguishable one from another."
+
+It was a remarkable crowd for a little boy to wander in.
+
+If Ferdinand Foch had been destined to be a painter or a writer, the
+impressions made upon his childish mind by that medley of strange folk
+might have been passed on to us long ago on brilliant canvas or on
+glowing page.
+
+[Illustration: Ferdinand Foch (center) as a Schoolboy.]
+
+[Illustration: The School in Tarbes Where Foch Prepared for the
+Military Academy.]
+
+But that was not the way it served him.
+
+I want you who are interested to comprehend Ferdinand Foch, to think of
+those old horsefairs and race meets of his Gascony childhood, and the
+crowds of strange types they brought to Tarbes, when we come to the
+great days of his life that began in 1914--the days when his
+comprehension of many types of men, his ability to "get on with" them
+and harmonize them with one another, meant almost as much to the world
+as his military genius.
+
+Tarbes had suffered so much in civil and religious wars, for many
+centuries, that not many of her ancient buildings were left.  The old
+castle, with its associations with the Black Prince and other renowned
+warriors, was a ramshackle prison in Ferdinand Foch's youth.  The old
+palace of the bishops was used as the prefecture, where Ferdinand's
+father had his office.
+
+There were two old churches, much restored and of no great beauty, but
+very dear to the people of Tarbes nevertheless.
+
+Ferdinand and his brothers and sister were very piously reared, and at
+an early age learned to love the church and to seek it for exaltation
+and consolation.
+
+Later on in these chapters we shall see that phase of a little French
+boy's training in its due relation to a maréchal of France, directing
+the greatest army the world has ever seen.
+
+The college of Tarbes, where Ferdinand began his school days, was in a
+venerable building over whose portal there was, in Latin, an
+inscription recording the builder's prayer:
+
+"May this house remain standing until the ant has drunk all the waves
+of the sea and the tortoise has crawled round the world."
+
+Ferdinand was a hard student, serious beyond his years, but not
+conspicuous except for his earnestness and diligence.
+
+When he was twelve years old, his fervor for Napoleon led him to read
+Thiers' "History of the Consulate and the Empire."  And about this time
+his professor of mathematics remarked of him that "he has the stuff of
+a polytechnician."
+
+The vacations of the Foch children were passed at the home of their
+paternal grandparents in Valentine, a large village about two miles
+from the town of St. Gaudens in the foothills of the Pyrénées.  There
+they had the country pleasures of children of good circumstances, in a
+big, substantial house and a vicinity rich in tranquil beauty and
+outdoor opportunities.  And there, as in the children's own home at
+Tarbes, one was ashamed not to be a very excellent child, and, so,
+worthy to be descended from a chevalier of the great Napoleon.
+
+In the mid-sixties the family moved from Tarbes to Rodez--almost two
+hundred miles northeast of their old locality in which both parents had
+been born and where their ancestors had long lived.
+
+It was quite an uprooting--due to the father's appointment as paymaster
+of the treasury at Rodez--and took the Foch family into an atmosphere
+very different from that of their old Gascon home, but one which also
+helped to vivify that history which was Ferdinand's passion.
+
+There Ferdinand continued his studies, as also at Saint-Étienne, near
+Lyons, whither the family moved in 1867 when the father was appointed
+tax collector there.
+
+And in 1869 he was sent to Metz, to the Jesuit College of Saint
+Clément, to which students flocked from all parts of Europe.
+
+He had been there a year and had been given, by unanimous vote of his
+fellow students, the grand prize for scholarly qualities, when the
+Franco-Prussian war began.
+
+Immediately Ferdinand Foch enlisted for the duration of the war.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+A YOUNG SOLDIER OF A LOST CAUSE
+
+There is nothing to record of Ferdinand Foch's first soldiering except
+that from the dépôt of the Fourth Regiment of Infantry, in his home
+city of Saint-Étienne, he was sent to Chalon-sur-Saône, and there was
+discharged in January, 1871, after the capitulation of Paris.
+
+He did not distinguish himself in any way.  He was just one of a
+multitude of youths who rushed to the colors when France called, and
+did what they could in a time of sad confusion, when a weak government
+had paralyzed the effectiveness of the army--of the nation!
+
+Whatever blows Ferdinand Foch struck in 1870 were without weight in
+helping to avert France's catastrophe.  But he was like hundreds of
+thousands of other young Frenchmen similarly powerless in this: In the
+anguish he suffered because of what he could not do to save France from
+humiliation were laid the foundations of all that he has contributed to
+the glory of new France.
+
+At the time when his Fall term should have been beginning at Saint
+Clément's College, Metz was under siege by the German army, and its
+garrison and inhabitants were suffering horribly from hunger and
+disease; Paris was surrounded; the German headquarters were at
+Versailles; and the imperial standards so dear to young Foch because of
+the great Napoleon were forever lowered when the white flag was hoisted
+at Sedan and an Emperor with a whole army passed into captivity.
+
+How much the young soldier-student of the Saône comprehended then of
+the needlessness of the shame and surrender of those inglorious days we
+do not know.  He cannot have been sufficiently versed in military
+understanding to realize how much of the defeat France suffered was due
+to her failure to fight on, at this juncture and that, when a stiffer
+resistance would have turned the course of events.
+
+But if he did not know then, he certainly knew later.  And as soon as
+he got where he could impress his convictions upon other soldiers of
+the new France he began training them in his great maxim: "A battle is
+lost when you admit defeat."
+
+What his devotion to Saint Clément's College was we may know from the
+fact of his return there to resume his interrupted studies under the
+same teachers, but in sadly different circumstances.
+
+He found German troops quartered in parts of the college, and as he
+went to and from his classes the young man who had just laid off the
+uniform of a French soldier was obliged to pass and repass men of the
+victorious army of occupation.
+
+The memory of his shame and suffering on those occasions has never
+faded.  How much France and her allies owe to it we shall never be able
+to estimate.
+
+For the effect on Foch was one of the first acid tests in which were
+revealed the quality of his mind and soul.  Instead of offering himself
+a prey to sullen anger and resentment, or of flaring into fury when one
+time for fury was past and another had not yet come, he used his sorrow
+as a goad to study, and bent his energies to the discovery of why
+France had failed and why Prussia had won.  His analysis of those
+reasons, and his application of what that analysis taught him, is what
+has put him where he is to-day--and _us_ where _we_ are!
+
+From Metz, Foch went to Nancy to take his examination for the
+Polytechnic at Paris.
+
+Just why this should have been deemed necessary I have not seen
+explained.  But it was, like a good many other things of apparent
+inconsequence in this young man's life, destined to leave in him an
+impress which had much to do with what he was to perform.
+
+I have seldom, if ever, studied a life in which events "link up" so
+marvelously and the present is so remarkably an extension of the past.
+
+Nancy had been chosen by General Manteuffel, commander of the First
+German Army Corps, as headquarters, pending the withdrawal of the
+victors on the payment of the last sou in the billion-dollar indemnity
+they exacted of France along with the ceding of Alsace-Lorraine.  (For
+three years France had to endure the insolent victors upon her soil.)
+
+And with the fine feeling and magnanimity in which the German was then
+as now peculiarly gifted General Manteuffel delighted in ordering his
+military bands to play the "Retreat"--to taunt the sad inhabitants with
+this reminder of their army's shame.
+
+Ferdinand Foch listened and thought and wrote his examinations for the
+school of war.
+
+Forty-two years later--in August, 1913--a new commandant came to Nancy
+to take control of the Twentieth Army Corps, whose position there,
+guarding France's Eastern frontier, was considered one of the most
+important--if not _the_ most important--to the safety of the nation.
+
+The first order he gave was one that brought out the full band strength
+of six regiments quartered in the town.  They were to play the "March
+Lorraine" and the "Sambre and Meuse."  They were to fill Nancy with
+these stirring sounds.  The clarion notes carrying these martial airs
+were to reach every cranny of the old town.  It was a veritable tidal
+wave of triumphant sound that he wanted--for it had much to efface.
+
+Nancy will never forget that night!  It was Saturday, the 23d of
+August, 1913.  And the new commandant's name was Ferdinand Foch!
+
+Less than a year later he was fighting to save Nancy, and what lay
+beyond, from the Germans.
+
+And _this_ time there was to be a different story!  Ferdinand Foch was
+foremost of those who assured it.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+PARIS AFTER THE GERMANS LEFT
+
+Ferdinand Foch entered the Polytechnic School at Paris on the 1st of
+November, 1871, just after he had completed his twentieth year.
+
+This school, founded in 1794, is for the technical education of
+military and naval engineers, artillery officers, civil engineers in
+government employ, and telegraphists--not mere operators, of course,
+but telegraph engineers and other specialists in electric
+communication.  It is conducted by a general, on military principles,
+and its students are soldiers on their way to becoming officers.
+
+Its buildings cover a considerable space in the heart of the great
+school quarter of Parts.  The Sorbonne, with its traditions harking
+back to St. Louis (more than six centuries) and its swarming thousands
+of students, is hard by the Polytechnic.  So is the College de France,
+founded by Francis I.  And, indeed, whichever way one turns, there are
+schools, schools, schools--of fine arts and applied arts; of medicine
+in all its branches; of mining and engineering; of war; of theology; of
+languages; of commerce in its higher developments; of pedagogy; and
+what-not.
+
+Nowhere else in the world is there possible to the young student, come
+to advance himself in his chosen field of knowledge, quite such a
+thrill as that which must be his when he matriculates at one of the
+scores of educational institutions in that quarter of Paris to which
+the ardent, aspiring youth of all the western world have been directing
+their eager feet from time immemorial.
+
+Cloistral, scholastic atmosphere, with its grave beauty, as at Oxford
+and Cambridge, he will not find in the Paris Latin Quarter.
+
+Paris does not segregate her students.  Conceiving them to be studying
+for life, she aids them to do it in the midst of life marvelously
+abundant.  They do not go out of the world--so to speak--to learn to
+live and work in the world.  They go, rather, into a life of
+extraordinary variety and fullness, out of which--it is expected--they
+will discover how to choose whatever is most needful to their success
+and well-being.
+
+There is no feeling of being shut in to a term of study.  There is,
+rather, the feeling of being "turned loose" in a place of vast
+opportunity of which one may make as much use as he is able.
+
+To a young man of Ferdinand Foch's naturally serious mind, deeply
+impressed by his country's tragedy, the Latin Quarter of Paris in those
+Fall days of 1871 was a sober place indeed.
+
+Beautiful Paris, that Napoleon III had done so much to make splendid,
+was scarred and seared on every hand by the German bombardment and the
+fury of the communards, who had destroyed nearly two hundred and fifty
+public and other buildings.  The government of France had deserted the
+capital and moved to Versailles--just evacuated by the Germans.
+
+The blight of defeat lay on everything.
+
+In May, preceding Foch's advent, the communards--led by a miserable
+little shoemaker who talked about shooting all the world--took
+possession of the buildings belonging to the Polytechnic, and were
+dislodged only after severe fighting by Marshal MacMahon's Versailles
+troops.
+
+The cannon of the communards, set on the heights of Pére-Lachaise (the
+great city of the dead where the slumber of so many of earth's most
+illustrious imposed no respect upon the "Bolsheviki" of that cataclysm)
+aimed at the Pantheon, shot short and struck the Polytechnic.  One
+shell burst in the midst of an improvised hospital there, gravely
+wounding a nurse.
+
+At last, on May 24, the Polytechnic was taken from the revolutionists
+by assault, and many of the communards were seized.
+
+In the days following, the great recreation court of the school was the
+scene of innumerable executions, as the wretched revolutionists paid
+the penalty of their crimes before the firing squad.  And the students'
+billiard room was turned into a temporary morgue, filled with bodies of
+those who had sought to destroy Paris from within.
+
+The number of Parisians slain in those days after the second siege of
+Paris has been variously estimated at from twenty thousand to
+thirty-six thousand.  And all the while, encamped upon the heights
+round about Paris, were victorious German troops squatting like Semitic
+creditors in Russia, refusing to budge till their account was settled
+to the last farthing of extortion.
+
+The most sacred spot in Paris to young Foch, in all the depression he
+found there, was undoubtedly the great Dôme des Invalides, where,
+bathed in an unearthly radiance and surrounded by faded battle flags,
+lies the great porphyry sarcophagus of Napoleon I.
+
+With what bitter reflections must the young man who had been nurtured
+in the adoration of Bonaparte have returned from that majestic tomb to
+the Polytechnic School for Warriors--to which, on the day after his
+coronation as Emperor, Napoleon had given the following motto:
+
+"Science and glory--all for country."
+
+But, also, what must have been the young southerner's thought as he
+lifted his gaze on entering the Polytechnic and read there that
+self-same wish which was inscribed over the door of his first school in
+Tarbes:
+
+"May this house remain standing until the ant has drunk all the waves
+of the sea and the tortoise has crawled round the world."
+
+The edifice in which part of the Polytechnic was housed was the ancient
+College of Navarre, and a Navarrias poet of lang syne had given to the
+Paris school for his countrymen this quaint wish, repeated from the
+inscription he knew at Tarbes.
+
+France had had twelve different governments in fourscore years when
+Ferdinand Foch came to study in that old building which had once been
+the college of Navarre.  Houses of cards rather than houses of
+permanence seemed to characterize her.
+
+Yet she has always had her quota--a larger one, too, than that of any
+other country--of those who look toward far to-morrows and seek to
+build substantially and beautifully for them.
+
+That forward-looking prayer of old Navarre, and recollection of the
+centuries during which it had prevailed against destroying forces, was
+undoubtedly an aid and comfort to the heavy-hearted youth who then and
+there set himself to the study of that art of war wherewith he was to
+serve France.
+
+Among the two hundred and odd fellow-students of Foch at the
+Polytechnic was another young man from the south--almost a neighbor of
+his and his junior by just three months--Jacques Joseph Césaire Joffre,
+who had entered the school in 1869, interrupted his studies to go to
+war, and resumed them shortly before Ferdinand Foch entered the
+Polytechnic.
+
+Joffre graduated from the Polytechnic on September 21, 1872, and went
+thence to the School of Applied Artillery at Fontainebleau.
+
+Foch left the Polytechnic about six months later, and also went to
+Fontainebleau for the same special training that Joffre was taking.
+
+Both young men were hard students and tremendously in earnest.  Both
+were heavy-hearted for France.  Both hoped the day would come when they
+might serve her and help to restore to her that of which she had been
+despoiled.
+
+But if any one, indulging in the fantastic extravagancies of youth, had
+ventured to forecast, then, even a tithe of what they have been called
+to do for France, he would have been set down as madder than March
+hares know how to be.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+LEARNING TO BE A ROUGH RIDER
+
+When Ferdinand Foch graduated, third in his class, from the artillery
+school at Fontainebleau, instead of seeking to use what influence he
+might have commanded to get an appointment in some garrison where the
+town life or social life was gay for young officers, he asked to be
+sent back to Tarbes.
+
+No one, to my knowledge, has advanced an explanation for this move.
+
+To so earnest and ambitious a student of military art (Foch will not
+permit us to speak of it as "military science") sentimental reasons
+alone would never have been allowed to control so important a choice.
+
+That he always ardently loved the Pyrenean country, we know.  But to a
+young officer of such indomitable purpose as his was, even then, it
+would have been inconceivable that he should elect to spend his first
+years out of school in any other place than that one where he saw the
+maximum opportunity for development.
+
+"Development," mind you--not just "advancement."  For Foch is, and ever
+has been, the kind of man who would most abhor being advanced faster
+than he developed.
+
+He would infinitely rather be prepared for a promotion and fail to get
+it than get a promotion for which he was not thoroughly prepared.
+
+Nor is he the sort of individual who can comfortably deceive himself
+about his fitness.  He sustains himself by no illusions of the variety:
+"If I had so-and-so to do, I'd probably get through as well as
+nine-tenths of commanders would."
+
+He is much more concerned to satisfy himself that his thoroughness is
+as complete as he could possibly have made it, than he is to "get by"
+and satisfy the powers that be!
+
+So we know that it wasn't any mere longing for the scenes of his happy
+childhood which directed his choice of Tarbes garrison when he left the
+enchanting region of Fontainebleau, with its fairy forest, its
+delightful old town, and its many memories of Napoleon.
+
+His mind seems to have been fixed upon a course involving more cavalry
+skill than was his on graduating.  And after two years at Tarbes, with
+much riding of the fine horses of Arabian breed which are the specialty
+of that region, he went to the Cavalry School at Saumur, on the Loire.
+
+King René of Anjou, whose chronic poverty does not seem to have
+interfered with his taste for having innumerable castles, had one at
+Saumur, and it still dominates the town and lends it an air of
+medievalism.
+
+Toward the end of the sixteenth century Saumur was one of the chief
+strongholds of Protestantism in France and the seat of a Protestant
+university.
+
+But the revocation of the Edict of Nantes granting tolerance to the
+Huguenots, brought great reverses upon Saumur, whose inhabitants were
+driven into exile.  And thereupon (1685) the town fell into a decline
+which was not arrested until Louis XV, in the latter part of his reign,
+caused this cavalry school to be established there.
+
+It is a large school, with about four hundred soldiers always in
+training as cavalry officers and army riding masters.  And the riding
+exhibitions which used to be given there in the latter part of August
+were brilliant affairs, worth going many miles to see.
+
+There Ferdinand Foch studied cavalry tactics, practiced "rough riding"
+and--by no means least important--learned to know another type of
+Frenchman, the men of old Anjou.
+
+In our own country of magnificent distances and myriad racial strains
+we are apt to think of French people as a single race: "French is
+French."
+
+This is very wide of the truth.  French they all are, in sooth, with an
+intense national unity surpassed nowhere on earth if, indeed, it is
+anywhere equaled.  But almost every one of them is intensely a
+provincial, too, and very "set" in the ways of his own section of
+country--which, usually, has been that of his forbears from time
+immemorial.
+
+In the description I quoted in the second chapter, showing some of the
+types from the vicinity of Tarbes which frequent its horse market, one
+may get some idea of the extraordinary differences in the men of a
+single small region which is bordered by many little "pockets" wherein
+people go on and on, age after age, perpetuating their special traits
+without much admixture of other strains.
+
+Not every part of France has so much variety in such small compass.
+But every province has its distinctive human qualities.  And between
+the Norman and the Gascon, the Breton and the Provençal, the man of
+Picardy and the man of Languedoc, there are greater temperamental
+differences than one can find anywhere else on earth in an equal number
+of square miles--except in some of our American cities.
+
+To the commander of General Foch's type (and as we begin to study his
+principles we shall, I believe, see that they apply to command in civil
+no less than in military life) knowledge of different men's minds and
+the way they work is absolutely fundamental to success.
+
+And his preparation for this mastery was remarkably thorough.
+
+At Saumur he learned not only to direct cavalry operations, but to know
+the Angevin characteristics.
+
+In each school he attended, beginning with Metz, he had close class
+association with men from many provinces, men of many types.  And this
+was valuable to him in preparing him to command under-officers in whom
+a rigorous uniformity of training could not obliterate bred-in-the-bone
+differences.
+
+Many another young officer bent on "getting on" in the army would have
+felt that what he learned among his fellow officers of the provincial
+characteristics was enough.
+
+But not so Ferdinand Foch.
+
+Almost his entire comprehension of war is based upon men and the way
+they act under certain stress--not the way they might be expected to
+act, but the way they actually do act, and the way they can be led to
+act under certain stimulus _of soul_.
+
+For Ferdinand Foch wins victories with men's souls--not just with their
+flesh and blood, nor even with their brains.
+
+And to command men's souls it is necessary to understand them.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+FIRST YEARS IN BRITTANY
+
+Upon leaving the cavalry school at Saumur, in 1878, Ferdinand Foch went,
+with the rank of captain of the Tenth Regiment of Artillery, to Rennes,
+the ancient capital of Brittany and the headquarters of France's tenth
+army corps.
+
+He stayed at Rennes, as an artillery captain, for seven years.
+
+It is not a particularly interesting city from some points of view, but
+it is a very "livable" one, and for a student like Foch it had many
+advantages.  The library is one of the best in provincial France and has
+many valuable manuscripts.  There is also an archaeological museum of
+antiquities found in that vicinity, many of them relating to prehistoric
+warfare.  Some good scientific collections are also treasured there.
+
+What is now known as the University of Rennes was styled merely the
+"college" in the days of Foch's residence there.  But it did
+substantially the same work then as now, and among its faculty Foch
+undoubtedly found many who could give him able aid in his perpetual study
+of the past.
+
+Rennes especially cherishes the memory of Bertrand du Guesclin, the great
+constable of France under King Charles V and the victorious adversary of
+Edward III.  This brilliant warrior, who drove the English, with their
+claims on French sovereignty, out of France, was a native of that
+vicinity.  And we may be sure that whatever special opportunity Rennes
+afforded of studying documents relating to his campaigns was fully
+improved by Captain Foch.
+
+In that time, also, Foch had ample occasion to know the Bretons, who are,
+in some respects, the least French of all French provincials--being much
+more Celtic still than Gallic, although it is a matter of some fifteen
+hundred years since their ancestors, driven out of Britain by the
+Teutonic invasions, came over and settled "Little Britain," or Brittany.
+
+The Bretons maintained their independence of France for a thousand years,
+and only became united with it through the marriage of their last
+sovereign, Duchess Anne, with Charles VIII, in 1491 and--after his
+death--with his successor, Louis XII.
+
+And even to-day, after more than four centuries of political union, the
+people of Brittany are French in name and in spirit rather than in
+speech, customs, or temperament.  Many of them do not speak or understand
+the French language.  Few of them, outside of the cities, have conformed
+appreciably to French customs.  Quaint, sturdy, picturesque folk they
+are--simple, for the most part, superstitious, tenacious of the old,
+suspicious of the new, and governable only by those who understand them.
+
+Foch must have learned, in those seven years, not only to know the
+Bretons, but to like them and their rugged country very well.  For he has
+had, these many years past, his summer home near Morlaix on the north
+coast of Brittany.  It was from there that he was summoned into the great
+war on July 26, 1914.
+
+In 1885 Captain Foch was called to Paris and entered the Superior School
+of War.
+
+This institution, wherein he was destined to play in after years a part
+that profoundly affected the world's destiny, was founded only in 1878 as
+a training school for officers, connected with the military school which
+Louis XV established in 1751 to "educate five hundred young gentlemen in
+all the sciences necessary and useful to an officer."
+
+One of the "young gentlemen" who profited by this instruction was the
+little Corsican whom Ferdinand Foch so ardently venerated.
+
+The building covers an area of twenty-six acres and faces the vast
+Champ-de-Mars, which was laid out about 1770 for the military school's
+use as a field for maneuvers.
+
+This field is eleven hundred yards long and just half that wide.  It
+occupies all the ground between the school buildings and the river.
+
+Across the river is the height called the Trocadéro, on which Napoleon
+hoped to build a great palace for the little King of Rome; but whereon,
+many years after he and his son had ceased to need mansions made by
+hands, the French republic built a magnificent palace for the French
+people.  This vast building, with its majestic gardens, was the principal
+feature of the French national exhibition of 1878, which, like its
+predecessor of 1867 and its successors of 1889 and 1900, was held on the
+Champ-de-Mars.
+
+Facing the Trocadéro Palace, on the Champ-de-Mars, is the Eiffel Tower
+(nearly a thousand feet high) which was erected for the exposition of
+1889, and has served, since, then-unimaginable purposes during the stress
+and strain of war as a wireless station.  The "Ferris" wheel put up for
+the exposition of 1900 is close by.  And a stone's throw from the
+military school are the Hôtel des Invalides, Napoleon's tomb, and the
+magnificent Esplanade des Invalides down which one looks straightway to
+the glinting Seine and over the superb Alexander III bridge toward the
+tree-embowered palaces of arts on the Champs-Élysées.
+
+On the other side of the Hôtel des Invalides from that occupied by the
+military school and Champ-de-Mars is the principal diplomatic and
+departmental district of Paris, with many embassies (not ours, however,
+nor the British--which are across the river) and many administrative
+offices of the French nation.
+
+Soldiers and government officials and foreign diplomats dominate the
+quarter--and homes of the old French aristocracy.
+
+The Hotel des Invalides, founded by Louis XIV and designed to
+accommodate, as an old soldiers' home, some seven thousand veterans of
+his unending wars, has latterly served as headquarters for the military
+governor of Paris, and also--principally--as a war museum.
+
+Here are housed collections of priceless worth and transcendent interest.
+The museum of artillery contains ten thousand specimens of weapons and
+armor of all kinds, ancient and modern.  The historical museum, across
+the court of honor, was--in the years when I spent many fascinating hours
+there--extraordinarily rich in personal souvenirs of scores of
+illustrious personages.
+
+What it must be now, after the tragic years of a world war, and what it
+will become as a treasure house for the years to come, is beyond my
+imagination.
+
+It was into this enormously rich atmosphere, pregnant with everything
+that conserves France's most glorious military traditions, that Captain
+Ferdinand Foch was called in 1885 for two years of intensive training and
+study.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+JOFFRE AND FOCH
+
+After quitting the School of War in 1887 (he graduated fourth in his
+class, as he had at Saumur; he was third at Fontainebleau), Ferdinand
+Foch was sent to Montpellier as a probationer for the position of staff
+officer.
+
+He remained at Montpellier for four years--first as a probationer and
+later as a staff officer in the Sixteenth Army Corps, whose headquarters
+are there.
+
+[Illustration: Marshall Joffre, General Foch]
+
+It is a coincidence--without special significance, but interesting--that
+Captain Joseph Joffre had spent several years at the School of
+Engineering in Montpellier; he left there in 1884, after the death of his
+young wife, to bury himself and his grief in Indo-China; so the two men
+did not meet in the southern city.[1]
+
+Joffre returned from Indo-China in 1888, while Foch was at Montpellier,
+and after some time in the military railway service, and a promotion in
+rank (he was captain for thirteen years), received an appointment as
+professor of fortifications at Fontainebleau.
+
+Some persons who claim to have known Joffre at Montpellier have
+manifested surprise at the greatness to which he attained thirty years
+later; he did not impress them as a man of destiny.  That is quite as
+likely to be their fault as his.  And also it is possible that Captain
+Joseph Joffre had not then begun to develop in himself those qualities
+which made him ready for greatness when the opportunity came.
+
+If, however, any one has ever expressed surprise at Ferdinand Foch's
+attainment, I have not heard of it.  He seems always to have impressed
+people with whom he came in contact as a man of tremendous energy,
+application, and thoroughness.
+
+The opportunities for study at Montpellier are excellent, and the region
+is one of extraordinary richness for the lover of history.  The splendor
+of the cities of Transalpine Gaul in this vicinity is attested by remains
+more numerous and in better preservation than Italy affords save in a
+very few places.  And awe-inspiring evidences of medievalism's power
+flank one at every step and turn.  Without doubt, Foch made the most of
+them.
+
+Needless to remark, the commander-in-chief of the allied armies has not
+confided to me what were his favorite excursions during these four years
+at Montpellier.  But I am quite sure that Aigues-Mortes was one of them.
+And I like to think of him, as we know he looked then, pacing those
+battlements and pondering the warfare of those militant ages when this
+vast fortress in the wide salt marshes was one of the most formidable in
+the world.  What fullness of detail there must have been in the mental
+pictures he was able to conjure of St. Louis embarking here on his two
+crusades?  What particularity in his appreciation of those defenses!
+
+The place is, to-day, the very epitome of desolation--much more so than
+if the fortifications were not so perfectly preserved.  For they look as
+if yesterday they might have been bristling with men-at-arms--whereas not
+in centuries has their melancholy majesty served any other purpose than
+that of raising reflections in those to whom the past speaks through her
+monuments.
+
+From Montpellier, Ferdinand Foch returned to Paris, in February, 1891, as
+major on the general army staff.
+
+He and Joffre had now the same rank.  Joffre became lieutenant colonel in
+1894 and colonel in 1897; similar promotions came to Foch in 1896 and
+1903.  He was six years later than Joffre in attaining a colonelcy, and
+exactly that much later in becoming a general.
+
+Neither man had a quick rise but Foch's was (as measurable in grades and
+pay) specially slow.
+
+About the time that Major Joffre went to the Soudan, to superintend the
+building of a railway in the Sahara desert, Major Foch went to Vincennes
+as commander of the mounted group of the Thirteenth Artillery.
+
+Vincennes is on the southeastern skirts of Paris, close by the confluence
+of the Seine and the Marne; about four miles or so from the Bastille,
+which was the city's southeastern gate for three hundred years or
+thereabouts, until the fortified inclosure on that side of the city was
+enlarged under Louis XIV.
+
+The fort of Vincennes was founded in the twelfth century to guard the
+approach to Paris from the Marne valley.  And on account of its pleasant
+situation--close to good hunting and also to their capital--the castle of
+Vincennes was a favorite residence of many early French kings.
+
+It was there that St. Louis is said to have held his famous open-air
+court of justice, which he established so that his subjects might come
+direct to him with their troubles and he, besides settling them, might
+learn at first hand what reforms were needed.
+
+Five Kings of France died there (among them Charles VI, the mad king, and
+Charles IX, haunted by the horrors of the massacre on St. Bartholomew's
+eve), and one King of England, Harry Hotspur.  King Charles V was born
+there.
+
+From the days of Louis XI the castle has been used as a state prison.
+Henry of Navarre was once a prisoner there, and so was the Grand Condé,
+and Diderot, and Mirabeau, and it was there that the young Duc d'Enghien
+was shot by Napoleon's orders and to Napoleon's everlasting regret.
+
+The castle is now (and has been for many years) an arsenal and school of
+musketry, artillery, and other military services.  Before its firing
+squad perish many traitors to France, whose last glimpse of the country
+they have betrayed is in the courtyard of this ancient castle.
+
+The vicinity is very lovely.  The Bois de Vincennes, on the edge of which
+the castle stands, is scarcely inferior to the Bois de Boulogne in charm.
+We used to go out there, not infrequently, for luncheon, which we ate in
+a rustic summerhouse close to the edge of the lake, with many sociable
+ducks and swans bearing us company and clamoring for bits of bread.
+
+It would be hard to imagine anything more idyllic, more sylvan, on the
+edge of a great city--anything more peaceful, restful, anywhere.
+
+Yet the whole locality was, even then, a veritable camp of Mars--forts,
+barracks, fields for maneuvers and for artillery practice, infantry
+butts, rifle ranges, school of explosives; and what not.
+
+France knew her need of protection--and none of us can ever be
+sufficiently grateful that she did!
+
+But she did not obtrude her defensive measures.  She seldom made one
+conscious of her military affairs.
+
+In Germany, for many years before this war, remembrance of the army and
+reverence to the army was exacted of everyone almost at every breath.
+Forever and forever and forever you were being made to bow down before
+the God of War.
+
+In France, on the contrary, it was difficult to think about war--even in
+the very midst of a place like Vincennes--unless you were actually
+engaged in organizing and preparing the country's defenses.
+
+After three years at Vincennes, Ferdinand Foch was recalled to the army
+staff in Paris.  And on the 31st of October, 1895, he was made associate
+professor of military history, strategy, and applied tactics, at the
+Superior School of War.
+
+He had then just entered upon his forty-fifth year; and the thoroughness
+of his training was beginning to make itself felt at military
+headquarters.
+
+
+[1] I have found it interesting to compare the careers of Joffre and Foch
+from the time they were at school together, and I daresay that others
+will like to know what steps forward he was taking who is not the subject
+of these chapters but inseparably bound up with him in many events and
+forever linked with him in glory.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE SUPERIOR SCHOOL OF WAR
+
+After a year's service as associate professor of military history,
+strategy, and applied tactics at the Superior School of War in Paris,
+Ferdinand Foch was advanced to head professorship in those branches and
+at the same time he was made lieutenant-colonel.  This was in 1896.  He
+was forty-five years old and had been for exactly a quarter of a century
+a student of the art of warfare.
+
+His old schoolfellow, Joseph Joffre, was then building fortifications in
+northern Madagascar; and his army rank was the same as that of Foch.
+
+It was just twenty years after Foch entered upon his full-fledged
+professorship at the Superior School of War that Marshal Joffre, speaking
+at a dinner assembling the principal leaders of the government and of the
+army, declared that without the Superior School of War the victory of the
+Marne would have been impossible.
+
+All the world knows this now, almost as well as Marshal Joffre knew it
+then.  And all the world knows now as not even Marshal Joffre could have
+known then, how enormous far, far beyond the check of barbarism at the
+first battle of the Marne--is our debt and that of all posterity to the
+Superior School of War and, chiefly, to Ferdinand Foch.
+
+It cannot have been prescience that called him there.  It was just
+Providence, nothing less!
+
+For that was a time when men like Ferdinand Foch (whose whole heart was
+in the army, making it such that nothing like the downfall of 1870 could
+ever again happen to France), were laboring under extreme difficulties.
+The army was unpopular in France.
+
+This was due, partly to the disclosures of the Dreyfus case; partly to a
+wave of internationalism and pacifism; partly to jealousy of the army
+among civil officials.
+
+An unwarranted sense of security was also to blame.  France had worked so
+hard to recoup her fortunes after the disaster of 1870 that her
+people--delighted with their ability as money makers, blinded by the
+glitter of great prosperity--grudged the expanse of keeping up a large
+army, grudged the time that compulsory military training took out of a
+young man's life.  And this preoccupation with success and the arts and
+pleasures of prosperous peace made them incline their ears to the
+apostles of "Brotherhood" and "Federation" and "Arbitration instead of
+Armament."
+
+Little by little legislation went against the army.  The period of
+compulsory service was reduced from three years to two; that cut down the
+size of the army by one-third.  The supreme command of the army was
+vested not in a general, but in a politician--the Minister of War.  The
+generals in the highest commands not only had to yield precedence to the
+prefects of the provinces (like our governors of states), but were
+subject to removal if the prefects did not like their politics and the
+Minister of War wished the support of the prefects.
+
+Even the superior war council of the nation might be politically made up,
+to pay the War Minister's scores rather than to protect the country.
+
+All this can happen to a people lulled by a false sense of security--even
+to a people which has had to defend itself against the savage rapacity of
+its neighbors across the Rhine for two thousand years!
+
+It was against these currents of popular opinion and of government
+opposition that Ferdinand Foch took up his work in the Superior School of
+War--that work which was to make possible the first victory of the Marne,
+to save England from invasion by holding Calais, and to do various other
+things vital to civilization, including the prodigious achievements of
+the days that have since followed.
+
+Foch foresaw that these things would have to be done and, with absolute
+consecration to his task, he set himself not only to train officers for
+France when she should need them, but to inspire them with a unity of
+action which has saved the world.
+
+I have various word-pictures of him as he then appeared to, and
+impressed, his students.
+
+One is by a military writer who uses the pseudonym of "Miles."
+
+"The officers who succeeded one another at the school of war between 1896
+and 1901," he says, referring to the first term of Foch as instructor
+there, "will never forget the impressions made upon them by their
+professor of strategy and of general tactics.  It was this course that
+was looked forward to with the keenest curiosity as the foundational
+instruction given by the school.  It enjoyed the prestige given it by the
+eminent authorities who had held it; and the eighty officers who came to
+the school at each promotion, intensely desirous of developing their
+skill and judgment, were always impatient to see and hear the man who was
+to instruct them in these branches.
+
+"Lieutenant-Colonel Foch did not disappoint their expectations.  Thin,
+elegant, of distinguished bearing, he at once struck the beholder with
+his expression--full of energy, of calm, of rectitude.
+
+"His forehead was high, his nose straight and prominent, his gray-blue
+eyes looked one full in the face.  He spoke without gestures, with an air
+of authority and conviction; his voice serious, harsh, a little
+monotonous; amplifying his phrases to press home in every possible way a
+rigorous reasoning; provoking discussion; always appealing to the logic
+of his hearers; sometimes difficult to follow, because his discourse was
+so rich in ideas; but always holding attention by the penetration of his
+surveys as well as by his tone of sincerity.
+
+"The most profound and the most original of the professors at the school
+of war, which at that time counted in its teaching corps many very
+distinguished minds and brilliant lecturers: such Lieutenant-Colonel Foch
+seemed to his students, all eager from the first to give themselves up to
+the enjoyment of his lessons and the acceptance of his inspiration."
+
+Colonel E. Réquin of the French general staff, who has fought under Foch
+in some of the latter's greatest engagements, says:
+
+"Foch has been for forty years the incarnation of the French military
+spirit."  For forty years!  That means ever since he left the cavalry
+school at Saumur and went, as captain of the Tenth regiment of artillery,
+to Rennes.  "Through his teachings and his example," Colonel Réquin goes
+on to say, in a 1918 number of the _World's Work_, "he was the moral
+director of the French general staff before becoming the supreme chief of
+the allied armies.  Upon each one of us he has imprinted his strong mark.
+We owe to him in time of peace that unity of doctrine which was our
+strength.  Since the war we owe to him the highest lessons of
+intellectual discipline and moral energy.
+
+"As a professor he applied the method which consists in taking as the
+base of all strategical and tactical instruction the study of history
+completed by the study of military history--that is to say, field
+operations, orders given, actions, results, and criticisms to be made and
+the instructions to be drawn from them.  He also used concrete
+cases--that is to say, problems laid by the director on the map or on the
+actual ground.
+
+"By this intellectual training he accustomed the officers to solving all
+problems, not by giving them ready-made solutions, but by making them
+find the logical solution to each individual case.
+
+"His mind was trained through so many years of study that no war
+situation could disturb him.  In the most difficult ones, he quickly
+pointed out the goal to be reached and the means to employ, and each one
+of us felt that it must be right."
+
+But best of all the things said about Foch in that period of his life, I
+like this, by Charles Dawbarn, in the _Fortnightly Review_:
+
+"Such was"--in spite of many disappointments--"_his fine confidence in
+life, that he communicated to others not his grievances, but his secret
+satisfactions_."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE GREAT TEACHER
+
+Foch made the men who sat under him love their work for the work's sake
+and not for its rewards.  He fired them with an ardor for military art
+which made them feel that in all the world there is nothing so
+fascinating, so worth while, as knowing how to defend one's country
+when she needs defense.
+
+He was able, in peace times when the military spirit was little
+applauded and much decried, to give his students an enthusiasm for
+"preparedness" which flamed as high and burned as pure as that which
+ordinarily is lighted only by a great national rush to arms to save the
+country from ravage.
+
+It was tremendously, incalculably important for France and for all of
+us that Ferdinand Foch was eager and able to impart this enthusiasm for
+military skill.
+
+But also it is immensely important, to-day, when the war is won, and in
+all days and all walks of life, that there be those who can kindle and
+keep alight the enthusiasm of their fellows; who can overlook the
+failure of their own ardor and faithfulness to win its fair reward, and
+convey to others only the alluring glow of their "secret satisfactions."
+
+In the five years, 1895-1901 (his work at the school was interrupted by
+politics in 1901), "many hundreds of officers," as René Puaux says,
+"the very elite of the general staffs of our army, followed his
+teaching and were imbued with it; and as they practically all, at the
+beginning of the war, occupied high positions of command, one may
+estimate as he can the profound and far reaching influence of this one
+grand spirit."
+
+Let us try to get some idea of the sort of thing that Foch taught those
+hundreds of French army officers, not only about war but about life.
+
+From all his study, he repeatedly declared, one dominant conviction has
+evolved: Force that is not dominated by spirit is vain force.
+
+Victory, in his belief, goes to those who merit it by the greatest
+strength of will and intelligence.
+
+It was his endeavor, always, to develop in the hundreds of officers who
+were his students, that dual strength in which it seemed to him that
+victory could only lie: moral and intellectual ability to perceive what
+ought to be done, and intellectual and moral ability to do it.
+
+In his mind, it is impossible to be intelligent with the brain alone.
+The Germans do not comprehend this, and therein, to Ferdinand Foch,
+lies the key to all their failures.
+
+He believes that each of us must think with our soul's aid--that is to
+say, with our imagination, our emotions, our aspiration--and employ our
+intelligence to direct our feeling.
+
+And he asks this combination not from higher officers alone, but from
+all their men down to the humblest in the ranks.
+
+He believes in the invincibility of men fighting for a principle dearer
+to them than life--but he knows that ardor without leadership means a
+lost cause; that men must know how to fight for their ideals, their
+principles; but that their officers are charged with the sacred
+responsibility of making the men's ardor and valor count.
+
+At the beginning of his celebrated course of lectures on tactics he
+always admonished his students thus:
+
+"You will be called on later to be the brain of an army.  So I say to
+you to-day: Learn to think."
+
+By this he was far from meaning that officers were to confine thinking
+to themselves, but that they were to teach themselves to think so that
+they might the better hand on intelligence and stimulate their men to
+obey not blindly but comprehendingly.
+
+It was a maxim of Napoleon's, of which Foch is very fond, that "as a
+general rule, the commander-in-chief ought only to indicate the
+direction, determine the ends to be attained; the means of getting
+there ought to be left to the free choice of the mediums of execution,
+without whom success is impossible."
+
+This leaves a great responsibility to officers, but it is the secret of
+that flexibility which makes the French army so effective.
+
+For Foch carries his belief in individual judgment far beyond the
+officers commanding units; he carries it to the privates in the ranks.
+
+An able officer, in Foch's opinion, is one who can take a general
+command to get his men such-and-such a place and accomplish
+such-and-such a thing, and so interpret that command to his men that
+each and every one of them will, while acting in strict obedience to
+orders, use the largest possible amount of personal intelligence in
+accomplishing the thing he was told to do.
+
+It is said that there was probably never before in history a battle
+fought in which every man was a general--so to speak--as at the battle
+of Château Thierry, in July, 1918.  That is to say, there was probably
+never before a battle in which so many men comprehended as clearly as
+if they had been generals what it was all about, and acted as if they
+had been generals to attain their objectives.
+
+It was an intelligent democracy, acting under superb leadership that
+vanquished the forces of autocracy.
+
+Foch has worked with a free hand to test the worth of his lifelong
+principles.  And the hundreds of men he trained in those principles
+were ready to carry them out for him.
+
+No wonder his first injunction was: Learn to think!
+
+To him, the leadership of units is not a simple question of
+organization, of careful plans, of strategic and tactical intelligence,
+but a problem involving enormous adaptability.
+
+Battles are not won at headquarters, he contends; they are won in the
+field; and the conditions that may arise in the field cannot be
+foreseen or forestalled--they must be met when they present themselves.
+In large part they are made by the behavior of men in unexpected
+circumstances; therefore, the more a commander knows about human nature
+and its spiritual depressions and exaltations, the better able he is to
+change his plans as new conditions arise.
+
+German power in war, Foch taught his students, lay in the great masses
+of their effective troops and their perfect organization for moving men
+and supplies.  German weakness was in the absolute autocracy of great
+headquarters, building its plans as an architect builds a house and
+unable to modify them if something happens to make a change necessary.
+
+This he deduced from his study of their methods in previous wars,
+especially in that of 1870.
+
+And with this in mind he labored so that when Germany made her next
+assault upon France, France might be equipped with hundreds of officers
+cognizant of Germany's weakness and prepared to turn it to her defeat.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+A COLONEL AT FIFTY
+
+"It was not," Napoleon wrote, "the Roman legions which conquered Gaul,
+but Caesar.  It was not the Carthaginian soldiers who made Rome
+tremble, but Hannibal.  It was not the Macedonian phalanx which
+penetrated India, but Alexander.  It was not the French army which
+reached the Weser and the Inn, but Turenne.  It was not the Prussian
+soldiers who defended their country for seven years against the three
+most formidable powers in Europe; it was Frederick the Great."
+
+And already it has been suggested that historians will write of this
+war: "It was not the allied armies, struggling hopelessly for four
+years, that finally drove the Germans across the Rhine, but Ferdinand
+Foch."
+
+But I am sure that Foch would not wish this said of him in the same
+sense that Napoleon said it of earlier generals.
+
+For Foch has a greater vision of generalship than was possible to any
+commander of long ago.
+
+His strategy is based upon a close study of theirs; for he says that
+though the forms of making war evolve, the directing principles do not
+change, and there is need for every officer to make analyses of
+Xenophon and Caesar and Hannibal as close as those he makes of
+Frederick and Napoleon.
+
+But his conception of military leadership is permeated with the ideals
+of democracy and justice for which he fights.
+
+One of his great lectures to student-officers was that in which he made
+them realize what, besides the route of the Prussians, happened at
+Valmy in September, 1792.
+
+On his big military map of that region (it is on the western edge of
+the Argonne) Foch would show his students how the Prussians, Hessians
+and some Austrian troops; under the Duke of Brunswick, crossed the
+French frontier on August 19 and came swaggering toward Paris,
+braggartly announcing their intentions of "celebrating" in Paris in
+September.
+
+Brunswick and his fellow generals were to banquet with the King of
+Prussia at the Tuileries.  And the soldiers were bent upon the cafés of
+the Palais Royal.
+
+Foch showed his classes how Dumouriez, who had been training his raw
+troops of disorganized France at Valenciennes, dashed with them into
+the Argonne to intercept Brunswick; how this and that happened which I
+will not repeat here because it is merely technical; and then how the
+soldiers of the republic, rallied by the cry, "The country is in
+danger," and thrilled by "The Marseillaise" (written only five months
+before, but already it had changed the beat of nearly every heart in
+France), made such a stand that it not only halted Prussia and her
+allies, but so completely broke their conquering spirit that without
+firing another shot they took themselves off beyond the Rhine.
+
+"We," Foch used to tell his students, "are the successors of the
+revolution and the empire, the inheritors of the art, new-born upon the
+field of Valmy to astonish the old Europe, to surprise in particular
+the Duke of Brunswick, the pupil of Frederick the Great, and to tear
+from Goethe, before the immensity of a fresh horizon, this profound
+cry: 'I tell you, from this place and this day comes a new era in the
+history of the world!'"
+
+It is that new era which Foch typifies--that new era which his
+adversaries, deaf to Goethe's cry and blind to Goethe's vision, have
+not yet realized.
+
+It was "the old Europe" against which Foch fought--the old Europe which
+learned nothing at Valmy and had learned nothing since; the old Europe
+that fought as Frederick the Great fought and that had not yet seen the
+dawn of that new day which our nation and the French nation greeted
+with glad hails much more than a century ago.
+
+In 1792 Prussia measured her military skill and her masses of trained
+men against France's  disorganization--and  overlooked "The
+Marseillaise."
+
+In 1914 she weighed her might against what she knew of the might of
+France--and omitted to weigh certain spiritual differences which she
+could not comprehend, but which she felt at the first battle of the
+Marne, has been feeling ever since, and before which she had to retire,
+beaten but still blind.
+
+In 1918 she estimated the probable force of those "raw recruits" whom
+we were sending overseas--and laughed.  She based her calculations on
+our lack of military tradition, our hastily trained officers, our
+"soft," ease-loving men uneducated in those ideals of blood and iron
+wherein she has reared her youth always.  She overlooked that spiritual
+force which the "new era" develops and which made our men so responsive
+to the command of Foch at Château Thierry and later.
+
+"The immensity of a fresh horizon" whereon Goethe saw the new era
+dawning, is still veiled from the vision of his countrymen.  But across
+its roseate reaches unending columns of marching men passed, under the
+leadership of Ferdinand Foch, to liberate the captives the blind brute
+has made and to strike down the strongholds of "old Europe" forever.
+
+For nearly six years Foch taught such principles as these and others
+which I shall recall in connection with great events which they made
+possible later on.
+
+Then came the anti-clerical wave in French politics, and on its crest a
+new commandant to the School of War--a man elevated by the
+anti-clericals and eager to keep his elevation by pleasing those who
+put him there.
+
+Foch adheres devoutly to the religious practices in which he was
+reared, and one of his brothers belongs to the Jesuit order.
+
+These conditions made his continuance at the school under its new head
+impossible.  Whether he resigned because he realized this, or was
+superseded, I do not know.  But he left his post and went as
+lieutenant-colonel to the Twenty-ninth artillery, at Laon.
+
+He was there two years and undoubtedly made a thorough study of the
+country round Laon--which was for more than four years to be the key to
+the German tenure in that part of France.
+
+Ferdinand Foch, with his brilliant knowledge and high ideals of
+soldiering, was now past fifty and not yet a colonel.
+
+Strong though his spirit was, sustained by faith in God and rewarded by
+those "secret satisfactions" which come to the man who loves his work
+and is conscious of having given it his best, he must have had hours,
+days, when he drank deep of the cup of bitterness.  There are, though,
+bitters that shrivel and bitters that tone and invigorate.  Or perhaps
+they are the same and the difference is in us.
+
+At any rate, Foch was not poisoned at the cup of disappointment.
+
+And when the armies under his command encircled the great rock whereon
+Laon is perched high above the surrounding plains I hope Foch was with
+them--in memory of the days when he was "dumped" there, so to speak,
+far away from his sphere of influence at the School of War.
+
+In 1903 he was made colonel and sent to the Thirty-fifth artillery at
+Vannes, in Brittany.
+
+Only two years later he was called to Orleans as chief of staff of the
+Fifth army corps.
+
+On June 20, 1907, he was made Brigadier General and passed to the
+general staff of the French army at Paris.  Soon afterwards, Georges
+Clemenceau became Minister of War, and was seeking a new head for the
+Staff College.  Everyone whose advice he sought said: Foch.  So the
+redoubtable old radical and anti-clerical summoned General Foch.
+
+"I offer you command of the School of War."
+
+"I thank you," Foch replied, "but you are doubtless unaware that one of
+my brothers is a Jesuit."
+
+"I know it very well," was Clemenceau's answer.  "But you make good
+officers, and that is the only thing which counts."
+
+Thus was foreshadowed, in these two great men, that spirit of "all for
+France" which, under the civil leadership of one and the military
+leadership of the other, was to save the country and the world.
+
+In 1911 Foch, at 60, was given command of the Thirteenth division at
+Chaumont, just above the source of the Marne.  On December 17, 1912, he
+was placed at the head of the Eighth Army Corps, at Bourges.  And on
+August 23, 1913, he took command of the Twentieth corps at Nancy.
+
+"When," says Marcel Knecht, "we in Nancy heard that Foch had been
+chosen to command the best troops in France, the Twentieth Army Corps,
+pride of our capital, everybody went wild with enthusiasm."
+
+It is M. Knecht who tells us about the visit to General Foch at Nancy,
+in the spring of 1914, of three British generals whose presence there
+Foch utilized for two purposes:  He showed them what he was doing to
+strengthen Nancy's defensibility, and thereby urged upon them France's
+conviction that an attack by Germany was imminent and unavoidable; and
+he utilized the occasion to show the Lorrainers his warm friendliness
+for England--which Lorraine was inclined still to blame for the death
+of Joan of Arc.  Foch knew that German propagandists were continually
+fanning this resentment against England.  And he made it part of his
+business to overcome that prejudice by showing the honor in which he
+held Great Britain's eminent soldiers.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+FORTIFYING FRANCE WITH GREAT PRINCIPLES
+
+So much has been said about France's unreadiness for the war that it is
+easy for those who do not know what the real situation was to suppose
+that the French were something akin to fools.  For twenty centuries the
+Germans had been swarming over the Rhine in preying, ravaging hordes,
+and France had been beating them back to save her national life.  That
+they would swarm again, more insolent and more rapacious than ever
+after their triumph of 1870, was not to be doubted.  Everyone in France
+who had the slightest knowledge of the spirit that has animated the
+Hohenzollern empire knew its envy of France, its cupidity of France's
+wealth, its hatred of France's attractions for all the world.  Everyone
+who came in contact with the Germans felt the bullet-headed
+belligerence of their attitude which they were never at any pains to
+conceal.
+
+The military men of France knew that Germany had for years been
+preparing for aggression on a large scale.  They knew that she would
+strike when she felt that she was readiest and her opponents of the
+Triple Entente were least ready.
+
+The state of mind of the civilians--busy, prosperous, peace-loving,
+concerned with conversational warfare about a multitude of petty
+internal affairs--is difficult to describe.  But I think it may not be
+impertinent to say of it that it was something like the state of mind
+of a congregation, well fed, comfortable, conscious of many pleasant
+virtues and few corroding sins, before whom a preacher holds up the
+last judgment.  None of them hopes to escape it, none of them can tell
+at what moment he may be called to his account, none of them would wish
+to go in just his present state, and yet none of them does anything
+when he leaves church to put himself more definitely in readiness for
+that great decision which is to determine where he shall spend eternity.
+
+In 1911 it seemed for a brief while that the irruption from the east
+was at hand.  But Germany did not feel quite ready; she "dickered"; and
+things went on seemingly as before.
+
+France seemed to forget.  But she was not so completely abandoned to
+hopefulness as was England--England, who turned her deafest ear to Lord
+Roberts' impassioned pleas for preparedness.
+
+France has an institution called the Superior War Council.  It is the
+supreme organ of military authority and the center of national defense;
+it consists of eleven members supposed to be the ablest commanding
+generals in the nation.  The president of this council is the Minister
+of War; the vice president is known as the generalissimo of the French
+army.
+
+In 1910 General Joseph Joffre became a member of the Superior War
+Council, and in 1911 he became generalissimo.
+
+It was because the Council felt the imminence of war with Germany that
+General Pau--to whom the vice presidency should have gone by right of
+his priority and also of his eminent fitness--patriotically waived the
+honor, because in two years he would be sixty-five and would have to
+retire; he felt that the defense of the country needed a younger man
+who could remain more years in service.  So Joffre was chosen and
+almost immediately he began to justify the choice.
+
+Joffre and his associates of the council not only foresaw the war, but
+they quite clearly previsioned its extent and something of its
+character.  In 1912 Joffre declared "the fighting front will extend
+from four hundred to five hundred miles."  He talked little, but he
+worked prodigiously; and always his insistence was: "We must be
+prepared!"
+
+"With whole nations," he said, "engaged in a mortal combat, disaster is
+certain for those who in time of peace failed to prepare for war."  And
+"To be ready means, to-day, to have mustered in advance all the
+resources of the country, all the intelligence of its citizens, all
+their moral energy, for the purpose of attaining this one aim--victory.
+Getting ready is a duty that devolves not only upon the army, but upon
+all public officials, upon all organizations, upon all societies, upon
+all families, upon all citizens."
+
+This complete readiness was beyond his power to effect.  But in his
+province--the army--he achieved marvels that were almost miracles.
+
+It was France's good fortune (and that of her allies) that in all he
+undertook for the purification and strengthening of the army Joffre
+had, from January, 1912, the complete co-operation of the Minister of
+War, M. Millerand.  Together, these two men, brilliantly supported by
+some of Joffre's colleagues in the Superior Council--notably Pau and
+Castelnau--achieved results that have been pronounced "unparalleled in
+the history of the Third Republic."  They freed the army from the worst
+effects of political influence, made it once more a popular
+institution, and organized it into an effectiveness which needs, now,
+no comment.
+
+When Foch was put in command of the Twentieth army corps at Nancy it
+was in the expectation that Nancy would sustain the first shock of the
+German invasion when it came.  The opinion prevailed that Nancy could
+not be held.  Whether Joffre was of this opinion or not, I do not know.
+If he was, he probably felt that Foch would give it up only after
+harder fighting than any other general.  But Foch believed that Nancy
+could be defended, and so did his immediate superior, the gallant
+General Castelnau, in command of the Second Army of Lorraine.
+
+For nearly a year following upon his appointment to Nancy, Foch labored
+mightily to strengthen Nancy against the attack which was impending.
+He seems never to have doubted that Germany would make her first
+aggression there, only seventeen miles from her own border, and with
+Metz and Strassburg to back the invading army.
+
+But that there were other opinions, even at Nancy, I happen to know.
+For, one day while the war was still new, I chanced in rooting in an
+old bookstall in Paris, to find a book which was written by an officer
+of the Twentieth Corps, in 1911.[1]
+
+The officer was, if I mistake not, of the artillery, and he wrote this
+"forecast" to entertain the members of his mess or battery.
+
+He predicted with amazing accuracy the successive events which happened
+nearly three years later, only he "guessed" the order for mobilization
+in France to fall on August 14, instead of August 1; and all his
+subsequent dates were just about two weeks later than the actualities.
+But he "foresaw" the invasion of Belgium, the resistance at Liége and
+Namur, the fall of Brussels, the invasion of France by her northeastern
+portals.  Almost--at the time I read this book--it might have served as
+history instead of prophecy.  I would that I had it now!  But I clearly
+remember that it located the final battle of the war in Westphalia,
+describing the location exactly.  And that it said the Emperor would
+perish in that downfall of his empire.  And it cited two prophecies
+current in Germany--the long-standing one to the effect that Germany's
+greatest disaster would come to her under an Emperor with a withered
+arm, and one made in Strassburg in 1870, declaring that the new empire
+would dissolve under its third Emperor.
+
+The book was published in January, 1912, if I remember rightly, and was
+almost immediately translated into German.  And I was told that one
+hundred thousand copies were sold in Germany in a very short time, and
+it was made the subject of editorials in nearly every prominent German
+paper.
+
+Probably Foch read it.  He may even have discussed it with the author.
+But he held to the belief that when the attack came it would come
+through Nancy.
+
+He was not, however, expecting it when it came.
+
+
+[1] The reason I cannot give his name, nor quote directly from his
+book, is that a fellow-traveler borrowed the book from me and I have
+never seen it since.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+ON THE EVE OF WAR
+
+In the first days of July, 1914, divisional maneuvers were held as
+usual in Lorraine.  Castelnau and Foch reviewed the troops, known
+throughout the army as "the division of iron."
+
+A young captain, recently assigned from the School of War to a regiment
+of Hussars forming part of the Twentieth army corps, wrote to his
+parents on July 5 an account of the maneuvers in which he had just
+taken part.  He said that "the presence of these two eminent men gave a
+great interest" to the events he described.  And the impression made
+upon him by Foch is so remarkable that his letter is likely to become
+one of the small classics of the war--endlessly reproduced whenever the
+story of Foch is told.
+
+"General Foch," he reminds his parents, "is a former commander of the
+School of War, where he played, on account of his great fitness, a very
+remarkable role.
+
+"He is a man still young [he was almost 63!], slender and supple, and
+rather frail; his powerful head seems like a flower too heavy for a
+stem too slight.
+
+"What first strikes one about him is his clear gaze, penetrating,
+intellectual, but above all and in spite of his tremendous energy,
+luminous.  This light in his eyes spiritualizes a countenance which
+otherwise would be brutal, with its big mustache bristling above a very
+prominent, dominant jaw.
+
+"When he speaks, pointing lessons from the maneuver, he becomes
+animated to the extent of impassionedness, but never expressing himself
+otherwise than with simplicity and purity.
+
+"His speech is sober, direct; he affirms principles, condemns faults,
+appeals to our energies in a brief but comprehensive style.
+
+"He is a priest, who judges, condemns, and instructs in the name of the
+faith which illumines him and to which he has consecrated all the
+powers of his mind and his heart.  General Foch is a prophet whom his
+God transports."
+
+The young officer who wrote thus to his parents was Captain André
+Dubarle; and he later laid down his life for his country on the field
+of honor commanded by General Foch.
+
+The letter seems to me as treasurable for what it conveys to us of the
+sort of young man Foch found among his officers and soldiers (there
+were many such!) as for what it tells us of the impression Foch created
+even in those days before men's souls were set on fire with fervor for
+France.
+
+On July 18 General Foch asked and obtained a leave of absence for
+fifteen days, so that he might join the family group gathered at his
+home near Morlaix in Brittany.  His two sons-in-law, Captain Fournier
+and Captain Becourt, also obtained leave.  The former was attached to
+the general army staff at Paris, and was granted seventeen days.  The
+latter was in command of a company of the Twenty-sixth battalion of
+Foot Chasseurs at Pont-à-Mousson.  He was given twenty-five days'
+leave.  The wives and children of both were at Morlaix with Madame Foch.
+
+So little expectation of immediate war had France on July 18 that she
+granted a fortnight's absence to the commander of those troops which
+were expected to bear the first shock of German aggression when it came.
+
+But I happen to know of a French family reunion held at Nancy on July
+14 and the days following, which was incomplete.  One of the women of
+this family was married to a German official at Metz whose job it was
+to be caretaker for three thousand locomotives belonging to the
+imperial government and kept at Metz for "emergencies."  On July 12 (as
+it afterwards transpired) he was ordered to have fires lighted and
+steam got up in those three thousand engines, and to keep them, night
+and day, ready for use at a moment's notice.
+
+Those smoking iron horses in Metz are a small sample of what was going
+on all over Germany while France's frontier-defenders were being given
+permission to visit Brittany.
+
+But for that matter German war-preparations were going on much nearer
+to Nancy than in Metz, while Foch was playing with his grandchildren at
+Morlaix.
+
+Beginning about July 21 and ending about the 25th, twelve thousand
+Germans left Nancy for "points east," and six thousand others left the
+remainder of French Lorraine.
+
+The pretexts they gave were various--vacations, urgent business
+matters, "cures" at German watering places.  They all knew, when they
+left, that Germany was mobilizing for attack upon France.  They had
+known it for some time before they left.
+
+Since the beginning of July they had been working in Nancy to aid the
+German attack.  They had visited the principal buildings, public and
+private, and especially the highest ones, with plans for the
+installation of wireless at the modest price of $34.  "It is so
+interesting," they said, "to get the exact time, every day, from the
+Eiffel Tower!"
+
+They had also some amazingly inexpensive contrivances for heating
+houses, or regulating the heating already installed, or for home
+refrigeration--things which took them into cellars in Nancy--and before
+they left to join their regiments they were exceedingly busy
+demonstrating those things.
+
+They were all gone when General Foch was recalled, on July 26.
+
+On July 30 German under-officers crossed the frontier.
+
+On August 3 Uhlans and infantrymen on motorcycles were shooting and
+pillaging on the French side of the border, although it was not until
+6:45 P.M. that day that Germany declared war on France.
+
+That which France had been unable to suppose even Germany capable of,
+happened: The treaty with Belgium became a scrap of paper and the main
+attack upon France was made by way of the north.
+
+But the expectation that Nancy would be one of the first objectives of
+the Hun-rampant was not without fulfillment.  For the hordes advanced
+in five armies; and the fifth, the German left wing under Crown Prince
+Rupprecht of Bavaria, was ordered to swarm into France south of that of
+the Imperial Crown Prince, spread itself across country behind the
+French armies facing northward, join with Von Kluck's right wing
+somewhere west of Paris, and "bag" the French--armies, capital and
+all--"on or about" September 1.
+
+It was all perfectly practicable--on paper.  The only difficulty was
+that there were so many things the German staff had omitted from its
+careful calculations--omitted, perforce, because it had never guessed
+their existence.  And that spoiled their reckoning.
+
+Foch had, for years, been teaching that fighting demands supreme
+flexibility, adaptability; that war is full of surprises which must be
+met as they arise; that morale, the spiritual force of an army, is
+subject to fluctuations caused by dozens of conditions which cannot be
+foreseen and must be overcome.  The phrase oftenest on his lips was:
+"What have we to do here?"  For, as he conceived warfare, officers and
+even privates must constantly be asking themselves that.  One plan goes
+awry.  Very well! we'll find a better.
+
+But Foch had not trained the German general staff.  They made war
+otherwise.  And well he knew it!  Well he knew what happened to them
+when their "blue prints" would not fit unexpected conditions.
+
+He knew that they expected to take Nancy easily, that they were looking
+for some effort to defend it, but not for a French attack.
+
+They did not know his maxim: "The best means of defense is to attack."
+
+He attacked.  His Twentieth corps fought its way through the center of
+the Bavarian army, into German Lorraine.  Then something happened.
+Just what it was is not clear--but doubtless will be some day.  The
+offensive had to be abandoned and the French troops had to withdraw
+from German soil to defend their own.
+
+How bitter was the disappointment to Foch we may guess but shall never
+know.  But remaking plans in his genius.
+
+"What have we to do here?" he asked himself.
+
+Then, "in the twinkling of an eye," says one military historian,
+"General Foch found the solution to the defense problem wherewith he
+was so suddenly confronted when his offensive failed of support."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE BATTLE OF LORRAINE
+
+What is known as the battle of Lorraine began at the declaration of war
+and lasted till August 26--though the major part of it was fought in
+the last six of those days.
+
+I shall not go into details about it here, except to recall that it was
+in this fighting that General Castelnau lost his oldest son, stricken
+almost at the father's side.
+
+A German military telegram intercepted on August 27 said:
+
+"On no account make known to our armies of the west [that is to say,
+the right wing, in Belgium] the checks sustained by our armies of the
+east [the left wing, in Lorraine]."
+
+So much depended on those plans which Castelnau and Dubail and
+Foch--and very particularly Foch!--had frustrated.
+
+Joffre realized what had been achieved.  And on August 27 he issued the
+following "order of the day":
+
+"The First and Second armies are at this moment giving an example of
+tenacity and of courage which the commander-in-chief is happy to bring
+to the knowledge of the troops under his orders.
+
+"These two armies undertook a general offensive and met with brilliant
+success, until they hurled themselves at a barrier fortified and
+defended by very superior forces.
+
+"After a retreat in perfect order, the two armies resumed the offensive
+and, combining their efforts, retook a great part of the territory they
+had given up.
+
+"The enemy bent before them and his recoil enabled us to establish
+undeniably the very serious losses he had suffered.
+
+"These armies have fought for fourteen days without a moment's respite,
+and with an unshakable confidence in victory as the reward of their
+tenacity.
+
+"The general-in-chief knows that the other armies will be moved to
+follow the example of the First and Second armies."
+
+Now, where were those other armies?  And what were they doing?
+
+France had then eight armies in the field, and was soon to have a
+ninth--commanded by General Foch.
+
+There was the First army, under General Dubail; the Second, under
+General Castelnau; the Third, under General Sarrail; the Fourth, under
+General Langle de Cary; the Fifth, under General Franchet d'Espérey;
+the Sixth, under General Manoury; the Seventh and Eighth armies are not
+mentioned in the Battle of the Marne, and I have not been able to find
+out where they were in service.
+
+The First and Second armies, fighting in Lorraine, we know about.  They
+developed, in that battle, more than one great commander of whose
+abilities Joffre hastened to avail himself.  On the day he issued that
+order commending the First and Second armies, the generalissimo called
+Manoury from the Lorraine front, where he had shown conspicuous
+leadership, and put him in command of the newly-created Sixth army,
+which was to play the leading part in routing Von Kluck.  And on the
+next day (August 28) Joffre called Foch from Lorraine to head the new
+Ninth army, which was to hold the center at the Battle of the Marne and
+deal the smashing, decisive blow.
+
+In two days, while his troops were retreating before an apparently
+irresistible force, Joffre created two new armies, put at the head of
+each a man of magnificent leadership, and intrusted to those two armies
+and their leaders the most vital positions in the great battle he was
+planning.
+
+The German soldiers facing Joffre were acting on general orders printed
+for them eight years before, and under specific orders which had been
+worked out by their high command with the particularity of machine
+specifications.  And all their presumptions were based on the French
+doing what Teutons would do in the same circumstances.  Their
+extra-suspender-button efficiency and preparedness were pitted against
+the flexible genius of a man who could assemble his two "shock" armies
+in two days and put them under the command of men picked not from the
+top of his list of available commanders, but practically from the
+bottom.
+
+The Third, Fourth and Fifth armies of Joffre were those which had
+sustained the terrific onslaught in the north and had been fighting in
+retreat, practically since the beginning.
+
+On August 25 Joffre declared; "We have escaped envelopment"--thanks
+largely to the action in Lorraine, holding back the Bavarians--and,
+clearly seeing that he could not hope for favorable results from a
+great battle fought in the north, he gave the order for retreat which
+meant the abandonment of north-eastern France to the Hunnish hordes.
+
+What anguish that order caused him we shall never know.  He realized to
+the full what the people of that great, prosperous part of France would
+have to suffer.  He was aware what the loss of those resources would
+mean to the French, and also what their gain would mean to the Germans.
+He understood the effect of retreat upon the morale of his men.  And he
+must have been aware of the panic his order would create throughout the
+yet-uninvaded parts of France where no one could know at what point the
+invasion would be checked.  He knew that the nation's faith in him
+would be severely shaken, and that even his army's faith in him would
+be put to a supreme test.
+
+But when a man trains himself to be a commander of men, he trains
+himself to go through, heroically and at any cost, what he believes
+must be done.  To sacrifice one's self comes comparatively easy--given
+compelling circumstances and an obedient soul.  But to sacrifice others
+never becomes easy to a man who respects the rights of others.  And we
+shall never begin to comprehend men like Joffre and Foch until we shake
+ourselves free from any notion we may have that military expediency
+makes it easy for them to order great mental and physical suffering.
+
+General Foch detached himself, on August 29, from his beloved Twentieth
+corps and betook himself to the little village of Machault, about
+twenty miles northeast of Châlons-sur-Marne, where he found assembled
+for his command an army made up of units from other armies.  They were
+all more or less strange to one another and to him.
+
+There was the Ninth army corps, from Tours, made up of Angevins (men
+such as Foch had learned to know when he was at Saumur) and Vendeans
+(the Bretons' south neighbors).  Some of these men had been fighting
+without respite for nine days as they fell back, with the Fourth army,
+from the Belgian border.  With them, since August 22, had been the
+remarkable Moroccan division under General Humbert.
+
+Then there was the Eleventh corps of Bretons and Vendeans, which had
+been through the same terrible retreat.
+
+And--not to enumerate too far--there was that Forty-second division of
+infantry which was destined to play one of the most dramatic,
+thrilling, forever-memorable parts in all warfare.  It had been in the
+Ardennes, and had fallen back, fighting fiercely as it came.
+
+To help him command these weary men whose hearts were heavy with
+forebodings for France, Foch had, as he himself has said, "a general
+staff of five or six officers, gathered in haste to start with, little
+or no working material, our note books and a few maps."
+
+"Those who lived through these tragic hours near him," says René Puaux,
+"recall the chief questioning the liaison officers who did not know
+exactly where the different units were, punctuating his questions with:
+'You don't know?  Very well, then go and find out!'; putting together
+in his head the mosaic of which there were still so many pieces
+missing; gradually visioning a plan for bringing them together;
+calculating his effectives; estimating approximately his reserves of
+ammunition; discovering his bases of food supply."
+
+And through all this stress he had the personal anguish of being unable
+to get word of his only son, Germain Foch, or of his son-in-law,
+Captain Becourt, both of whom had been fighting on the Belgian front.
+
+"It was not, however," M. Puaux says, "the time for personal emotions.
+The father effaced himself before the soldier.  There was nothing to be
+thought of save the country."
+
+Thus we see Ferdinand Foch, on the eve of the first Battle of the Marne.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE FIRST VICTORY AT THE MARNE
+
+It was Saturday, August 29, 1914, when General Foch went to Machault to
+take command of the various units he was to weld into the Ninth army.
+
+On the Tuesday following (September 1) Joffre was quartered with his
+general staff at the little old town of Bar-sur-Aube, fifty miles south
+of Châlons, and he had then determined the limits to which he would
+permit the retreat of his armies.
+
+If a stand could be taken and an offensive launched further north than
+the Aube River, it should be done; but in no event would the withdrawal
+go beyond the Seine, the Aube and the region north of Bar-le-Duc.
+
+He then placed his armies in the field in the relation in which he
+deemed they would be most effective: the First army, under General
+Dubail, was in the Vosges, and the Second army, under General
+Castelnau, was round about Nancy; the Third army, under General
+Sarrail, east and south of the Argonne in a kind of "elbow," joining
+the Fourth army, under General de Langle de Cary; then the Ninth army,
+under General Foch; then the Fifth army, under General Franchet
+d'Espérey; then the little British army of three corps, under General
+Sir John French; and then the new Sixth army, under General Manoury.
+
+So Foch, on the third day of organizing his new command, received
+orders--at once terrible and immensely flattering--that he was to
+occupy the center of Joffre's battle line and to sustain the onslaught
+of Von Buelow and the famous Prussian Guards.
+
+In the morning of Saturday, September 5, all commanders received from
+Joffre the now historic message:
+
+"The moment has come for the army to advance at all costs and allow
+itself to be slain where it stands rather than give way."
+
+The men to whom this order was relayed by their commanders had,
+five-sixths of them, been ceaselessly engaged, without one single day's
+rest of any kind and much of the time without night rest either, for
+fourteen days, fighting as they fell back, and falling back as they
+fought; the skin was all worn from the soles of their feet, and what
+shoes they had left were stuck to their feet with blood.
+
+"They had marched under a torrid sky," says Louis Madelin, "on
+scorching roads, parched and suffocated with dust.  In reality they
+moved with their hearts rather than with their legs.  According to
+Pierre Lasserre's happy expression, 'Our bodies had beaten a retreat,
+but not our hearts,' . . .  But when, worn out with fatigue, faces
+black with powder, blinded by the chalk of Champagne, almost dying,
+they learned Joffre's order announcing the offensive, then the faces of
+our troops from Paris to Verdun beamed with joy.  They fought with
+tired limbs, and yet no army ever showed such strength, for their
+hearts were filled with faith and hope."
+
+At daybreak on Sunday, the 6th, Foch pitched his headquarters in a
+modern château near the little village of Pleurs, which you probably
+will not find on any map except a military one, but it is some six
+miles southeast of Sézanne.  And the front assigned to Foch ran from
+Sézanne to the Camp de Mailly, twenty-five miles east by a little
+south.  The Marne was twenty-five miles to north of him.  Between him
+and its south bank were many towns and villages; the clay pocket (ten
+miles long) called the Marshes of St. Gond, but far from marshy in that
+parching heat; and north of that the forest of Epernay.  His vanguards
+were north of the marshes.  But as that Sunday wore on, the Prussian
+Guards drove Foch's Angevins and Vendeans of the Ninth Corps back and
+occupied the marshes.  The Bretons on the east of Foch's line were
+obliged to dislodge, and the Moroccans and Forty-second Division had to
+yield on Foch's left.
+
+Thus, at nightfall of the first day's fighting, Foch's new army had
+given ground practically everywhere.
+
+The next day the German attack became fiercer, and it seemed that more
+ground must be yielded.
+
+That was the day when Foch made his memorable deduction: "They are
+trying to throw us back with such fury I am sure that means things are
+going badly for them elsewhere and they are seeking compensation."
+
+He was right!  Von Kluck was retiring in a northeasterly direction
+under Manoury's blows; and even Von Buelow (whom Foch faced) was
+withdrawing parts of his troops from the line at Foch's left.
+
+But the attempt to break through the center Foch held, waxed fiercer as
+the Germans realized the strength opposing them on their right.
+
+And on Tuesday, the 8th, Foch was unable to hold--save at certain
+points--and had to move his headquarters eleven miles south, to Plancy.
+
+He had now reached the Aube, beyond which Joffre had decreed that he
+must not retire.  On its north bank his gallant army must, if it could
+not do otherwise, "allow itself to be slain where it stands rather than
+give way."
+
+On that evening he sent Major Réquin to the Forty-second Division with
+orders for the morrow.  The most incredible orders!
+
+The enemy had found his point of least resistance--on his right wing.
+He ought to strengthen that wing, but he could not.  All the reserves
+were engaged--and the enemy knew it as well as he did.  And it is a
+fixed principle of war not to withdraw active troops from one part of
+the line to strengthen another.
+
+Only one part of his army had had any success that day: Toward evening
+the Forty-second Division and the Moroccans had made an irresistible
+lunge forward and driven the enemy to the north edge of the marshes.
+
+They were weary--those splendid troops--but they were exalted; they had
+advanced!
+
+Foch believes in the power of the spirit.  He appealed to the
+Forty-second to do an extraordinary thing--to march, weary as it was,
+from left to right of his long line and brace the weak spot.  And to
+cover up the gap their withdrawal would make he asked General Franchet
+d'Espérey to stretch out the front covered by his right wing and
+adjoining Foch's left.
+
+In a letter to me, Lieutenant-Colonel (then Major) Réquin gives some
+graphic bits descriptive of that historic errand.  He was a sort of
+liaison officer between General Grossetti, commanding the Forty-second
+Division, and the latter's chief, General Foch, his special duty being
+to carry General Foch's orders to General Grossetti and to keep the
+army chief informed, each evening, how his commands were being carried
+out.
+
+"It was 10 P.M.," he writes, "when I roused General Grossetti from his
+sleep in the straw, in the miserable little shell-riddled farm of
+Chapton.
+
+"The order astonished him; but like a disciplined leader, he started to
+execute it with all the energy of which this legendary soldier was
+capable."
+
+The Forty-second came!  While they were marching to the rescue the
+Prussian Guard in a colossal effort smashed through Foch's right.  They
+were wild with joy.  The French line was pierced.  They at once began
+celebrating, at La Fère-Champenoise.
+
+When this was announced to Foch he telegraphed to general headquarters:
+
+"My center gives way, my right recedes; the situation is excellent.  I
+shall attack."
+
+For this, we must remember, is the man who says: "A battle won is a
+battle in which one is not able to believe one's self vanquished."
+
+He gave the order to attack.  Everything that he cared about in this
+world was at stake.  This desperate maneuver would save it all--or it
+would not.  He gave the order to attack--and then he went for a walk on
+the outskirts of the little village of Plancy.  His companion was one
+of his staff officers, Lieutenant Ferasson of the artillery; and as
+they walked they discussed metallurgy and economics.
+
+There could be nothing more typically French or more diametrically
+opposed to the conceptions of French character which prevailed in other
+countries before this war.  And I hope that if Lieutenant Ferasson
+survives, he will accurately designate (if he can) exactly where Foch
+walked on that Wednesday afternoon, September 9, when, his center
+having given way, his right wing receded, he pronounced the "situation
+excellent," gave the order for attack, and went out to discuss
+metallurgy.
+
+Toward six o'clock on that evening the Germans, celebrating their
+certain victory, saw themselves confronted by a "new" French army
+pouring into the gap they had thought their road to Paris.
+
+The Forty-second Division (more than half dead of fatigue, but their
+eyes blazing with such immensity and intensity of purpose it has been
+said the Germans fled, as before spirits, when they saw these men) had
+not only blocked the roundabout road to Paris; they had broken the
+morale of Von Buelow's crack troops.  Without this brilliant maneuver
+and superb execution the successes of all the other armies must have
+gone for naught.
+
+"To be victorious," said Napoleon, "it is necessary only to be stronger
+than your enemy at a given point and at a given moment."
+
+Foch's preferred way to take advantage of that given point and moment
+is with reserves, which he called the reservoirs of force.  "The art of
+war consists in having them when the enemy has none."
+
+But as there were no reserves available at that first Battle of the
+Marne, he exemplified his other principle that conditions must be met
+as they arise.
+
+"I still seem," says René Puaux, "to hear General Foch telling us, one
+evening after dinner at Cassel several months later, about that
+maneuver of September 9.
+
+"He had put matches on the tablecloth"--some red matches which Colonel
+Réquin treasures as a souvenir--"and he illustrated with them the
+disposition of the troops engaged.  For the Forty-second Division he
+had only half a match, which he moved here and there with his quick,
+deft fingers as he talked.
+
+"The match representing the Twelfth German Corps (which with the
+Prussian Guard was cutting the gap in Foch's weak spot) was about to
+make a half-turn which would bring it in the rear of the French armies.
+
+"The general, laying down the half-match that was the Forty-second
+Division, made an eloquent gesture with his hand, indicating the move
+that the Forty-second made.
+
+"'It might succeed,' he said, laconically, 'or it might fail.  It
+succeeded.  Those men were exhausted; they won, nevertheless.'"
+
+At nine o'clock the next morning (September 10) the Forty-second
+entered La Fère-Champenoise, where they found officers of the Prussian
+Guard lying, dead drunk, on the floors in the cantonments, surrounded
+by innumerable bottles of stolen champagne wherewith they had been
+celebrating their victory.
+
+Two days later Foch was at Châlons, to direct in person the crossing of
+the Marne by his army in pursuit of the fleeing enemy.
+
+"The cavalry, the artillery, the unending lines of supply wagons," says
+Colonel Réquin, "the infantry in two columns on either side of the
+road; all this in close formation descending like a torrent to resume
+its place of battle above the passage on the other side of the river;
+was an unforgettable sight and one that gave all who witnessed it an
+impression of the tremendous energy General Foch has for the command of
+enormous material difficulties."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+SENT NORTH TO SAVE THE CHANNEL PORTS
+
+Germany's plan to enter France by the east gate, in Lorraine, was
+frustrated with the aid of Foch.
+
+Her plan to smash through the center of the armies on the Marne was
+frustrated, with the very special aid of Foch.
+
+Blocked in both these moves, there was just one other for Germany to
+make, then, on the western front.
+
+And on September 14, Joffre, instead of celebrating the victory on the
+Marne, was deep in plans to forestall an advance upon the Channel
+ports, and began issuing orders for the transfer of his main fighting
+bodies to the north.
+
+All this, of course, had to be done so as to leave no vulnerable spot
+in all that long battle line from Belfort to Calais.
+
+Joffre had clearly foreseen the length of that line.  He predicted it,
+as we have seen, in 1912.  Doubtless he had foreseen also that it would
+be too long a line to direct from one viewpoint, from one general
+headquarters.  What he was too wise to try to foresee before the war
+began was, which one of France's trained fighting men he would call to
+his aid as his second in command.  He waited, and watched, before
+deciding that.
+
+And late in the afternoon of October 4 he telegraphed to General Foch
+at Châlons, telling him that he was appointed first in command under
+the generalissimo, and asking him to leave at once for the north, there
+to coordinate the French, English and Belgian forces that were opposing
+the German march to the sea.
+
+Five weeks previously Foch had been called to the vicinity of Châlons
+to assemble an army just coming into existence.  Now he was called to
+leave Châlons and that army he had come to know--that army of which he
+must have been so very, very proud--and go far away to another task of
+unknown factors.
+
+But in a few hours he had his affairs in order and was ready to leave.
+
+It was ten o'clock that Sunday night when he got into his automobile to
+be whirled from the Marne to the Somme.
+
+At four in the morning he was at Breteuil, where General Castelnau had
+the headquarters of his new army, created on September 20 and
+designated to service on Manoury's left.  General Castelnau had not yet
+heard of the generalissimo's new order.  He was sound asleep when the
+big gray car came to a stop at the door of his headquarters after its
+one-hundred-and-fifty-mile dash through silent towns and dark,
+war-invested country.
+
+Six weeks ago Foch had been his subordinate.  Then they became equals
+in command.  Now the magnificent hero of Lorraine who, before the war,
+had done so much on the Superior War Council to aid Joffre in
+reorganizing the army, rose from his bed in the chill of a fall morning
+not yet dawned, to greet his superior officer.
+
+Some black coffee was heated for them, and for two hours they discussed
+the problems of this new front--Castelnau as eager to serve under Foch,
+for France, as, eight weeks ago, Foch had been to serve under
+Castelnau.  If the sublime unselfishness of such men could have
+communicated itself to some of the minor figures of this war, how much
+more inspiring might be the stories of these civilian commanders!
+
+At six o'clock Foch was under way again--to Amiens, Doullens, St. Pol,
+and then, at nine, to Aubigny, where General Maud'huy had the
+headquarters of his army, holding the line north of Castelnau's.
+
+The difficulties of Foch's new undertaking were not military alone, but
+diplomatic.  He had to take account of the English and Belgian armies,
+each under independent command, and each small.  It was the fitness of
+Foch for the diplomacy needed here, as well as his fitness for the
+great military task of barring the enemy from the Channel ports, that
+determined Joffre in nominating him to the place.
+
+In 1912 General Foch had been the head of the French military
+commission sent to witness the British army maneuvers at Cambridge.
+
+He speaks no English; and not many British generals at that time spoke
+much French.  Yet he somehow managed to get on, with the aid of
+interpreters, so that his relations with the British officers were not
+only cordial, in a superficial social way, but important in their
+results of deepened understanding on his part and of respect on theirs.
+
+His study of what seemed to him the military strength and weakness of
+France's great neighbor and ally was minute and comprehensive.
+
+In his opinion, the soldiers of Britain were excellent; but he was
+fearful that their commanders lacked seasoned skill to direct them
+effectively.  This lack he laid to that apparent inability to believe
+in the imminence of war, which was even more prevalent in Britain, with
+her centuries of inviolate security, than in France.
+
+Two years before the long-suspended sword fell, Foch foresaw clearly
+what would be the difficulties in the way of England when she should
+gird herself for land conflict.  Doubtless he had resolved in his mind
+plans for helping her to meet and to overcome them.
+
+Now he was placed where he could render aid--where he _must_ render aid.
+
+After the Battle of the Marne Sir John French wanted his army moved up
+north, nearer to its channel communications--that is to say, to its
+source of supplies.  And on October 1 Joffre began to facilitate this
+movement.  It was just well under way when Foch arrived in the north.
+
+And on October 9 the gallant Belgian army withdrew from Antwerp and
+made its way to the Yser under cover of French and British troops.
+
+Foch soon saw that an allied offensive would not be possible then; that
+the most they could hope to do was to hold back the invading forces.
+
+Until October 24 he remained at Doullens, twenty miles north of Amiens.
+Then he removed his headquarters to the ancient town of Cassel, about
+eighteen miles west and a little south of Ypres.
+
+From there he was able to reach in a few hours' time any strategic part
+of the north front and from this actual watch-tower (Cassel is on an
+isolated hill more than 500 feet high, and commands views of portions
+of France, Belgium, and even--on a clear day--of the chalky cliffs of
+England; St. Omer, Dunkirk, Ypres, and Ostend are all visible from its
+heights), he was to direct movements affecting the destinies of all
+three nations.
+
+The Belgians, whose sublime stand had thwarted Germany's murderous plan
+against an unready world, were a sad little army when they reached the
+Yser about mid October.  It was not what they had endured that
+contributed most to break their spirit; but what they had been unable
+to prevent.
+
+To those heroic men who had left their beautiful country to the
+arch-fiends of destruction, their parents and wives and children to
+savages who befoul the name of beasts; who no longer had any
+possessions, nor munitions wherewith to make another stand on Belgian
+soil; to them Foch took fresh inspiration with his calm and tremendous
+personality; to them he sent his splendid Forty-second Division to
+swell their ranks so frightfully depleted in Honor's cause; to them he
+gave the suggestion of opening their sluices and drowning out of their
+last little corner of Belgium the enemy they could not otherwise
+dislodge.
+
+This done, the next problem of Foch was to establish relations with Sir
+John French whereby the most cordial and complete cooperation might be
+insured between the British Field Marshal and the French commander of
+the armies in the north.
+
+There are several graphic accounts of interviews which took place
+between these generals.
+
+It was on October 28 that Foch saw the success of the opened sluices
+and the consequent salvation to the heroic Belgians of a corner of
+their own earth whereon to maintain their sovereignty.
+
+On the 30th the English suffered severe reverses in spite of the aid
+lent them by eight battalions of French soldiers and artillery
+reinforcements.  In consequence, they had had to cede considerable
+ground, their line was pierced, and the flank of General Dubois' army,
+adjoining theirs, was menaced.
+
+When word of this disaster reached Foch that night he at once set out
+from Cassel for French's headquarters at Saint Omer.
+
+It was 1 A.M. when he arrived.  Marshal French was asleep.  He was
+waked to receive his visitor.
+
+"Marshal," said Foch, "your line is cracked?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you any resources?"
+
+"I have none."
+
+"Then I give you mine; the gap must be stopped at once; if we allow our
+lines to be pierced at a single point we are lost, because of the
+masses our enemy has to pour through it.  I have eight battalions of
+the Thirty-second Division that General Joffre has sent me.  Take them
+and go forward!"
+
+The offer was most gratefully received.  At two o'clock the orders were
+given; the gap was stopped.
+
+Nevertheless, the British despaired of their ability to hold.  Marshal
+French had no reserves, and decided to fall back.
+
+A liaison officer hastened to notify General Dubois that the British
+were about to retire, and General Dubois betook himself in all speed to
+Vlamertinghe, the Belgian headquarters, to notify their commanding
+general.  Foch happened to be with the Belgian general.  And while
+these three were conferring, the liaison officer (Jamet) saw the
+automobile of Marshal French pass by.
+
+Realizing the importance of the British commander's presence at that
+interview, Jamet ventured to stop him and suggest his attendance.
+
+Foch implored French to prevent retreat.  French declared there was
+nothing else for him to do--his men were exhausted, he had no reserves.
+Foch pointed out to him the incalculable consequences of yielding.
+
+"It is necessary to hold in spite of everything!" he cried; "to hold
+until death.  What you propose would mean a catastrophe.  Hold on!
+I'll help you."
+
+And as he talked he wrote his suggestions on a piece of paper he found
+on the table before him, and passed it to the British commander.
+
+Marshal French read what was written, at once added to it, "execute the
+order of General Foch," signed it, and gave it to one of his staff
+officers.
+
+And the Channel ports were saved.
+
+But a greater thing even than that was foreshadowed: Foch had begun to
+demonstrate what was in him before which not only the men of his
+command must bow but the generals of other nations also.
+
+One of the staff officers of General Foch who was closely associated
+with him there in the north in that time of great anxiety, has given us
+a pen-picture of the chief as his aides often saw him then.  Doubtless
+it is a good picture also, except for differences in trifling details,
+of the great commander as he has been on many and many a night since,
+while the destinies of millions hung in the balance of his decisions.
+
+"All is silence.  The little town of Cassel is early asleep.  On the
+rough pavement of the Grande Place, occasional footsteps break the
+stillness.  Now they are those of a staff officer on his way to his
+billet.  Now it is the sentry moving about to warm himself up a bit.
+Then silence again.
+
+"In a little office of the Hotel de Ville, a man is seated at a table.
+His elbows are on a big military map.  A telephone is at his hand.  He
+waits--to hear the results of orders he has given.  And while he waits
+he chews an unlighted cigar and divides his attention between the map
+and the clock--an old Louis XVI timepiece with marble columns, which
+ticks off the minutes almost soundlessly.  How slowly its hands go
+round!  How interminable seems the wait for news!
+
+"Someone knocks, and Colonel Weygand, chief of staff, enters; he has a
+paper in his hand: 'Telephoned from the Ninth army at 1.15 A.M.' . . .
+
+"The general has raised his head; his eyes are shining.
+
+"'Good! good!'
+
+"His plans are working out successfully; the reinforcements he sent for
+have arrived in time.  There is nothing more he can do now; so he will
+go to bed.
+
+"A last look at the map.  Then his eye-glasses, at the end of their
+string, are tucked away in the upper pocket of his coat.  The general
+puts on his black topcoat and his cap.
+
+"In the hall, the gendarme on guard duty gets up, quickly, from the
+chair wherein he is dozing.
+
+"The general salutes him with a brisk gesture, but with it he seems to
+say: 'Sleep on, my good fellow; I'm sorry to have disturbed you.'
+
+"At the foot of the grand staircase, the sentry presents arms; and one
+of the staff officers joins the commander, to accompany him to the
+house of the notary who is extending him hospitality.
+
+"A few hours later, very early in the morning, the general is back
+again at his office."
+
+Thus he was at Cassel, as he directed those operations on the Yser by
+which he checked the German attempt to reach Calais and Dunkirk, and
+revealed to the military world a new strategist of the first order.
+
+By November 15 (six weeks after arriving in the north) Foch had the
+high command of the German army as completely thwarted in its design as
+it had been at the Marne.  It had fallen to Foch to defeat the German
+plan on the east (Lorraine), in the center (Marne) and on the west
+(Ypres).  And the consequences of this frustration that he dealt them
+in Flanders were calculated to be "at least equal to the victory of the
+Marne."  Colonel Réquin calls that Battle of the Yser "like a preface
+to the great victory of 1918."
+
+In the spring of 1915 Foch left Cassel and took up headquarters at
+Frévent, between Amiens and Doullens, whence he directed those
+engagements in Artois which demonstrated that though trench warfare was
+not the warfare he had studied and prepared for, and nearly all its
+problems were new, he was master of it not less than he would have been
+of a cavalry warfare.
+
+In the autumn of 1915, Foch moved nearer to Amiens--to the village of
+Dury in the immediate outskirts of the ancient capital of Picardy.  For
+the next chapter in his history was to be the campaign of the Somme
+including the first great offensive of France in the war, which,
+together with the Verdun defense, forced the Germans not only again to
+re-make their calculations, but to withdraw to the Hindenburg line.
+
+On September 30, 1916 (just before his sixty-fifth birthday, on which
+his retirement from active service was due), he was "retained without
+age limit" in the first section of the general staff of the French army.
+
+Honors were beginning to crowd upon him as the debt of France and of
+her allies to his genius began to be realized.  Responsibility vested
+in him became heavier and heavier as he demonstrated his ability to
+bear it.  But always, say those who were nearest him, "a great,
+religious serenity pervaded and illumined his soul."
+
+This is a serenity not of physical calm.  Foch is intensely nervous,
+almost ceaselessly active.  His body is frail, racked with suffering,
+worn down by the enormous strains imposed upon it.  But the
+self-mastery _within_ is always apparent; and it inspires confidence,
+and renewed effort, in all who come in contact with him.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE SUPREME COMMANDER OF THE ALLIED ARMIES
+
+After his position in the first section of the General Staff had been
+made independent of age limits, General Foch was relieved (for the
+autumn and winter at least, during which time no operations of
+importance were expected) of active command of a group of armies; and
+at once began the organization of a bureau devoted to the study of
+great military questions affecting not the French lines alone but those
+of France's allies.
+
+[Illustration: General Pétain--Marshal Haig--General Foch--General
+Pershing]
+
+At first the headquarters of this bureau were at Senlis, near Paris.
+Then they were moved close to France's eastern border where Foch and
+his associates studied ways and means of meeting a possible attack
+through Switzerland--if Germany resolved to add that crime to her
+category--or across northern Italy.
+
+So clearly had Foch foreseen what would happen in the Venetian plain,
+that he had his plan of French reinforcement perfected long in advance,
+even to the schedule for dispatching troop trains to the Piave front.
+
+In January, 1917, Marshal Joffre reached the age of retirement (65).
+He was venerated and loved throughout France as few men have ever been.
+Gratitude for his great gifts and great character filled every heart to
+overflowing.  His country had no honor great enough to express its
+sense of his service to France.  Yet it was felt that for the
+operations of the future, the interests of France and of her allies
+would be best furthered with another strategist in command of the
+armies in the field.  Joffre's retirement was therefore effected.
+
+Joffre is an engineer, a master-builder of fortifications, a great
+defense soldier.  But defense would not end the war.  France must look
+to her greatest offensive strategist.
+
+There could be no question who that strategist was.  No one knew it
+quite so well as Marshal Joffre.  And one of the most splendid things
+about that mighty and noble man is the spirit in which he concurred in
+(if, indeed, he did not suggest) the change which meant that another
+should lead the armies of France to victory.
+
+The appointment of General Foch as head of the General Staff was made
+on May 15, 1917, while Marshal Joffre was in the United States to
+confer with our officials regarding our part in the war.  On the same
+date General Philippe Pétain, the heroic defender of Verdun, who had
+been Chief of Staff for a month, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of
+all French armies operating on the French front.
+
+General Foch installed himself at the Invalides, and addressed himself
+to the study of all the allies' fronts, the assembling American army,
+and to another task for which he was signally fitted: that of
+coordinating the plans and purposes of the Generalissimo and the
+government.
+
+Wherever General Foch goes, one finds him creating harmony and, through
+harmony, doubling everyone's strength.
+
+He "gets on" with everybody, but not in the way that sort of thing is
+too generally done--not by methods which have come to be called
+diplomatic and which involve a great deal of surface affability, of
+wordy beating about the bush and concealing one's real purposes from
+persons who see his hand and wonder if they are bluffing him about
+theirs.
+
+Foch has no stomach for this sort of thing.  His whole bent is toward
+discovering the right thing to do and then making it so plain to others
+that it is the right thing that they adopt it gladly and cooperate in
+it with ardor.
+
+In council he is still the great teacher striving always not merely to
+make his principles remembered, but to have them shared.
+
+The eminent French painter, Lucien Jonas, who has served in Artois, at
+Verdun, on the Somme and in Italy, and has been appointed painter of
+the Army Museum at Des Invalides, was commissioned to make a picture of
+General Foch holding an allies' council of war at Versailles.
+
+It was, of course, impossible for Jonas to be actually present at a
+council meeting.  But it was arranged that he should sit outside a
+glass door through which he could see all, but hear nothing.
+
+"General Foch," he tells us, "held his auditors in a sort of
+fascination.  One felt that in his explanations there was not a flaw,
+not a hesitancy.  All seemed clear, plain, irresistible."
+
+This power was his in great degree in the years before the war.  But
+now men who listen to him know that his perceptions are not merely
+logical--they are workable.  His performances prove the worth of his
+theories.
+
+On March 21, 1918, Ludendorff launched his great offensive against the
+British army.  The line bent; it cracked.  Amiens seemed doomed; the
+British in France were threatened with severance from their
+allies--with envelopment!
+
+After four days of onrushing disaster a conference was called to meet
+at Doullens--a conference of representatives of the allied governments.
+Something must be done to coordinate the various "fronts," to put them
+under a supreme command.
+
+Foch was hastily empowered to order whatever he deemed advisable to
+prevent the separation of the English and French armies.  It is
+apparent that the wide powers thus hurriedly given to him were bestowed
+with the approval of every member of the conference.  In October, 1918,
+however, in responding to a note of greeting from Lloyd-George on the
+occasion of his sixty-seventh birthday, Foch recognized the weight of
+the British Prime Minister's influence at the conference:
+
+"I am greatly touched," he replied, "by your congratulations and thank
+you sincerely.
+
+"I do not forget that it was to your insistence that I owe the position
+which I occupy to-day."
+
+Foch's new responsibilities were laid upon him on March 26.  By evening
+of the 28th he had the situation so well in hand that he was able to
+hold in check the German onslaught without even employing all the
+troops he had brought up for that purpose.  He had averted what
+threatened to be the worst disaster of the war, and he had reserves in
+readiness against a new and augmented attack.  This in two days!
+
+On the 30th an official announcement told all the world that the
+destinies of the allied armies were by common consent confided to the
+general direction of Ferdinand Foch.
+
+On that same day there was made public, by the French war authorities,
+something which had taken place and had contributed in a degree we are
+not yet able to state, to the investment of Foch with supreme power.
+This was a visit made by General Pershing to Foch.  In the presence of
+Foch, Pétain, Clemenceau and Loucheur (Minister of Munitions) Pershing
+made the following declaration:
+
+"I come to tell you that the American people would hold it a great
+honor if our troops were engaged in the present battle.  I ask you this
+in my name and in theirs.  At this moment there is nothing to be
+thought of but combat.  Infantry, artillery, aviation--all that we have
+is yours.  Use them as you will.  There are more to come--as many more
+as shall be needed.  I am here solely to say to you that the American
+people will be proud to be engaged in the greatest and most glorious
+battle in history."
+
+[Illustration: General Foch--General Pershing]
+
+On April 5, a week after his appointment to the supreme command was
+announced, Foch granted an interview to a group of war correspondents.
+Their various accounts differ very slightly.  Instead of quoting any
+one I will make a digest of them.
+
+They found the general installed in a provincial mansion, place not
+named.  The room he occupied was nearly bare; an old table, an
+armchair, a telephone, a huge war map, no profusion of papers, no "air
+of importance."
+
+Foch was writing in a notebook.  He rose, when he had finished his
+entry among those epoch-making memoranda, and received his visitors.
+He had but a few minutes to give, yet he realized the importance of the
+occasion and treated it accordingly.  These men were to send to
+millions of people in the great democracies of France, Britain and
+America their pen pictures of the man just invested with the greatest
+military responsibility any man in the world's history has ever borne.
+Battles must be fought, but also those people had a right to such a
+sense of participation as only their press could give them; it was
+their issue; their attitude toward it was the foundation of their
+nation's morale.  Foch has neither time nor taste for talk about
+himself, but he is no war autocrat; he is, as he constantly reiterates,
+a son of France, defending human liberties.  He might not have much
+time to give journalists, but it is not in him to minimize their place
+in a world where the will of the majority prevails and the press does
+much to shape that will.
+
+His manner on that occasion was calm, unhurried, but very direct, to
+the point.
+
+"Well, gentlemen," said he, "our affairs are not going badly; are they?
+The boche has been halted since March 27.  He has, doubtless,
+encountered some obstacle.  We have stopped him.  Now we shall endeavor
+to do better.  I do not see that there is anything more to say.
+
+"But as to yourselves, keep at your task.  It is a time when everyone
+ought to work steadfastly.  Work with your pens.  We will go on working
+with our arms."
+
+"I regret," wrote Lieutenant d'Entraygues in the Paris _Temps_, "only
+one thing: that all the people of France were not able to see and hear
+this soldier as he spoke to us.  They would know why it is not possible
+to doubt our victory."
+
+It was probably about that time that Major Darnley Stuart-Stephens
+wrote of Foch, for the _English Review_.
+
+"The man who has been consecrated by destiny to the saving from Moloch
+of this globe's civilization, is he who will prove once more that in
+the conflict between the finely tempered sword and the finely tempered
+brain, it is the mental asset that will prevail."
+
+Major Stuart-Stephens had studied the "mental assets" of Ferdinand Foch.
+
+"Now and again at his lectures." he wrote, "I have noticed that
+far-away look of the mystic in his eyes that I remember so well in
+those of that other soldier-saint, Charles Gordon."
+
+It was that spiritual greatness in Foch which everyone felt, on which
+everyone brought into contact with him based his unfaltering faith in
+the outcome.
+
+"We do not know," says an editorial writer in the New York _Evening
+Sun_, "what the judgments of the military critics will be when they
+have carefully studied and sifted the evidence, but to a layman it
+looks as if Foch was not merely a very great general but one of the
+greatest generals of all recorded history . . . as great a general as
+Napoleon or Caesar or Hannibal or Alexander."
+
+But whether they put him, as a military man, on a par with Napoleon, or
+come sapiently to the conclusion that he was no more than a very able
+general fortunate in being in command at the time the Germanic morale
+was breaking, it will never be possible to disprove that he was a
+supreme leader of men in a great war of ideals--an incarnation of all
+those qualities of faith and fervor, of self-mastery and dependence on
+the Divine, of self-realization and with it devotion to the rights and
+progress of others, which are embodied in the Christian democracy for
+whose preservation millions have gladly died.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+BRINGING GERMANY TO ITS KNEES
+
+Faith in the ability of Foch to lead us all to victory was, however, not
+to endure without its grave tests.
+
+The German drive of March 21 was checked by his co-ordination of Allied
+forces.  But checking the enemy just before he reached the key of the
+Channel ports was not defeating him; preventing him from driving a wedge
+between the British and French armies was only diverting him to another
+point of attack.  He was desperate--that enemy!  He knew that he must win
+a decisive victory soon, or see his own maladies destroy him.
+
+He knew the genius of Foch; he knew the immense increase in strength that
+the Allies had achieved in unifying their command.  He may have
+underestimated the worth in battle of our American fighters; but it is
+scarcely probable that he underestimated the worth, behind the lines, of
+our army of railroad builders, harbor constructors, supply handlers, and
+the like.  He knew that whether we could fight or not, we had money and
+men and were pouring both into France to help win the war.
+
+And he also knew that victory after victory which he had won had not only
+failed to increase his might but had, somehow, weakened him; country
+after country had fallen before his sword or before his
+poison-propaganda--or both!--his plunder was vast, his accessions in
+fighting men available for the Western front were formidable--yet
+something in his vitals was wrong, terribly wrong; he must stop, soon,
+and look to his health, or he would be too far-gone for recovery.  But
+not now! not now!  "They" must be crushed now or never!
+
+So he fought like a maddened beast whose usual cunning has given place to
+frenzied desperation.
+
+Again and again and again he lunged--now here, now there.  And the
+defenders of civilization fell back and back, before him.
+
+Where was that calm, quiet man who had said: "Well, gentlemen, our
+affairs are not going badly; are they?"
+
+"The boche," he had said, "has been halted . . . now we shall endeavor to
+do better."
+
+What had happened?  The boche was _not_ halted!  He was, in fact,
+shelling Paris!
+
+It was in those days that the "soldier-saint," as Major Stuart-Stephens
+has called him, must have had need of all his faith and all his fortitude.
+
+We don't know much, yet, except of a very superficial sort, about those
+days.  We know what happened in them insofar as army movements are
+concerned, and the heartbreaking re-occupation of towns and villages
+where French and American restoration squads were working to make
+habitable those places the Huns had laid waste; and the continued
+shelling of Paris by the "mystery gun"; and the great exodus of civilians
+from the capital as the ravaging hordes drew nearer and always nearer.
+
+These things we know; but not what Foch was thinking--except that he was
+not thinking of defeat.
+
+If there was a true heart in France that ever for a moment doubted the
+outcome of the war, or dreamed of abandoning the conflict before it had
+made the future safe, I have never heard of that one.
+
+Certainly the man who was leading them never doubted.  Nor was it on his
+own skill that his faith was founded.  He knew Who would give his cause
+the victory.
+
+
+In the fifth German drive of 1918 the enemy crossed the Marne!  Paris was
+almost in sight--Paris! where millions of French were celebrating the
+fall of the Bastille and the birth of freedom as if the leering, jeering
+enemies of all freemen were not so close to the gates of the Capital that
+the gleam of their tusks might almost have been seen from the city's
+outermost ramparts.  Certainly the drunken fools within--drunk with their
+deep draughts of liberty--could hear the snarling and snapping of the
+approaching wolves, the baying of Big Bertha, the barking of her smaller
+sisters!  But it would be like those crazy French to dance and sing and
+celebrate the overthrow of autocracy, while an autocracy the like of
+which no French King had ever exercised was on the eve of engulfing them.
+
+So the German General Staff said, sneering, as it laid its plans for the
+final drive on Paris.  They would start that drive on the night of July
+14, while the fools were celebrating, when they were least expecting an
+attack.  Probably most of them would be drunk.  Oh, almost certainly!
+Their resistance would be weak, And for all time thereafter it would make
+an impressive tale for schoolbooks throughout the Pan-Germanized world,
+that democracy was dispatched in her last orgy of exultation.
+
+As clearly as if he were not only present in the councils of German
+Headquarters, but present inside the thick round skulls about the council
+table, this boche attitude and intent was comprehended by the small frail
+man at Mormant, where his Headquarters then were.
+
+On that night of July 14 he began the great offensive which never stopped
+until the whining boche was east of the Rhine!
+
+His Intelligence Department told him that the German drive would probably
+begin at ten minutes past midnight.  They might be quite wrong, but that
+was their guess.  Foch was all-but sure they were not wrong; that it was
+not in German nature to reason other than as I have described.
+
+An hour before midnight the Germans were (doubtless) surprised by some
+lively action of French artillery.  Strange!  But it couldn't mean
+anything, of course!  So the boche came on.  The behavior of the French
+was not quite what he had expected; one thing after another happened that
+was not in his calculations.  But that did not argue aught against the
+calculations!  It was the exasperating habit of the French to do
+unexpected things.  Most annoying!  But not able to affect the outcome,
+of course.
+
+On July 18th they got "more unexpected still"--they and sundry "green"
+troops from the flaccid, fatuous U. S. A.!  Some "hounds of the devil"
+were let loose upon the gray-clad armies of righteousness.  It was
+outrageous the way those sons of Satan fought!  They rushed upon the
+legions of the Lord's anointed as if killing Germans were the noblest
+work a man could be about.
+
+So many things happened that were not down on paper--in the plans of the
+German General Headquarters!  It became distressingly evident that these
+Yanks knew as little, and cared as little, what was expected of them as
+the stupid Britishers or the mercurial French or the suicidal Belgians.
+They didn't know how to fight--they couldn't know--they had never done
+any fighting, and whom had they had to teach them warfare?  They were
+absurd.  They didn't know the simplest rules of war--they didn't know
+enough to surrender when they were surrounded, cut off, outnumbered.
+They fought on!  They didn't know how to fight; but Lord! how they could
+kill Germans.  And then they were such fools that their medical corps
+came out onto the battlefield and when they found a German who wasn't
+dead but was suffering, their doctors bound up his wounds and gave him
+water to quench his raging thirst, and left him for his own comrades to
+carry away and nurse--that, instead of gouging his eyes out with a
+bayonet's end or bashing in his skull with the butt of a gun!  Strange
+people!  They never could become good slaves of Kultur; so the wounded
+Germans whose agonies they had assuaged, rose up on their elbows and shot
+them dead.
+
+
+In six hours the Allies, not only reinforced but recreated by this tide
+of new life, new eagerness, re-took twice as much ground on the
+Soissons-Rheims salient as the Germans had won in six days' desperate
+advance.
+
+When the word to fight came to the men of the American army, it was less
+like a command to them than like a release, a long-desired permission.
+Many, if not most, of them had for nearly four years been straining at
+the leash which held them from the place where their sense of honor told
+them they should be.
+
+[Illustration: Marshal Foch, Executive Head of the Allied Forces]
+
+"They were superb," Marshal Foch has said, paying wholehearted tribute to
+them.  "There is no other word.  Our armies were fatigued by years of
+relentless struggle and the mantle of war lay heavily upon them.  We were
+magnificently comforted by the virility of the Americans.  The youth of
+the United States brought a renewal of the hope that hastened victory.
+Not only was this moral factor of the highest importance, but also the
+enormous material aid placed at our disposal.  Nobody among us will ever
+forget what America did."
+
+Let us hope that neither will any among us ever forget for a single
+instant how much was paid for us in blood and anguish by those who held
+the beast at bay from us for long years before we put forth a stroke in
+our own defense or in friendly help or in support of our ideals.
+
+That our aid arrived in time to help turn the tide, that our men were
+magnificent when their opportunity was given them, is cause not for
+vaunting ourselves, but only for gratefulness that our honor remains to
+us--that we have not had to accept life and liberty at other men's hands
+while our hands stayed in our pockets.
+
+Our fighting men redeemed us in our own eyes; they restored our souls'
+dignity; for this we can never be grateful enough to them.  But we can
+never be braggart about it.  It might so easily have come too late!
+
+
+On August 6, Foch was made Marshal of France.
+
+And two days later, the British, on the Somme, launched the first really
+successful offensive of the war--not stopping a drive, but inaugurating
+one.
+
+At last Foch was able to make war as he had for years contended that war
+should be made: The way to make war is to attack.
+
+It was his plan, now that he had the men to make this possible, to keep
+the enemy busy by striking first at one point of the long line running
+from Belgium to the Piave, and then at another.  And by the first of
+September the Allied line on the Western front was back where it ran in
+the deadlock of 1915-16 while the attack on Verdun was raging.
+
+"General Pershing," Foch has said, "wished to have his army concentrated,
+as far as possible, in an American sector.  The Argonne and the heights
+of the Meuse were a sector hard to tackle.  So I said to him: 'All right;
+your men have the devil's own punch.  They will get away with it.  Go to
+it.'"
+
+And they went!  That was the famous St. Mihiel salient.  The American
+infantry started their advance there on September 26.  They went forward
+with a rush.  On their left, the French advanced as rapidly, and on
+October 1 re-took St. Quentin, which the Germans had held since the
+beginning of the war.  October 2 the British, operating on the left of
+the French, reached Cambrai which also had been in German hands for more
+than four years.
+
+October 4 the Hohenzollern King of Bulgaria deserted his doomed allies
+and his throne and began looking for a place of refuge.
+
+And on that day the Hohenzollern government at Berlin had so little
+relish for the situation on all fronts, that it besought the President of
+the United States "to take in hand the restoration of peace, acquaint all
+the belligerent states with this request and invite them to send
+plenipotentiaries for the purpose of opening negotiations. . . .  With a
+view to avoiding further bloodshed, the German Government requests the
+immediate conclusion of an armistice on land and water and in air."
+
+October 10, Austria and Turkey joined Germany in appealing for peace
+terms.  Notes continued to pass between the Germanic capitals and
+Washington, D. C.
+
+But Foch fought on.
+
+The Americans had cleared the last corner of the Argonne of German
+machine-gun nests and gunners, and were widening their offensive on the
+Meuse.  The French had taken Laon, and were pushing on.  The British had
+taken Lens and Cambrai and were advancing on Douai and Lille.
+
+On the 23rd of October the President of the United States referred the
+matter of the armistice to the Allies.  On the 29th, the Allied War
+Council met at Versailles to fix the armistice conditions.
+
+(Foch meanwhile had launched an offensive against the Austrians on the
+Piave.)
+
+Now, an armistice is supposed to be a cessation of hostilities for an
+agreed period, all combatants to remain as they were; if the parley for
+peace is not successful, the struggle is to resume where it paused,
+neither side having gained or lost, except as delay may or may not have
+been favorable to them.
+
+Foch had not the smallest intention of granting the hard-pushed enemy
+that sort of an armistice--time to recuperate, to parley while Winter
+came on and postponed the resumption of his offensive until Spring.  To
+do that meant to prolong the war probably another year, at enormous cost
+in lives, suffering, materials.
+
+What he would grant would be an armistice in which the enemy, so far from
+keeping his positions would abandon them all and retire far behind the
+Rhine; in which the Allies, so far from keeping their positions, would
+follow the retreating enemy into his own country, and police it; in which
+the enemy, so far from resting on his sword, would hand it over--his
+swords, and his cannon, and his machine-guns, and his fleet and his
+submarines and his aircraft and his locomotives; in which he would
+release all Allied prisoners and not ask the release of any of his
+captured men.
+
+The terms were the most ignominious ever imposed upon a prostrate enemy.
+The sole reason for referring to them as "armistice terms" was that peace
+terms are final and absolute, and these were not final--they would be
+made much worse if the Germans failed to satisfy their conquerors on
+every point.
+
+When the Allied War Council had agreed with Foch on the armistice terms,
+he said:
+
+"Within ten days or a fortnight I can break the German army in three,
+envelop a section of it, and take a million prisoners.  Is there any
+condition which, in the opinion of any of you, could be imposed upon the
+enemy then, more conclusive than those of the armistice?"
+
+No one could think of anything that might add a jot to the completeness
+of Germany's subjugation.
+
+"Then, gentlemen," answered the Commander-in-Chief, "we will proceed with
+the armistice.  When all is won that can be won for the safety and honor
+of France and her Allies, I cannot for the sake of prestige or
+gratification or personal glory, order action that would cost the life of
+any parents' young son, any little child's father.  I am a bereaved
+father.  I think of the fathers and mothers whom further fighting must
+bereave.  The enveloping advance which our armies could make in ten to
+fourteen days would cost us thousands of lives, many maimed men.  If
+those things must be to bring the triumph of Right, we can bear them
+again as we have borne them these years past.  But not for any other
+reason!"
+
+"The German high command," he said later, at Trèves, "was not ignorant of
+the fact that it faced a colossal disaster.  When it surrendered,
+everything was prepared for an offensive in which it would infallibly
+have succumbed.  The Germans were lost.  They capitulated.  That is the
+whole story."
+
+The German plenipotentiaries arrived at the French front at nine o'clock
+on the evening of November 7, and were escorted to the Château Francfort
+to spend the night.  The next morning they were taken to Rethondes in the
+forest of Compiègne.  There Foch (whose headquarters were at Semis,
+twenty-two miles nearer Paris) awaited them in his special train.
+
+I may be quite wrong about his reason for receiving the German envoys in
+a railway carriage.  But my surmise about it is that he did not want any
+fixed place associated with Germany's humiliation until those empowered
+to act for the defunct empire of William I came to the Gallery of Mirrors
+at Versailles and there, where the German empire had been proclaimed,
+witnessed the formal degradation before the representatives of all
+civilization of their nation that was built on the principle that Might
+is Right.
+
+Next to this in poetic justice would have been to summon those
+plenipotentiaries before him at Senlis where their troops had committed
+such insensate horrors in September, 1914.  But for reasons of his own
+(which we may be sure had nothing to do with courtesy) Foch went part way
+to meet them.
+
+They complained, afterwards, that he received them coldly.  If he was
+able to keep his manner cold, it was only because his self-command is so
+great.  For no other man in the world knows so well as he the extent and
+the enormity of the crimes those men and their masters and their minions
+are guilty of.  A primitive man, or any undisciplined modern man, would
+have leaped at their throats.  Instead, Foch treated them as if they were
+human though not humane beings, and read to them slowly and in a loud
+voice, the terms of the armistice for which they had asked.
+
+Mathias Erzberger, their spokesman, requested a cessation of hostilities
+whilst a courier carried the terms to German General Headquarters at Spa.
+
+There the Kaiser, Hindenburg and others awaited particulars.
+
+Foch declined to cease hostilities.  He knew his enemy too well.
+
+As soon as the Kaiser learned what the terms were, he abdicated his
+throne and fled his country.  When the courier had returned, and the
+German plenipotentiaries once more presented themselves before Foch
+(again in his car) the "War Lord" of all the world was cowering in a
+Holland hiding place, his blubbering heir was in another, and a Social
+Republic had been declared in Berlin.
+
+How the Hohenzollerns knew the terms of the armistice full twenty-four
+hours before the courier's return to German Headquarters at Spa, I have
+not seen explained or heard any one conjecture.
+
+From Rethondes to Spa is a matter of some two hundred and fifty miles, by
+road, and nearly forty-eight hours were consumed by the courier in
+covering that distance; he did not reach German Headquarters until ten
+o'clock Sunday morning, November 10.  But the Kaiser abdicated and the
+Crown Prince renounced his claims to the throne, in Spa on Saturday
+morning, and they were both out of the country when the courier was
+received, his papers were read, and he was sent back with word to the
+plenipotentiaries to get amelioration of some conditions, if possible,
+but in any event to sign.
+
+If the press reports are not in error as to the time the courier arrived
+at Spa, then the terms of the armistice must have been made known to the
+Hohenzollerns by telegraph or other quick communication very early on
+Saturday--probably as soon as the courier recrossed his own lines, which
+he could have done not many hours after quitting Compiègne forest.  And
+Berlin seems to have known the terms at least as soon; for it was "the
+receipt of an urgent telegram" from Berlin, which the Kaiser is reported
+to have read with a shiver, that precipitated the abdication and flight.
+
+These details are significant, even in so brief a sketch of Foch's life
+as this is; for in their very confusion and obscurity they tell a great
+story of what was either realized or feared in the German camps and in
+the German capital.
+
+The magnitude of that which Foch was ready (and was by his enemies known
+to be ready) to do could not be better conveyed to us than by the panicky
+haste of those who knew themselves doomed, to make any concessions but at
+all costs to avert Foch's next move.
+
+Shortly after midnight on Sunday, the German delegation (which had by
+Foch's orders been scrupulously served in the matter of their creature
+comforts) again presented itself before him in his railway car.  Four
+hours were spent discussing the possibility of performing some of the
+conditions exacted, and modifications were made which in no degree
+altered the completeness of Germany's subjugation.
+
+Then the papers were signed.
+
+The Germans were punctiliously escorted to their own lines.  I have not
+heard what Foch did; but it would not surprise me to learn that he went
+back to bed, and to sleep.
+
+Perhaps, after giving orders for notifying his Government and her Allies,
+he sent a message to Madame Foch.  But I am quite sure that otherwise he
+did not "celebrate," except that he gave God thanks for the victory.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+DURING THE ARMISTICE AND AFTER
+
+When the French army rode into Metz, Foch was not at its head.  There
+may or there may not be another man who could and would have foregone
+that satisfaction; but certainly there are not many.
+
+It does not seem probable that he avoided the occasion; although it
+would be like him to take advantage of some good excuse for absence if
+he thought there was one of his generals who specially deserved and
+desired the honor of that triumphant entry into reclaimed Metz.
+
+The attitude of Foch toward praise and plaudits and personal glory is,
+it seems to me, one of the supremely great things about him.  I cannot
+imagine him "ducking" shyly away from any place where he knew he ought
+to for fear of salvos of acclaim; it would be as unsoldierly to him to
+dodge cheers as to flee from battle, if that way his duty lay.  And,
+similarly, I cannot imagine him going anywhere to gratify his personal
+feelings and collect the praises due him, if there was an urgent reason
+for his being somewhere else.
+
+[Illustration: Ferdinand Foch.  Showing His Insignia as a Marshal of
+France, Consisting of Seven Stars on Each Sleeve and Four Rows of Oak
+Leaves on His Cap.]
+
+The business, military and executive, of seeing that the armistice
+terms were fulfilled, was tremendous.  Much of it devolved upon him and
+made inconceivably great requisitions on that genius he has "for the
+command of enormous material difficulties"--a genius he first displayed
+in getting the Ninth Army across the Marne in pursuit of the fleeing
+Germans, in September, 1914; and which he further evidenced in every
+succeeding phase, beginning with the reconstitution of all the forces
+fighting on the Yser.
+
+The armistice period was a period of extreme demands on him.  In it
+there was scant opportunity to go here or there with his triumphant
+armies.  His work in the field, as a commanding general, had
+practically ceased with his removal from the Ninth Army after little
+more than a month of such command.  From the time he took up his
+headquarters on the hill at Cassel, he became "a desk man"; it was no
+longer his function to execute orders; thenceforth he had the far more
+trying duty of issuing orders--a truly awful responsibility and one
+which demands much solitude, much soul-searching as well as
+map-pondering and other weighing of the ponderable which is so easily
+off-set by the imponderable, the unguessable.
+
+There are few situations possible in life in which a man could be set
+apart with his soul and have so much demanded of his communings as was
+demanded of Foch from October, 1914, on to October, 1918.  Every
+decision he made involved lives--hundreds and thousands or hundreds of
+thousands of lives--and not one pang of what must be suffered for each
+life laid down was strange to him; his only son was among the first to
+die for France and human liberties; and one of his daughters was
+widowed; the home he "left in the joyousness of a midsummer Sunday" was
+desolate, and it stood forever to him as a symbol of the homes in
+France and latterly, in the lands of all the Allies, with whose
+best-beloved he made this or that move in the war to preserve
+civilization.  Nor were the lives he staked all that were involved;
+there were all that were incidentally menaced if his strategy
+failed--all that must suffer immediately and all that must suffer
+ultimately under the heel of the brute if the brute were not destroyed.
+
+A man who has lived thus for more than four years, sharing the
+awfulness of his burden only with Almighty God, must needs have passed
+to a spiritual plane whereon such self-considerations as still sway the
+rest of us have ceased to obtrude themselves.
+
+The quest of personal glory is as hard to associate with Ferdinand Foch
+as with the little Maid of France.  Both fought for God and for France
+and for a Cause, as their Voices directed them; that he has one of the
+best brains of modern or of all times, and that she did "not know her
+A, B, C," sets them not so far apart as the materialist might imagine;
+for the thing that made both invincible was the power of their faith to
+create an unconquerable ardor in themselves and in their men.  The
+churches in France wherein Foch knelt seeking guidance, beseeching
+strength, are likely to be doubly-consecrate, for ages, no less than
+those wherein Jeanne d'Arc prayed.  She is venerated not as a military
+leader (though she was that) but as the one who awakened the soul of
+mediaeval, much-partitioned France and made possible the
+nationalization of her country.  He will be venerated (by the great
+majority) not as "the first stategist of Europe," but as the supreme
+incarnation of that spirit which makes modern France transcendent among
+nations vowed to democracy.
+
+It is Foch's "likeness" to the myriad soldiers of France that France
+adores--not his difference from the rest.  Her poilu is her beau ideal
+of faith and courage, of patriotism and devotion to the principles of
+human rights, of cheerfulness and hopefulness, of invincibility in that
+his cause is just.  France is too essentially democratic to esteem one
+set of characteristics in the mass of men and another set in the
+leaders of men.  Foch and Joffre will live always in the hearts of
+their countrymen because, like Jeanne d'Arc, they have so much to say
+to everyone--so much that illumines every path in life wherever it is
+laid.
+
+On the 19th of December, 1918, Joffre took his seat among the Immortals
+of the French Academy.  The vacancy to which he had been elected was
+that made by the death of Jules Claretie who, before his admission to
+the Academy and before his absorption in the affairs of La Comédie
+Française, had written several books about the leaders of the French
+Revolution.
+
+It was Ernest Renan who delivered the address of welcome to Claretie
+(in February, 1889) and he said that it was still too soon to know
+whether those leaders of whom Claretie had written were supremely
+justified or were not.
+
+"You are young," Renan said to the new Immortal, "and you will see this
+question solved, . . . some years hence it will be known; if in ten or
+twenty years France is prosperous and free, faithful to right, strong
+in the friendship of the free peoples of the world, then the cause of
+the young Revolutionists is won; the world will enjoy the fruits of
+their endeavor without having had to know their unripe bitterness."
+
+Joffre quoted this part of Renan's address, in taking his seat.
+Claretie had not lived quite long enough to see, save with the eye of
+faith, that day Renan foretold; but Claretie's successor in the French
+Academy had seen it!  And it was like him to say:
+
+"I think, gentlemen, that in doing me the honor of receiving me into
+your august body, your desire is to pay homage to that glorious French
+army which has proved that the soul of France is steadfast for the
+rights of man, even unto death that men may be free."
+
+Accepting the honor as paid through him to the men who had proved the
+worth of that Liberty, Equality and Fraternity the Revolution declared
+and decreed, Joffre asked permission to name those to whom, he deemed,
+the gratitude of France and of France's Immortals was due.  And first
+among them he named Foch.
+
+This was gracious; it was generous; but it was more than that.  And
+though Joffre went on to name many leaders, many armies, many moral
+forces incarnate in many men as co-responsible for victory, no one
+could know quite so well as he how completely the France of which Renan
+dreamed as a glorious possibility, is realized and typified in the man
+whose name leads all the rest as having saved not France only but the
+liberties of mankind.
+
+Bonaparte, although he was not French (save technically) and not a
+democrat, captured the hearts of France in spite of all he cost them;
+because he aggrandized France, made her supreme in many things besides
+extent and power.  It is instinctive in every Frenchman (or woman, or
+child!) to revere anyone who does new credit to the name of France or
+brings new glory to it; for the passionate love of country is the
+primary religion of the French--they may or may not have another, but
+unless they are totally renegade they have that faith, that devotion.
+
+In Ferdinand Foch they have a great leader who is in no sense an
+"accident" (as Bonaparte was), a sporadic development in their midst, a
+spectacular growth on an exotic stem.  They have, rather, a
+quintessential Frenchman of to-day, even more widely representative of
+his countrymen than Lincoln was of ours.
+
+"The fame of one man," says Henri Bordeaux, "is nothing unless its
+represents the obscure deeds of the anonymous multitude."
+
+This is a typically modern idea, and typically French.  France of
+to-day would not deny the worth of any development because it was
+singular, isolate; but what she is particularly interested in is the
+possibilities of development along the lines that are followed by the
+many and are open (broadly speaking) to all.  Guynemer, for a shining
+instance, is the idol of every schoolchild in France, not for his
+daring alone, nor for the number of boche birds of prey he brought
+down; but because wealth and influence were unavailing to get him an
+opportunity beyond what the poorest, humblest youngster might have got
+in the same indomitable way; and because frail health and puny strength
+could not debar him from the sublimest exploits of daring for France.
+His circumstance--physical and material--tended to bind him to the soft
+places of earth.  His desire to serve France gave him wings to fly far
+beyond the eagles.  He has no grave.  He rides the empyrean for all
+time, to tell the youth of France how surmountable is everything to one
+who loves his country and the rights of mankind.
+
+Foch is of less legendary sort, but he, too, epitomizes France; and he
+will be increasingly potent as time goes on, irrespective of whether
+the sword is or is not superseded in the affairs of men.
+
+"The obscure deeds of the anonymous multitude" are much like his own
+obscure deeds prior to the great day when France needed him and found
+him ready.
+
+Every black-smocked schoolboy in France loitering along historic
+highways to his gray-stuccoed school, may feel in himself a Foch of
+to-morrow--and quicken his steps so that he may make himself a little
+more ready for his recitation.
+
+Every youth entering upon his military training must find in Foch a
+comrade whose influence is all toward thoroughness, "Learn to think,"
+was Foch's personal admonition for long years before he thus charged
+his students.
+
+Every teacher toiling to impart not knowledge alone but the thirst for
+knowledge, the zeal to use it nobly, has in Foch such a fellow as the
+annals of that great profession do not duplicate.  Other teachers may
+have influenced more pupils; but no human teacher ever saw such a
+demonstration of his principles--to the saving of mankind.
+
+Every good father in France may see himself in Foch--and especially
+every father who gave his son for France and her ideals.
+
+Every man whose work in life calls him to lead other men, in peace or
+in war, has supreme need of Foch; because Foch embodies those
+principles of leadership to which men are now responsive, those ideals
+toward which they are striving.  Particularly as a coordinator is Foch
+great--and potent for the future.  There is, probably, no other kind of
+service so important to the world's welfare, now, as that of bringing
+men together; making them see that fundamentally they are all, if they
+are right-minded, fighting for the same thing; and that in union there
+is strength.
+
+As a scholar, Foch is brilliant besides being profound.  As a man, he
+is simple--and France admires simplicity; he is elegant--and France
+loves the elegance that is the expression of fine thinking, fine
+feeling; he is modest of his own attainments, and proud of France's
+glory.
+
+For nearly every great commander, victory in arms has led to power in
+the state.
+
+Foch is a statesman as preëminently as he is a warrior.  His counsel
+was as weighty in the peace settlement as his strategy was in winning
+the war.
+
+But one cannot conceive him using his prestige, military or diplomatic,
+to increase his personal power.
+
+He has served God and man; he has served his country and his conviction
+of right.  He is content therewith--just as he hopes millions of men
+are content who have done the same according to their best ability.
+
+"I approach the twilight of my life," he wrote not long ago, "with the
+consciousness of a good servant who will rest in the peace of his Lord.
+Faith in eternal life, in a good and merciful God, has sustained me in
+the hardest hours.  Prayer has illumined my soul."
+
+In presenting to Foch the baton of a Marshal of France, President
+Poincaré recalled certain definitions he had often heard Foch
+reiterate: "War is the department of moral force; battle, the struggle
+between two wills; victory, the moral superiority of the conqueror, the
+moral depression of the conquered."
+
+"This moral superiority," said the President of the French Republic to
+the new Marshal of France, "you have tended like a sacred flame."
+
+Always, the tone of tribute to Foch is one of veneration for the
+greatness of his soul and his preëminent ability to represent and to
+lead his people.
+
+"You are not," President Poincaré went on, "of those who let themselves
+be downcast by danger; neither are you of those whom victory dazzles.
+You do not believe that we are near the end of our efforts and our
+sacrifices.  You guard against optimism as much as against depression."
+
+This he said to Foch, in the field, on August 23, 1918, when the fruits
+of victory though in sight were not yet within grasp.
+
+Had the presentation been three months later, President Poincaré would
+(I think) have spoken not differently; better even than before, he
+would have known that Foch is not "of those whom victory dazzles"; and
+not less clearly than before would he have perceived that Foch does not
+"believe that we are near the end of our efforts and our sacrifices."
+
+Foch may well feel that he has done his utmost for his country and for
+mankind, in the crisis for which he prepared himself and which he met
+with such superb faith in the triumph of Right; but he certainly does
+not feel that he has ushered in the millennium; he knows what other
+demands there are and will be upon the souls of men, on their devotion
+to their country, their perception of truth and honor, and their ardor
+and ability to serve humanity.  He knows that not France alone but
+every nation has need to-day and henceforth of leaders who will do just
+what he did: personify the highest ideals of their people and prepare
+themselves to defend those ideals intelligently, unselfishly, devoutly.
+
+He has established a new standard in leadership.  Far from culminating
+an old order, he has inaugurated a new--an order which everyone may
+join who wills to serve.  Its motto is: "Right is Might; believe in the
+power of Right; learn to uphold it; strengthen others, as they come in
+contact with you, to meet the enemies of Right and to vanquish them;
+never forget that the moving power of the world is _soul_, and the laws
+of the soul were made by God."
+
+Too deep a student of history, too keen an analyst of human nature to
+entertain any illusions about the enemy he has conquered but not
+converted, Foch knows that if what he has been privileged to do for
+France and for her allies is to have any lasting value, there must be a
+league of freedom-loving peoples as strong and as united to preserve
+peace as they were to win it; and that this league must be supported by
+a general morale not one whit less devoted to the end in view than was
+the morale which won the war.
+
+Too wise to feel that the victory is his save as he was the leader who
+re-organized millions and showed them how to make their conviction of
+Right prevail, he is also too wise to wish that his were the power to
+create the world anew.  He knows that not only will the to-morrows of
+mankind be as the multitudes of mankind make them, but that they should
+be not otherwise directed; this, of all things, is what the overthrow
+of autocracy means.
+
+He helped us to shake off the Beast who sought to impose his will on
+all the world.  Briefly, at least, that Menace is restrained--thanks to
+the indomitable will of many nations and to the genius of Ferdinand
+Foch.
+
+It is for us--every one of us!--to say what shall come out of the
+security that Foch and his armies have maintained for us at so great a
+price; how long we shall maintain it and how honorably we shall use it.
+
+And to us, with this sacred obligation on us, Foch would say:
+
+"It is not enough to mean well, to desire that righteousness shall
+prevail; it is not enough even to be willing to give all, should it be
+required of you.  You must _know how_ to serve your ideals, your
+principles.  Victory always goes to those who deserve it by possessing
+the greatest power of will and intelligence."
+
+
+
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+  <head>
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Foch the Man, by Clara E. Laughlin
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve">
+BODY { color: Black;
+       background: White;
+       margin-right: 10%;
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+
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+  <body>
+    <h1>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook, Foch the Man, by Clara E. Laughlin
+    </h1>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+    <p>
+      Title: Foch the Man
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Author: Clara E. Laughlin
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Release Date: January 14, 2006 [eBook #17511]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Language: English
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOCH THE MAN***
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      E-text prepared by Al Haines
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr class="full" />
+    <p>
+      <br /> <br /> <br /> <a name="img-front"></a> <img src="images/img-front.jpg"
+      alt="Marshal Foch at the Peace Conference." width="350" height="591" />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      [Frontispiece: Marshal Foch at the Peace Conference.]
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h1>
+      FOCH THE MAN
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      A Life of <br /> The Supreme Commander <br /> of the <br /> Allied Armies
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      BY
+    </h4>
+    <h3>
+      CLARA E. LAUGHLIN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      WITH APPRECIATION BY
+    </h4>
+    <h3>
+      LIEUT.-COL. EDOUARD RÉQUIN
+    </h3>
+    <h4>
+      of the French High Commission to the United States
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      NEW YORK &mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash; CHICAGO <br /><br /> Fleming H. Revell
+      Company <br /><br /> LONDON AND EDINBURGH
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h5>
+      Copyright, 1918, 1919, by <br /><br /> FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h5>
+      First Printing - November 11, 1918<br /> Second Printing - November 19,
+      1918<br /> Third Printing - November 29, 1918<br /> Fourth Printing -
+      December 7, 1918<br /> Fifth Printing - January 9, 1919<br /> Sixth Printing
+      - May 1, 1919
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      DEDICATION<br />
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      TO THE MEN WHO HAVE FOUGHT UNDER GENERAL<br /> FOCH'S COMMAND. TO ALL Of
+      THEM, IN ALL<br /> GRATITUDE. BUT IN AN ESPECIAL WAY TO THE MEN<br /> OF THE
+      42D DIVISION, THE SPLENDOR OF<br /> WHOSE CONDUCT ON SEPTEMBER 9, 1914,<br />
+      NO PEN WILL EVER BE ABLE<br /> ADEQUATELY TO COMMEMORATE.
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="img-002"></a> <img src="images/img-002.jpg"
+      alt="Hand-written letter from Foch." width="360" height="442" />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      [Illustration: Hand-written letter from Foch.]
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <a name="img-003"></a> <img src="images/img-003.jpg"
+      alt="Page 1 of hand-written letter from Lt.-Colonel E. Réquin to Clara Laughlin.]"
+      width="357" height="546" />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      [Illustration: Page 1 of hand-written letter from Lt.-Colonel E. Réquin to
+      Clara Laughlin.]
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <a name="img-004"></a> <img src="images/img-004.jpg"
+      alt="Page 2 of hand-written letter from Lt.-Colonel E. Réquin to Clara Laughlin.]"
+      width="363" height="529" />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      [Illustration: Page 2 of hand-written letter from Lt.-Colonel E. Réquin to
+      Clara Laughlin.]
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      [Transcriber's note: The letter in the second and third illustrations is
+      shown translated on the following page.]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Dear MADEMOISELLE LAUGHLIN:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have read with the keenest interest your sketch of the life of Marshal
+      Foch. It is not yet history: we are too close to events to write it now,
+      but it is the story of a great leader of men on which I felicitate you
+      because of your real understanding of his character.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Christian, Frenchman, soldier, Foch will be held up as an example for
+      future generations as much for his high moral standard as for his military
+      genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It seems that in writing about him the style rises with the noble
+      sentiments which inspire him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus in form of presentation as well as in substance you convey admirably
+      the great lesson which applies to each one of us from the life of Marshal
+      Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Please accept, Mademoiselle, this expression of my respectful regards.
+    </p>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      LT.-COLONEL E. RÉQUIN.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      "THEY SHALL NOT PASS!"
+    </h3>
+    <p class="poem">
+      Three Spirits stood on the mountain peak<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And
+      gazed on a world of red,--<br /> Red with the blood of heroes,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+      living and the dead;<br /> A mighty force of Evil strove<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;With
+      freemen, mass on mass.<br /> Three Spirits stood on the mountain peak<br />
+      &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And cried: "They shall not
+      pass!"<br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="poem">
+      The Spirits of Love and Sacrifice,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The
+      Spirit of Freedom, too,--<br /> They called to the men they had dwelt among<br />
+      &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Of the Old World and the
+      New!<br /> And the men came forth at the trumpet call,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yea,
+      every creed and class;<br /> And they stood with the Spirits who called to
+      them,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And cried:
+      "They shall not pass!"<br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="poem">
+      Far down the road of the Future Day<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I
+      see the world of Tomorrow;<br /> Men and women at work and play,<br />
+      &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In the midst of their joy
+      and sorrow.<br /> And every night by the red firelight,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When
+      the children gather 'round<br /> They tell the tale of the men of old.<br />
+      These noble ancestors, grim and bold,<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who
+      bravely held their ground.<br /> In thrilling accents they often speak<br />
+      Of the Spirits Three on the mountain peak.<br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="poem">
+      &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O
+      Freedom, Love and Sacrifice<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;You
+      claimed our men, alas!<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Yet
+      everlasting peace is theirs<br /> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Who
+      cried, "They shall not pass!"<br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="poem">
+      ARTHUR A. PENN.<br />
+    </p>
+    <h5>
+      <i>Reprinted by permission of M. Witmark &amp; Sons, N. Y.</i> <br /> <i>Publishers
+      of the musical setting to this poem.</i>
+    </h5>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      CONTENTS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap00b"> FOREWORD TO REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap01"> I. WHERE HE WAS BORN </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Stirring traditions and historic scenes which surrounded him in childhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap02"> II. BOYHOOD SURROUNDINGS </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      The horsemarkets at Tarbes. The school. Foch at twelve a student of
+      Napoleon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap03"> III. A YOUNG SOLDIER OF A LOST CAUSE </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      What Foch suffered in the defeat of France by the Prussians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap04"> IV. PARIS AFTER THE GERMANS LEFT </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Foch begins his military studies, determined to be ready when France
+      should again need defense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap05"> V. LEARNING TO BE A ROUGH RIDER </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Begins to specialize in cavalry training. The school at Saumur.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap06"> VI. FIRST YEARS IN BRITTANY </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Seven years at Rennes as artillery captain and always student of war.
+      Called to Paris for further training.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap07"> VII. JOFFRE AND FOCH </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Parallels in their careers since their school days together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap08"> VIII. THE SUPERIOR SCHOOL OF WAR </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Where Foch's great work as teacher prepared hundreds of officers for the
+      superb parts they have played in this war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap09"> IX. THE GREAT TEACHER </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Some of the principles Foch taught. Why he is not only the greatest
+      strategist and tactician of all time, but the ideal leader and coordinator
+      of democracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap10"> X. A COLONEL AT FIFTY </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Clemenceau's part in giving Foch his opportunity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap11"> XI. FORTIFYING FRANCE </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      How the Superior War Council prepared for the inevitable invasion of
+      France. Foch put in command at Nancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap12"> XII. ON THE EVE OF WAR </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      True to his belief that "the way to make war is to attack" Foch promptly
+      invaded Germany, but was obliged to retire and defend his own soil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap13"> XIII. THE BATTLE OF LORRAINE </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      How the brilliant generalship there thwarted the German plan; and how
+      Joffre recognized it in reorganizing his army.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap14"> XIV. THE FIRST VICTORY AT THE MARNE </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      "The Miracle of the Marne" was Foch. How he turned defeat to victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap15"> XV. SENT NORTH TO SAVE CHANNEL PORTS </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      Foch's skill and diplomacy in that crisis show him a great coordinator.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap16"> XVI. THE SUPREME COMMANDER </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      How Foch stopped the German drive that nearly separated the French and
+      English armies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap17"> XVII. BRINGING GERMANY TO ITS KNEES </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      The completest humiliation ever inflicted on a proud nation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#chap18"> XVIII. DURING THE ARMISTICE&mdash;AND AFTER </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      How Foch carries himself as victor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      ILLUSTRATIONS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#img-front"> Marshal Foch at the Peace Conference&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.&nbsp;.
+      <i>Frontispiece</i> </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#img-002"> Hand-written letter from Foch. </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#img-003"> Page 1 of hand-written letter from Lt.-Colonel E.
+      Réquin to Clara Laughlin. </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#img-004"> Page 2 of hand-written letter from Lt.-Colonel E.
+      Réquin to Clara Laughlin. </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#img-018a"> The room in which Ferdinand Foch was born </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#img-018b"> The house in Tarbes where Foch was born </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#img-028a"> Ferdinand Foch as a schoolboy of twelve </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#img-028b"> The school in Tarbes </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#img-060"> Marshall Joffre--General Foch </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#img-142"> General Pétain--Marshal Haig--General Foch--General
+      Pershing </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#img-148"> General Foch--General Pershing </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#img-160"> Marshal Foch, Executive head of the allied forces </a>
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      <a href="#img-174"> Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of France </a>
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap00b"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      FOREWORD TO REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When the Great War broke out, one military name "led all the rest" in
+      world-prominence: Kitchener. Millions of us were confident that the hero
+      of Kartoum would save the world. It was not so decreed. Almost immediately
+      another name flashed into the ken of every one, until even lisping
+      children said <i>Joffre</i> with reverence second only to that wherewith
+      they named Omnipotence. Then the weary years dragged on, and so many men
+      were incredibly brave and good that it seemed hard for anyone to become
+      pre-eminent. We began to say that in a war so vast, so far-flung, no one
+      man <i>could</i> dominate the scene.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, after nearly four years of conflict, a name we had heard and seen
+      from the first, among many others, began to differentiate itself from the
+      rest; and presently the whole wide world was ringing with it: Foch!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was commanding all the armies of civilization. Who was he?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hardly anyone knew.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Up to the very moment when he had compassed the most momentous victory in
+      the history of mankind, little was known about him, outside of France,
+      beyond the fact that he had been a professor in the Superior School of
+      War.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now and then, as the achievements of his generalship rocked the world,
+      someone essayed an account of him. They said he was a Lorrainer, born at
+      Metz; they said his birthday was August 4; they said he was too young to
+      serve in the Franco-Prussian war; and they said a great many other things
+      of which few happened to be true.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, as the summer of 1918 waned, there came to me from France, from
+      Intelligence officers of General Foch's staff, authoritative information
+      about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And also there came those, representing France and her interests in this
+      country, who said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Won't you put the facts about Foch before your people?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If I could have fought for France with a sword (or gun) I should have been
+      at her service from the first of August, 1914, when I heard her tocsin
+      ring, saw her sons march away to fight and die on battlefields as familiar
+      to me as my home neighborhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not being permitted that, I have yielded her such service as I could with
+      my pen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when asked to write, for my countrymen, about General Foch, I felt
+      honored in a supreme degree.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In due course we shall have many volumes about him: his life, his
+      teachings, his writings, his great deeds will be studied in minutest
+      details as long as that civilization endures which he did so much to
+      preserve to mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But just now, while all hearts are overflowing with gratefulness to him,
+      it may be&mdash;I cannot help thinking&mdash;as valuable to us to know a
+      little about him as it will be for us to know a great deal about him later
+      on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      My sources of information are mainly French; and notable among them is a
+      work recently published in Paris: "Foch, His Life, His Principles, His
+      Work, as a Basis for Faith in Victory," by René Puaux, a French
+      soldier-author who has served under the supreme commander in a capacity
+      which enabled him to study the man as well as the General.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      French, English and some few American periodicals have given me bits of
+      impression and some information. French military and other writers have
+      also helped. And noted war correspondents have contributed graphic
+      fragments. The happy fortune which permitted me to know France, her
+      history and her people, enabled me to "read into" these brief accounts
+      much which does not appear to the reader without that acquaintance. And
+      distinguished Frenchmen, scholars and soldiers, including several members
+      of the French High Commission to the United States, have helped me
+      greatly; most of them have not only close acquaintance with General Foch,
+      having served as staff officers under him, but are eminent writers as
+      well, with the highest powers of analysis and of expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Lieutenant-Colonel Édouard Réquin of the French General Staff, who was at
+      General Foch's side from the day Foch was made commander of an army, has
+      been especially kind to me in this undertaking; I am indebted to him, not
+      only for many anecdotes and suggestions, but also for his patience in
+      reading my manuscript for verification (or correction) of its details and
+      its essential truthfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And I want especially to record my gratefulness to M. Antonin Barthélemy,
+      French Consul at Chicago, the extent and quality of whose helpfulness, not
+      alone on this but on many occasions, I shall never be able to describe.
+      Through him the Spirit of France has been potent in our community.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus aided and encouraged, I have done what I could to set before my
+      countrymen a sketch of the great, dominant figure of the World War.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The thing about Foch that most impresses us as we come to know him is not
+      primarily his greatness as a military genius, but his greatness as a
+      spiritual force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those identical qualities in him which saved the world in war, will serve
+      it no less in peace&mdash;if we study them to good purpose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a leader of men, his principles need little, if any, adaptation to meet
+      the requirements of the re-born world from which, we hope, he has banished
+      the sword.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not to those only who would or who must captain their fellows, but to
+      every individual soul fighting alone against weakness and despair and
+      other foes, his life-story brings a rising tide of new courage, new
+      strength, new faith.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the young man or woman struggling with the principles of success; for
+      the man or woman of middle life, fearful that the time for great service
+      has gone by; to the preacher and the teacher and other moulders of ideals&mdash;to
+      these, and to many more, he speaks at least as thrillingly as to the
+      soldier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is what I have tried to make clear in my simple sketch here offered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap01"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      I
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      WHERE HE WAS BORN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Ferdinand Foch was born at Tarbes on October 2, 1851.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His father, of good old Pyrenean stock and modest fortune, was a
+      provincial official whose office corresponded to that of secretary of
+      state for one of our commonwealths. So the family lived in Tarbes, the
+      capital of the department called the Upper Pyrénées.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The mother of Ferdinand was Sophie Dupré, born at Argèles, twenty miles
+      south of Tarbes, nearer the Spanish border. Her father had been made a
+      chevalier of the empire by Napoleon I for services in the war with Spain,
+      and the great Emperor's memory was piously venerated in Sophie Dupré's new
+      home as it had been in her old one. So her first-born son may be said to
+      have inherited that passion for Napoleon which has characterized his life
+      and played so great a part in making him what he is.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a little sister in the family which welcomed Ferdinand. And in
+      course of time two other boys came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="img-018a"></a> <img src="images/img-018a.jpg"
+      alt="The Room in Which Ferdinand Foch was Born." width="352" height="305" />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      [Illustration: The Room in Which Ferdinand Foch was Born.]
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <a name="img-018b"></a> <img src="images/img-018b.jpg"
+      alt="The House in Tarbes Where Foch was Born." width="352" height="309" />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      [Illustration: The House in Tarbes Where Foch was Born.]
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      These four children led the ordinary life of happy young folks in France.
+      But there was much in their surroundings that was richly colorful,
+      romantic. Probably they took it all for granted, the way children (and
+      many who are not children) take their near and intimate world. But even if
+      they did, it must have had its deep effect upon them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To begin with, there was Tarbes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tarbes is a very ancient city. It is twenty-five miles southeast of Pau,
+      where Henry of Navarre made his dramatic entry upon a highly dramatic
+      career, and just half that distance northeast of Lourdes, whose famous
+      pilgrimages began when Ferdinand Foch was a little boy of seven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He must have heard many soul-stirring tales about little Bernadette, the
+      peasant girl to whom the grotto's miraculous qualities were revealed by
+      the Virgin, and whose stories were weighed by the Bishop of Tarbes before
+      the Catholic Church sponsored them. The procession of sufferers through
+      Tarbes on their way to Lourdes, and the joyful return of many, must have
+      been part of the background of Ferdinand Foch's young days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many important highways converge at Tarbes, which lies in a rich, elevated
+      plain on the left bank of the River Adour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The town now has some 30,000 inhabitants, but when Ferdinand Foch was a
+      little boy it had fewer than half that many.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For many centuries of eventful history it has consisted principally of one
+      very long street, running east and west over so wide a stretch of
+      territory that the town was called Tarbes-the-Long. Here and there this
+      "main street" is crossed by little streets running north and south and
+      giving glimpses of mountains, green fields and orchards; and many of these
+      are threaded by tiny waterways&mdash;small, meandering children of the
+      Adour, which take themselves where they will, like the chickens in France,
+      and nobody minds having to step over or around them, or building his house
+      to humor their vagaries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tarbes was a prominent city of Gaul under the Romans. They, who could
+      always be trusted to make the most of anything of the nature of baths,
+      seem to have been duly appreciative of the hot springs in which that
+      region abounds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But nothing of stirring importance happened at or near Tarbes until after
+      the battle of Poitiers (732), when the Saracens were falling back after
+      the terrible defeat dealt them by Charles Martel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sullen and vengeful, they were pillaging and destroying as they went, and
+      probably none of the communities through which they passed felt able to
+      offer resistance to their depredations&mdash;until they got to Tarbes. And
+      there a valiant priest named Missolin hastily assembled some of the men of
+      the vicinity and gave the infidels a good drubbing&mdash;killing many and
+      hastening the flight, over the mountains, of the rest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This encounter took place on a plain a little to the south of Tarbes which
+      is still called the Heath of the Moors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Ferdinand Foch was a little boy, more than eleven hundred years after
+      that battle, it was not uncommon for the spade or plowshare of some
+      husbandman on the heath to uncover bones of Christian or infidel slain in
+      what was probably the last conflict fought on French soil to preserve
+      France against the Saracens. And there may still have been living some
+      old, old men or women who could tell Ferdinand stories of the 24th of May
+      (anniversary of the battle) as it was observed each year until the
+      Revolution of 1789. At the southern extremity of the battlefield there
+      stood for many generations a gigantic equestrian statue, of wood,
+      representing the holy warrior, Missolin, rallying his flock to rout the
+      unbelievers. And in the presence of a great concourse singing songs of
+      grateful praise to Missolin, his statue was crowned with garlands by young
+      maidens wearing the picturesque gala dress of that vicinity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some forty-odd years after Missolin's victory, Charlemagne went with his
+      twelve knights and his great army through Tarbes on his way to Spain to
+      fight the Moors. And when that ill-starred expedition was defeated and its
+      warriors bold were fleeing back to France, Roland&mdash;so the story goes&mdash;finding
+      no pass in the Pyrénées where he needed one desperately, cleaved one with
+      his sword Durandal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      High up among the clouds (almost 10,000 feet) is that Breach of Roland&mdash;200
+      feet wide, 330 feet deep, and 165 feet long. A good slice-out for a single
+      stroke! And when Roland had cut it, he dashed through it and across the
+      chasm, his horse making a clean jump to the French side of the mountains.
+      That no one might ever doubt this, the horse thoughtfully left the mark of
+      one iron-shod hoof clearly imprinted in the rock just where he cleared it,
+      and where it is still shown to the curious and the stout of wind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a pity to remember that, in spite of such prowess of knight and
+      devotion of beast. Roland perished on his flight from Spain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, like all brave warriors, he became mightier in death even than he had
+      been in life, and furnished an ideal of valor which animated the most
+      chivalrous youth of all Europe, throughout many centuries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With such traditions is the country round about Tarbes impregnated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It has been suggested that the name Foch (which, by the way, is pronounced
+      as if it rhymed with "hush") is derived from Foix&mdash;a town some sixty
+      miles east of St. Gaudens, near which was the ancestral home of the Foch
+      family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever the relatives of Ferdinand may have thought of this as a
+      probability, it is certain that Ferdinand was well nurtured in the history
+      of Foix and especially in those phases of it that Froissart relates.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Froissart, the genial gossip who first courted the favor of kings and
+      princes and then was gently entreated by them so that his writing of them
+      might be to their renown, was on his way to Blois when he heard of the
+      magnificence of Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix. Whereupon the chronicler
+      turned him about and jogged on his way to Foix. Gaston Phoebus was not
+      there, but at Orthez&mdash;150 miles west and north&mdash;and, nothing
+      daunted, to Orthez went Froissart, by way of Tarbes, traveling in company
+      with a knight named Espaing de Lyon, who was a graphic and charmful
+      raconteur thoroughly acquainted with the country through which they were
+      journeying. A fine, "that-reminds-me" gentleman was Espaing, and every
+      turn of the road brought to his mind some stirring tale or doughty legend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Sainte Marie!" Froissart cried. "How pleasant are your tales, and how
+      much do they profit me while you relate them. They shall all be set down
+      in the history I am writing."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So they were! And of all Froissart's incomparable recitals, none are more
+      fascinating than those of the countryside Ferdinand Foch grew up in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap02"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      II
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      BOYHOOD SURROUNDINGS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The country round about Tarbes has long been famed for its horses of an
+      Arabian breed especially suitable for cavalry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Practically all the farmers of the region raised these fine, fleet
+      animals. There was a great stud-farm on the outskirts of town, and the
+      business of breeding mounts for France's soldiers was one of the first
+      that little Ferdinand Foch heard a great deal about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He learned to ride, as a matter of course, when he was very young. And all
+      his life he has been an ardent and intrepid horseman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A community devoted to the raising of fine saddle horses is all but
+      certain to be a community devotedly fond of horse racing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Love of racing is almost a universal trait in France; and in Tarbes it was
+      a feature of the town life in which business went hand-in-hand with
+      pleasure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In an old French book published before Ferdinand Foch was born, I have
+      found the following description of the crowds which flocked into Tarbes on
+      the days of the horse markets and races:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On these days all the streets and public squares are flooded with streams
+      of curious people come from all corners of the Pyrénées and exhibiting in
+      their infinite variety of type and costume all the races of the southern
+      provinces and the mountains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There one sees the folk of Provence, irascible, hot-headed, of vigorous
+      proportions and lusty voice, passionately declaiming about something or
+      other, in the midst of small groups of listeners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are men of the Basque province&mdash;small, muscular and proud,
+      agile of movement and with bodies beautifully trained; plain of speech and
+      childlike in deed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are the men of the Béarnais, mostly from towns of size and
+      circumstance&mdash;educated men, of self-command, tempering the southern
+      warmth which burns in their eyes by the calm intelligence born of
+      experience in life and also by a natural languor like that of their
+      Spanish neighbors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "There are the old Catalonians, whose features are of savage strength
+      under the thick brush of white hair falling about their leather-colored
+      faces; the men of Navarre, with braided hair and other evidences of
+      primitiveness&mdash;vigorous of build and handsome of feature, but withal
+      a little subnormal in expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then, in the midst of all these characteristic types, moving about in a
+      pell-mell fashion, making a constantly changing mosaic of vivid hues,
+      there are the inhabitants of the innumerable valleys around Tarbes itself,
+      each of them with its own peculiarities of costume, manners, speech, which
+      make them easily distinguishable one from another."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a remarkable crowd for a little boy to wander in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If Ferdinand Foch had been destined to be a painter or a writer, the
+      impressions made upon his childish mind by that medley of strange folk
+      might have been passed on to us long ago on brilliant canvas or on glowing
+      page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="img-028a"></a> <img src="images/img-028a.jpg"
+      alt="Ferdinand Foch (center) as a Schoolboy." width="353" height="298" />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      [Illustration: Ferdinand Foch (center) as a Schoolboy.]
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      <br /> <a name="img-028b"></a> <img src="images/img-028b.jpg"
+      alt="The School in Tarbes Where Foch Prepared for the Military Academy."
+      width="350" height="323" />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      [Illustration: The School in Tarbes Where Foch Prepared for the Military
+      Academy.]
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      But that was not the way it served him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I want you who are interested to comprehend Ferdinand Foch, to think of
+      those old horsefairs and race meets of his Gascony childhood, and the
+      crowds of strange types they brought to Tarbes, when we come to the great
+      days of his life that began in 1914&mdash;the days when his comprehension
+      of many types of men, his ability to "get on with" them and harmonize them
+      with one another, meant almost as much to the world as his military
+      genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Tarbes had suffered so much in civil and religious wars, for many
+      centuries, that not many of her ancient buildings were left. The old
+      castle, with its associations with the Black Prince and other renowned
+      warriors, was a ramshackle prison in Ferdinand Foch's youth. The old
+      palace of the bishops was used as the prefecture, where Ferdinand's father
+      had his office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were two old churches, much restored and of no great beauty, but
+      very dear to the people of Tarbes nevertheless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ferdinand and his brothers and sister were very piously reared, and at an
+      early age learned to love the church and to seek it for exaltation and
+      consolation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later on in these chapters we shall see that phase of a little French
+      boy's training in its due relation to a maréchal of France, directing the
+      greatest army the world has ever seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The college of Tarbes, where Ferdinand began his school days, was in a
+      venerable building over whose portal there was, in Latin, an inscription
+      recording the builder's prayer:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May this house remain standing until the ant has drunk all the waves of
+      the sea and the tortoise has crawled round the world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ferdinand was a hard student, serious beyond his years, but not
+      conspicuous except for his earnestness and diligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When he was twelve years old, his fervor for Napoleon led him to read
+      Thiers' "History of the Consulate and the Empire." And about this time his
+      professor of mathematics remarked of him that "he has the stuff of a
+      polytechnician."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vacations of the Foch children were passed at the home of their
+      paternal grandparents in Valentine, a large village about two miles from
+      the town of St. Gaudens in the foothills of the Pyrénées. There they had
+      the country pleasures of children of good circumstances, in a big,
+      substantial house and a vicinity rich in tranquil beauty and outdoor
+      opportunities. And there, as in the children's own home at Tarbes, one was
+      ashamed not to be a very excellent child, and, so, worthy to be descended
+      from a chevalier of the great Napoleon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the mid-sixties the family moved from Tarbes to Rodez&mdash;almost two
+      hundred miles northeast of their old locality in which both parents had
+      been born and where their ancestors had long lived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was quite an uprooting&mdash;due to the father's appointment as
+      paymaster of the treasury at Rodez&mdash;and took the Foch family into an
+      atmosphere very different from that of their old Gascon home, but one
+      which also helped to vivify that history which was Ferdinand's passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There Ferdinand continued his studies, as also at Saint-Étienne, near
+      Lyons, whither the family moved in 1867 when the father was appointed tax
+      collector there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And in 1869 he was sent to Metz, to the Jesuit College of Saint Clément,
+      to which students flocked from all parts of Europe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had been there a year and had been given, by unanimous vote of his
+      fellow students, the grand prize for scholarly qualities, when the
+      Franco-Prussian war began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately Ferdinand Foch enlisted for the duration of the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap03"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      III
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      A YOUNG SOLDIER OF A LOST CAUSE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      There is nothing to record of Ferdinand Foch's first soldiering except
+      that from the dépôt of the Fourth Regiment of Infantry, in his home city
+      of Saint-Étienne, he was sent to Chalon-sur-Saône, and there was
+      discharged in January, 1871, after the capitulation of Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He did not distinguish himself in any way. He was just one of a multitude
+      of youths who rushed to the colors when France called, and did what they
+      could in a time of sad confusion, when a weak government had paralyzed the
+      effectiveness of the army&mdash;of the nation!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Whatever blows Ferdinand Foch struck in 1870 were without weight in
+      helping to avert France's catastrophe. But he was like hundreds of
+      thousands of other young Frenchmen similarly powerless in this: In the
+      anguish he suffered because of what he could not do to save France from
+      humiliation were laid the foundations of all that he has contributed to
+      the glory of new France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the time when his Fall term should have been beginning at Saint
+      Clément's College, Metz was under siege by the German army, and its
+      garrison and inhabitants were suffering horribly from hunger and disease;
+      Paris was surrounded; the German headquarters were at Versailles; and the
+      imperial standards so dear to young Foch because of the great Napoleon
+      were forever lowered when the white flag was hoisted at Sedan and an
+      Emperor with a whole army passed into captivity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How much the young soldier-student of the Saône comprehended then of the
+      needlessness of the shame and surrender of those inglorious days we do not
+      know. He cannot have been sufficiently versed in military understanding to
+      realize how much of the defeat France suffered was due to her failure to
+      fight on, at this juncture and that, when a stiffer resistance would have
+      turned the course of events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if he did not know then, he certainly knew later. And as soon as he
+      got where he could impress his convictions upon other soldiers of the new
+      France he began training them in his great maxim: "A battle is lost when
+      you admit defeat."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What his devotion to Saint Clément's College was we may know from the fact
+      of his return there to resume his interrupted studies under the same
+      teachers, but in sadly different circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He found German troops quartered in parts of the college, and as he went
+      to and from his classes the young man who had just laid off the uniform of
+      a French soldier was obliged to pass and repass men of the victorious army
+      of occupation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The memory of his shame and suffering on those occasions has never faded.
+      How much France and her allies owe to it we shall never be able to
+      estimate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the effect on Foch was one of the first acid tests in which were
+      revealed the quality of his mind and soul. Instead of offering himself a
+      prey to sullen anger and resentment, or of flaring into fury when one time
+      for fury was past and another had not yet come, he used his sorrow as a
+      goad to study, and bent his energies to the discovery of why France had
+      failed and why Prussia had won. His analysis of those reasons, and his
+      application of what that analysis taught him, is what has put him where he
+      is to-day&mdash;and <i>us</i> where <i>we</i> are!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Metz, Foch went to Nancy to take his examination for the Polytechnic
+      at Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Just why this should have been deemed necessary I have not seen explained.
+      But it was, like a good many other things of apparent inconsequence in
+      this young man's life, destined to leave in him an impress which had much
+      to do with what he was to perform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have seldom, if ever, studied a life in which events "link up" so
+      marvelously and the present is so remarkably an extension of the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nancy had been chosen by General Manteuffel, commander of the First German
+      Army Corps, as headquarters, pending the withdrawal of the victors on the
+      payment of the last sou in the billion-dollar indemnity they exacted of
+      France along with the ceding of Alsace-Lorraine. (For three years France
+      had to endure the insolent victors upon her soil.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with the fine feeling and magnanimity in which the German was then as
+      now peculiarly gifted General Manteuffel delighted in ordering his
+      military bands to play the "Retreat"&mdash;to taunt the sad inhabitants
+      with this reminder of their army's shame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ferdinand Foch listened and thought and wrote his examinations for the
+      school of war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Forty-two years later&mdash;in August, 1913&mdash;a new commandant came to
+      Nancy to take control of the Twentieth Army Corps, whose position there,
+      guarding France's Eastern frontier, was considered one of the most
+      important&mdash;if not <i>the</i> most important&mdash;to the safety of
+      the nation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The first order he gave was one that brought out the full band strength of
+      six regiments quartered in the town. They were to play the "March
+      Lorraine" and the "Sambre and Meuse." They were to fill Nancy with these
+      stirring sounds. The clarion notes carrying these martial airs were to
+      reach every cranny of the old town. It was a veritable tidal wave of
+      triumphant sound that he wanted&mdash;for it had much to efface.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nancy will never forget that night! It was Saturday, the 23d of August,
+      1913. And the new commandant's name was Ferdinand Foch!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Less than a year later he was fighting to save Nancy, and what lay beyond,
+      from the Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And <i>this</i> time there was to be a different story! Ferdinand Foch was
+      foremost of those who assured it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap04"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IV
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      PARIS AFTER THE GERMANS LEFT
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Ferdinand Foch entered the Polytechnic School at Paris on the 1st of
+      November, 1871, just after he had completed his twentieth year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This school, founded in 1794, is for the technical education of military
+      and naval engineers, artillery officers, civil engineers in government
+      employ, and telegraphists&mdash;not mere operators, of course, but
+      telegraph engineers and other specialists in electric communication. It is
+      conducted by a general, on military principles, and its students are
+      soldiers on their way to becoming officers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Its buildings cover a considerable space in the heart of the great school
+      quarter of Parts. The Sorbonne, with its traditions harking back to St.
+      Louis (more than six centuries) and its swarming thousands of students, is
+      hard by the Polytechnic. So is the College de France, founded by Francis
+      I. And, indeed, whichever way one turns, there are schools, schools,
+      schools&mdash;of fine arts and applied arts; of medicine in all its
+      branches; of mining and engineering; of war; of theology; of languages; of
+      commerce in its higher developments; of pedagogy; and what-not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nowhere else in the world is there possible to the young student, come to
+      advance himself in his chosen field of knowledge, quite such a thrill as
+      that which must be his when he matriculates at one of the scores of
+      educational institutions in that quarter of Paris to which the ardent,
+      aspiring youth of all the western world have been directing their eager
+      feet from time immemorial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cloistral, scholastic atmosphere, with its grave beauty, as at Oxford and
+      Cambridge, he will not find in the Paris Latin Quarter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Paris does not segregate her students. Conceiving them to be studying for
+      life, she aids them to do it in the midst of life marvelously abundant.
+      They do not go out of the world&mdash;so to speak&mdash;to learn to live
+      and work in the world. They go, rather, into a life of extraordinary
+      variety and fullness, out of which&mdash;it is expected&mdash;they will
+      discover how to choose whatever is most needful to their success and
+      well-being.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no feeling of being shut in to a term of study. There is, rather,
+      the feeling of being "turned loose" in a place of vast opportunity of
+      which one may make as much use as he is able.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To a young man of Ferdinand Foch's naturally serious mind, deeply
+      impressed by his country's tragedy, the Latin Quarter of Paris in those
+      Fall days of 1871 was a sober place indeed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beautiful Paris, that Napoleon III had done so much to make splendid, was
+      scarred and seared on every hand by the German bombardment and the fury of
+      the communards, who had destroyed nearly two hundred and fifty public and
+      other buildings. The government of France had deserted the capital and
+      moved to Versailles&mdash;just evacuated by the Germans.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blight of defeat lay on everything.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In May, preceding Foch's advent, the communards&mdash;led by a miserable
+      little shoemaker who talked about shooting all the world&mdash;took
+      possession of the buildings belonging to the Polytechnic, and were
+      dislodged only after severe fighting by Marshal MacMahon's Versailles
+      troops.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The cannon of the communards, set on the heights of Pére-Lachaise (the
+      great city of the dead where the slumber of so many of earth's most
+      illustrious imposed no respect upon the "Bolsheviki" of that cataclysm)
+      aimed at the Pantheon, shot short and struck the Polytechnic. One shell
+      burst in the midst of an improvised hospital there, gravely wounding a
+      nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last, on May 24, the Polytechnic was taken from the revolutionists by
+      assault, and many of the communards were seized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the days following, the great recreation court of the school was the
+      scene of innumerable executions, as the wretched revolutionists paid the
+      penalty of their crimes before the firing squad. And the students'
+      billiard room was turned into a temporary morgue, filled with bodies of
+      those who had sought to destroy Paris from within.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The number of Parisians slain in those days after the second siege of
+      Paris has been variously estimated at from twenty thousand to thirty-six
+      thousand. And all the while, encamped upon the heights round about Paris,
+      were victorious German troops squatting like Semitic creditors in Russia,
+      refusing to budge till their account was settled to the last farthing of
+      extortion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The most sacred spot in Paris to young Foch, in all the depression he
+      found there, was undoubtedly the great Dôme des Invalides, where, bathed
+      in an unearthly radiance and surrounded by faded battle flags, lies the
+      great porphyry sarcophagus of Napoleon I.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With what bitter reflections must the young man who had been nurtured in
+      the adoration of Bonaparte have returned from that majestic tomb to the
+      Polytechnic School for Warriors&mdash;to which, on the day after his
+      coronation as Emperor, Napoleon had given the following motto:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Science and glory&mdash;all for country."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, also, what must have been the young southerner's thought as he lifted
+      his gaze on entering the Polytechnic and read there that self-same wish
+      which was inscribed over the door of his first school in Tarbes:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "May this house remain standing until the ant has drunk all the waves of
+      the sea and the tortoise has crawled round the world."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The edifice in which part of the Polytechnic was housed was the ancient
+      College of Navarre, and a Navarrias poet of lang syne had given to the
+      Paris school for his countrymen this quaint wish, repeated from the
+      inscription he knew at Tarbes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      France had had twelve different governments in fourscore years when
+      Ferdinand Foch came to study in that old building which had once been the
+      college of Navarre. Houses of cards rather than houses of permanence
+      seemed to characterize her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet she has always had her quota&mdash;a larger one, too, than that of any
+      other country&mdash;of those who look toward far to-morrows and seek to
+      build substantially and beautifully for them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That forward-looking prayer of old Navarre, and recollection of the
+      centuries during which it had prevailed against destroying forces, was
+      undoubtedly an aid and comfort to the heavy-hearted youth who then and
+      there set himself to the study of that art of war wherewith he was to
+      serve France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the two hundred and odd fellow-students of Foch at the Polytechnic
+      was another young man from the south&mdash;almost a neighbor of his and
+      his junior by just three months&mdash;Jacques Joseph Césaire Joffre, who
+      had entered the school in 1869, interrupted his studies to go to war, and
+      resumed them shortly before Ferdinand Foch entered the Polytechnic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joffre graduated from the Polytechnic on September 21, 1872, and went
+      thence to the School of Applied Artillery at Fontainebleau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch left the Polytechnic about six months later, and also went to
+      Fontainebleau for the same special training that Joffre was taking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Both young men were hard students and tremendously in earnest. Both were
+      heavy-hearted for France. Both hoped the day would come when they might
+      serve her and help to restore to her that of which she had been despoiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if any one, indulging in the fantastic extravagancies of youth, had
+      ventured to forecast, then, even a tithe of what they have been called to
+      do for France, he would have been set down as madder than March hares know
+      how to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap05"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      V
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      LEARNING TO BE A ROUGH RIDER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When Ferdinand Foch graduated, third in his class, from the artillery
+      school at Fontainebleau, instead of seeking to use what influence he might
+      have commanded to get an appointment in some garrison where the town life
+      or social life was gay for young officers, he asked to be sent back to
+      Tarbes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one, to my knowledge, has advanced an explanation for this move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To so earnest and ambitious a student of military art (Foch will not
+      permit us to speak of it as "military science") sentimental reasons alone
+      would never have been allowed to control so important a choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That he always ardently loved the Pyrenean country, we know. But to a
+      young officer of such indomitable purpose as his was, even then, it would
+      have been inconceivable that he should elect to spend his first years out
+      of school in any other place than that one where he saw the maximum
+      opportunity for development.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Development," mind you&mdash;not just "advancement." For Foch is, and
+      ever has been, the kind of man who would most abhor being advanced faster
+      than he developed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He would infinitely rather be prepared for a promotion and fail to get it
+      than get a promotion for which he was not thoroughly prepared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nor is he the sort of individual who can comfortably deceive himself about
+      his fitness. He sustains himself by no illusions of the variety: "If I had
+      so-and-so to do, I'd probably get through as well as nine-tenths of
+      commanders would."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He is much more concerned to satisfy himself that his thoroughness is as
+      complete as he could possibly have made it, than he is to "get by" and
+      satisfy the powers that be!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So we know that it wasn't any mere longing for the scenes of his happy
+      childhood which directed his choice of Tarbes garrison when he left the
+      enchanting region of Fontainebleau, with its fairy forest, its delightful
+      old town, and its many memories of Napoleon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His mind seems to have been fixed upon a course involving more cavalry
+      skill than was his on graduating. And after two years at Tarbes, with much
+      riding of the fine horses of Arabian breed which are the specialty of that
+      region, he went to the Cavalry School at Saumur, on the Loire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      King René of Anjou, whose chronic poverty does not seem to have interfered
+      with his taste for having innumerable castles, had one at Saumur, and it
+      still dominates the town and lends it an air of medievalism.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward the end of the sixteenth century Saumur was one of the chief
+      strongholds of Protestantism in France and the seat of a Protestant
+      university.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the revocation of the Edict of Nantes granting tolerance to the
+      Huguenots, brought great reverses upon Saumur, whose inhabitants were
+      driven into exile. And thereupon (1685) the town fell into a decline which
+      was not arrested until Louis XV, in the latter part of his reign, caused
+      this cavalry school to be established there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is a large school, with about four hundred soldiers always in training
+      as cavalry officers and army riding masters. And the riding exhibitions
+      which used to be given there in the latter part of August were brilliant
+      affairs, worth going many miles to see.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There Ferdinand Foch studied cavalry tactics, practiced "rough riding" and&mdash;by
+      no means least important&mdash;learned to know another type of Frenchman,
+      the men of old Anjou.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In our own country of magnificent distances and myriad racial strains we
+      are apt to think of French people as a single race: "French is French."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is very wide of the truth. French they all are, in sooth, with an
+      intense national unity surpassed nowhere on earth if, indeed, it is
+      anywhere equaled. But almost every one of them is intensely a provincial,
+      too, and very "set" in the ways of his own section of country&mdash;which,
+      usually, has been that of his forbears from time immemorial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the description I quoted in the second chapter, showing some of the
+      types from the vicinity of Tarbes which frequent its horse market, one may
+      get some idea of the extraordinary differences in the men of a single
+      small region which is bordered by many little "pockets" wherein people go
+      on and on, age after age, perpetuating their special traits without much
+      admixture of other strains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not every part of France has so much variety in such small compass. But
+      every province has its distinctive human qualities. And between the Norman
+      and the Gascon, the Breton and the Provençal, the man of Picardy and the
+      man of Languedoc, there are greater temperamental differences than one can
+      find anywhere else on earth in an equal number of square miles&mdash;except
+      in some of our American cities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the commander of General Foch's type (and as we begin to study his
+      principles we shall, I believe, see that they apply to command in civil no
+      less than in military life) knowledge of different men's minds and the way
+      they work is absolutely fundamental to success.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And his preparation for this mastery was remarkably thorough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At Saumur he learned not only to direct cavalry operations, but to know
+      the Angevin characteristics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In each school he attended, beginning with Metz, he had close class
+      association with men from many provinces, men of many types. And this was
+      valuable to him in preparing him to command under-officers in whom a
+      rigorous uniformity of training could not obliterate bred-in-the-bone
+      differences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Many another young officer bent on "getting on" in the army would have
+      felt that what he learned among his fellow officers of the provincial
+      characteristics was enough.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But not so Ferdinand Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Almost his entire comprehension of war is based upon men and the way they
+      act under certain stress&mdash;not the way they might be expected to act,
+      but the way they actually do act, and the way they can be led to act under
+      certain stimulus <i>of soul</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Ferdinand Foch wins victories with men's souls&mdash;not just with
+      their flesh and blood, nor even with their brains.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And to command men's souls it is necessary to understand them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap06"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VI
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      FIRST YEARS IN BRITTANY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Upon leaving the cavalry school at Saumur, in 1878, Ferdinand Foch went,
+      with the rank of captain of the Tenth Regiment of Artillery, to Rennes,
+      the ancient capital of Brittany and the headquarters of France's tenth
+      army corps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He stayed at Rennes, as an artillery captain, for seven years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is not a particularly interesting city from some points of view, but it
+      is a very "livable" one, and for a student like Foch it had many
+      advantages. The library is one of the best in provincial France and has
+      many valuable manuscripts. There is also an archaeological museum of
+      antiquities found in that vicinity, many of them relating to prehistoric
+      warfare. Some good scientific collections are also treasured there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What is now known as the University of Rennes was styled merely the
+      "college" in the days of Foch's residence there. But it did substantially
+      the same work then as now, and among its faculty Foch undoubtedly found
+      many who could give him able aid in his perpetual study of the past.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rennes especially cherishes the memory of Bertrand du Guesclin, the great
+      constable of France under King Charles V and the victorious adversary of
+      Edward III. This brilliant warrior, who drove the English, with their
+      claims on French sovereignty, out of France, was a native of that
+      vicinity. And we may be sure that whatever special opportunity Rennes
+      afforded of studying documents relating to his campaigns was fully
+      improved by Captain Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In that time, also, Foch had ample occasion to know the Bretons, who are,
+      in some respects, the least French of all French provincials&mdash;being
+      much more Celtic still than Gallic, although it is a matter of some
+      fifteen hundred years since their ancestors, driven out of Britain by the
+      Teutonic invasions, came over and settled "Little Britain," or Brittany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Bretons maintained their independence of France for a thousand years,
+      and only became united with it through the marriage of their last
+      sovereign, Duchess Anne, with Charles VIII, in 1491 and&mdash;after his
+      death&mdash;with his successor, Louis XII.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And even to-day, after more than four centuries of political union, the
+      people of Brittany are French in name and in spirit rather than in speech,
+      customs, or temperament. Many of them do not speak or understand the
+      French language. Few of them, outside of the cities, have conformed
+      appreciably to French customs. Quaint, sturdy, picturesque folk they are&mdash;simple,
+      for the most part, superstitious, tenacious of the old, suspicious of the
+      new, and governable only by those who understand them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch must have learned, in those seven years, not only to know the
+      Bretons, but to like them and their rugged country very well. For he has
+      had, these many years past, his summer home near Morlaix on the north
+      coast of Brittany. It was from there that he was summoned into the great
+      war on July 26, 1914.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1885 Captain Foch was called to Paris and entered the Superior School
+      of War.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This institution, wherein he was destined to play in after years a part
+      that profoundly affected the world's destiny, was founded only in 1878 as
+      a training school for officers, connected with the military school which
+      Louis XV established in 1751 to "educate five hundred young gentlemen in
+      all the sciences necessary and useful to an officer."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the "young gentlemen" who profited by this instruction was the
+      little Corsican whom Ferdinand Foch so ardently venerated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The building covers an area of twenty-six acres and faces the vast
+      Champ-de-Mars, which was laid out about 1770 for the military school's use
+      as a field for maneuvers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This field is eleven hundred yards long and just half that wide. It
+      occupies all the ground between the school buildings and the river.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Across the river is the height called the Trocadéro, on which Napoleon
+      hoped to build a great palace for the little King of Rome; but whereon,
+      many years after he and his son had ceased to need mansions made by hands,
+      the French republic built a magnificent palace for the French people. This
+      vast building, with its majestic gardens, was the principal feature of the
+      French national exhibition of 1878, which, like its predecessor of 1867
+      and its successors of 1889 and 1900, was held on the Champ-de-Mars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Facing the Trocadéro Palace, on the Champ-de-Mars, is the Eiffel Tower
+      (nearly a thousand feet high) which was erected for the exposition of
+      1889, and has served, since, then-unimaginable purposes during the stress
+      and strain of war as a wireless station. The "Ferris" wheel put up for the
+      exposition of 1900 is close by. And a stone's throw from the military
+      school are the Hôtel des Invalides, Napoleon's tomb, and the magnificent
+      Esplanade des Invalides down which one looks straightway to the glinting
+      Seine and over the superb Alexander III bridge toward the tree-embowered
+      palaces of arts on the Champs-Élysées.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the other side of the Hôtel des Invalides from that occupied by the
+      military school and Champ-de-Mars is the principal diplomatic and
+      departmental district of Paris, with many embassies (not ours, however,
+      nor the British&mdash;which are across the river) and many administrative
+      offices of the French nation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soldiers and government officials and foreign diplomats dominate the
+      quarter&mdash;and homes of the old French aristocracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Hotel des Invalides, founded by Louis XIV and designed to accommodate,
+      as an old soldiers' home, some seven thousand veterans of his unending
+      wars, has latterly served as headquarters for the military governor of
+      Paris, and also&mdash;principally&mdash;as a war museum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here are housed collections of priceless worth and transcendent interest.
+      The museum of artillery contains ten thousand specimens of weapons and
+      armor of all kinds, ancient and modern. The historical museum, across the
+      court of honor, was&mdash;in the years when I spent many fascinating hours
+      there&mdash;extraordinarily rich in personal souvenirs of scores of
+      illustrious personages.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What it must be now, after the tragic years of a world war, and what it
+      will become as a treasure house for the years to come, is beyond my
+      imagination.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was into this enormously rich atmosphere, pregnant with everything that
+      conserves France's most glorious military traditions, that Captain
+      Ferdinand Foch was called in 1885 for two years of intensive training and
+      study.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap07"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VII
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      JOFFRE AND FOCH
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      After quitting the School of War in 1887 (he graduated fourth in his
+      class, as he had at Saumur; he was third at Fontainebleau), Ferdinand Foch
+      was sent to Montpellier as a probationer for the position of staff
+      officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He remained at Montpellier for four years&mdash;first as a probationer and
+      later as a staff officer in the Sixteenth Army Corps, whose headquarters
+      are there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="img-060"></a> <img src="images/img-060.jpg"
+      alt="Marshall Joffre, General Foch" width="357" height="599" />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      [Illustration: Marshall Joffre, General Foch]
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      It is a coincidence&mdash;without special significance, but interesting&mdash;that
+      Captain Joseph Joffre had spent several years at the School of Engineering
+      in Montpellier; he left there in 1884, after the death of his young wife,
+      to bury himself and his grief in Indo-China; so the two men did not meet
+      in the southern city.[1]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joffre returned from Indo-China in 1888, while Foch was at Montpellier,
+      and after some time in the military railway service, and a promotion in
+      rank (he was captain for thirteen years), received an appointment as
+      professor of fortifications at Fontainebleau.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some persons who claim to have known Joffre at Montpellier have manifested
+      surprise at the greatness to which he attained thirty years later; he did
+      not impress them as a man of destiny. That is quite as likely to be their
+      fault as his. And also it is possible that Captain Joseph Joffre had not
+      then begun to develop in himself those qualities which made him ready for
+      greatness when the opportunity came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If, however, any one has ever expressed surprise at Ferdinand Foch's
+      attainment, I have not heard of it. He seems always to have impressed
+      people with whom he came in contact as a man of tremendous energy,
+      application, and thoroughness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The opportunities for study at Montpellier are excellent, and the region
+      is one of extraordinary richness for the lover of history. The splendor of
+      the cities of Transalpine Gaul in this vicinity is attested by remains
+      more numerous and in better preservation than Italy affords save in a very
+      few places. And awe-inspiring evidences of medievalism's power flank one
+      at every step and turn. Without doubt, Foch made the most of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Needless to remark, the commander-in-chief of the allied armies has not
+      confided to me what were his favorite excursions during these four years
+      at Montpellier. But I am quite sure that Aigues-Mortes was one of them.
+      And I like to think of him, as we know he looked then, pacing those
+      battlements and pondering the warfare of those militant ages when this
+      vast fortress in the wide salt marshes was one of the most formidable in
+      the world. What fullness of detail there must have been in the mental
+      pictures he was able to conjure of St. Louis embarking here on his two
+      crusades? What particularity in his appreciation of those defenses!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The place is, to-day, the very epitome of desolation&mdash;much more so
+      than if the fortifications were not so perfectly preserved. For they look
+      as if yesterday they might have been bristling with men-at-arms&mdash;whereas
+      not in centuries has their melancholy majesty served any other purpose
+      than that of raising reflections in those to whom the past speaks through
+      her monuments.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Montpellier, Ferdinand Foch returned to Paris, in February, 1891, as
+      major on the general army staff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He and Joffre had now the same rank. Joffre became lieutenant colonel in
+      1894 and colonel in 1897; similar promotions came to Foch in 1896 and
+      1903. He was six years later than Joffre in attaining a colonelcy, and
+      exactly that much later in becoming a general.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Neither man had a quick rise but Foch's was (as measurable in grades and
+      pay) specially slow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About the time that Major Joffre went to the Soudan, to superintend the
+      building of a railway in the Sahara desert, Major Foch went to Vincennes
+      as commander of the mounted group of the Thirteenth Artillery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Vincennes is on the southeastern skirts of Paris, close by the confluence
+      of the Seine and the Marne; about four miles or so from the Bastille,
+      which was the city's southeastern gate for three hundred years or
+      thereabouts, until the fortified inclosure on that side of the city was
+      enlarged under Louis XIV.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The fort of Vincennes was founded in the twelfth century to guard the
+      approach to Paris from the Marne valley. And on account of its pleasant
+      situation&mdash;close to good hunting and also to their capital&mdash;the
+      castle of Vincennes was a favorite residence of many early French kings.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was there that St. Louis is said to have held his famous open-air court
+      of justice, which he established so that his subjects might come direct to
+      him with their troubles and he, besides settling them, might learn at
+      first hand what reforms were needed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five Kings of France died there (among them Charles VI, the mad king, and
+      Charles IX, haunted by the horrors of the massacre on St. Bartholomew's
+      eve), and one King of England, Harry Hotspur. King Charles V was born
+      there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the days of Louis XI the castle has been used as a state prison.
+      Henry of Navarre was once a prisoner there, and so was the Grand Condé,
+      and Diderot, and Mirabeau, and it was there that the young Duc d'Enghien
+      was shot by Napoleon's orders and to Napoleon's everlasting regret.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The castle is now (and has been for many years) an arsenal and school of
+      musketry, artillery, and other military services. Before its firing squad
+      perish many traitors to France, whose last glimpse of the country they
+      have betrayed is in the courtyard of this ancient castle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The vicinity is very lovely. The Bois de Vincennes, on the edge of which
+      the castle stands, is scarcely inferior to the Bois de Boulogne in charm.
+      We used to go out there, not infrequently, for luncheon, which we ate in a
+      rustic summerhouse close to the edge of the lake, with many sociable ducks
+      and swans bearing us company and clamoring for bits of bread.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It would be hard to imagine anything more idyllic, more sylvan, on the
+      edge of a great city&mdash;anything more peaceful, restful, anywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yet the whole locality was, even then, a veritable camp of Mars&mdash;forts,
+      barracks, fields for maneuvers and for artillery practice, infantry butts,
+      rifle ranges, school of explosives; and what not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      France knew her need of protection&mdash;and none of us can ever be
+      sufficiently grateful that she did!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But she did not obtrude her defensive measures. She seldom made one
+      conscious of her military affairs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Germany, for many years before this war, remembrance of the army and
+      reverence to the army was exacted of everyone almost at every breath.
+      Forever and forever and forever you were being made to bow down before the
+      God of War.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In France, on the contrary, it was difficult to think about war&mdash;even
+      in the very midst of a place like Vincennes&mdash;unless you were actually
+      engaged in organizing and preparing the country's defenses.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After three years at Vincennes, Ferdinand Foch was recalled to the army
+      staff in Paris. And on the 31st of October, 1895, he was made associate
+      professor of military history, strategy, and applied tactics, at the
+      Superior School of War.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had then just entered upon his forty-fifth year; and the thoroughness
+      of his training was beginning to make itself felt at military
+      headquarters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      [1] I have found it interesting to compare the careers of Joffre and Foch
+      from the time they were at school together, and I daresay that others will
+      like to know what steps forward he was taking who is not the subject of
+      these chapters but inseparably bound up with him in many events and
+      forever linked with him in glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap08"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      VIII
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      THE SUPERIOR SCHOOL OF WAR
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      After a year's service as associate professor of military history,
+      strategy, and applied tactics at the Superior School of War in Paris,
+      Ferdinand Foch was advanced to head professorship in those branches and at
+      the same time he was made lieutenant-colonel. This was in 1896. He was
+      forty-five years old and had been for exactly a quarter of a century a
+      student of the art of warfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His old schoolfellow, Joseph Joffre, was then building fortifications in
+      northern Madagascar; and his army rank was the same as that of Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was just twenty years after Foch entered upon his full-fledged
+      professorship at the Superior School of War that Marshal Joffre, speaking
+      at a dinner assembling the principal leaders of the government and of the
+      army, declared that without the Superior School of War the victory of the
+      Marne would have been impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All the world knows this now, almost as well as Marshal Joffre knew it
+      then. And all the world knows now as not even Marshal Joffre could have
+      known then, how enormous far, far beyond the check of barbarism at the
+      first battle of the Marne&mdash;is our debt and that of all posterity to
+      the Superior School of War and, chiefly, to Ferdinand Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It cannot have been prescience that called him there. It was just
+      Providence, nothing less!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For that was a time when men like Ferdinand Foch (whose whole heart was in
+      the army, making it such that nothing like the downfall of 1870 could ever
+      again happen to France), were laboring under extreme difficulties. The
+      army was unpopular in France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was due, partly to the disclosures of the Dreyfus case; partly to a
+      wave of internationalism and pacifism; partly to jealousy of the army
+      among civil officials.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An unwarranted sense of security was also to blame. France had worked so
+      hard to recoup her fortunes after the disaster of 1870 that her people&mdash;delighted
+      with their ability as money makers, blinded by the glitter of great
+      prosperity&mdash;grudged the expanse of keeping up a large army, grudged
+      the time that compulsory military training took out of a young man's life.
+      And this preoccupation with success and the arts and pleasures of
+      prosperous peace made them incline their ears to the apostles of
+      "Brotherhood" and "Federation" and "Arbitration instead of Armament."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little by little legislation went against the army. The period of
+      compulsory service was reduced from three years to two; that cut down the
+      size of the army by one-third. The supreme command of the army was vested
+      not in a general, but in a politician&mdash;the Minister of War. The
+      generals in the highest commands not only had to yield precedence to the
+      prefects of the provinces (like our governors of states), but were subject
+      to removal if the prefects did not like their politics and the Minister of
+      War wished the support of the prefects.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Even the superior war council of the nation might be politically made up,
+      to pay the War Minister's scores rather than to protect the country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this can happen to a people lulled by a false sense of security&mdash;even
+      to a people which has had to defend itself against the savage rapacity of
+      its neighbors across the Rhine for two thousand years!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was against these currents of popular opinion and of government
+      opposition that Ferdinand Foch took up his work in the Superior School of
+      War&mdash;that work which was to make possible the first victory of the
+      Marne, to save England from invasion by holding Calais, and to do various
+      other things vital to civilization, including the prodigious achievements
+      of the days that have since followed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch foresaw that these things would have to be done and, with absolute
+      consecration to his task, he set himself not only to train officers for
+      France when she should need them, but to inspire them with a unity of
+      action which has saved the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I have various word-pictures of him as he then appeared to, and impressed,
+      his students.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One is by a military writer who uses the pseudonym of "Miles."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The officers who succeeded one another at the school of war between 1896
+      and 1901," he says, referring to the first term of Foch as instructor
+      there, "will never forget the impressions made upon them by their
+      professor of strategy and of general tactics. It was this course that was
+      looked forward to with the keenest curiosity as the foundational
+      instruction given by the school. It enjoyed the prestige given it by the
+      eminent authorities who had held it; and the eighty officers who came to
+      the school at each promotion, intensely desirous of developing their skill
+      and judgment, were always impatient to see and hear the man who was to
+      instruct them in these branches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Lieutenant-Colonel Foch did not disappoint their expectations. Thin,
+      elegant, of distinguished bearing, he at once struck the beholder with his
+      expression&mdash;full of energy, of calm, of rectitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His forehead was high, his nose straight and prominent, his gray-blue
+      eyes looked one full in the face. He spoke without gestures, with an air
+      of authority and conviction; his voice serious, harsh, a little
+      monotonous; amplifying his phrases to press home in every possible way a
+      rigorous reasoning; provoking discussion; always appealing to the logic of
+      his hearers; sometimes difficult to follow, because his discourse was so
+      rich in ideas; but always holding attention by the penetration of his
+      surveys as well as by his tone of sincerity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The most profound and the most original of the professors at the school
+      of war, which at that time counted in its teaching corps many very
+      distinguished minds and brilliant lecturers: such Lieutenant-Colonel Foch
+      seemed to his students, all eager from the first to give themselves up to
+      the enjoyment of his lessons and the acceptance of his inspiration."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Colonel E. Réquin of the French general staff, who has fought under Foch
+      in some of the latter's greatest engagements, says:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Foch has been for forty years the incarnation of the French military
+      spirit." For forty years! That means ever since he left the cavalry school
+      at Saumur and went, as captain of the Tenth regiment of artillery, to
+      Rennes. "Through his teachings and his example," Colonel Réquin goes on to
+      say, in a 1918 number of the <i>World's Work</i>, "he was the moral
+      director of the French general staff before becoming the supreme chief of
+      the allied armies. Upon each one of us he has imprinted his strong mark.
+      We owe to him in time of peace that unity of doctrine which was our
+      strength. Since the war we owe to him the highest lessons of intellectual
+      discipline and moral energy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "As a professor he applied the method which consists in taking as the base
+      of all strategical and tactical instruction the study of history completed
+      by the study of military history&mdash;that is to say, field operations,
+      orders given, actions, results, and criticisms to be made and the
+      instructions to be drawn from them. He also used concrete cases&mdash;that
+      is to say, problems laid by the director on the map or on the actual
+      ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "By this intellectual training he accustomed the officers to solving all
+      problems, not by giving them ready-made solutions, but by making them find
+      the logical solution to each individual case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His mind was trained through so many years of study that no war situation
+      could disturb him. In the most difficult ones, he quickly pointed out the
+      goal to be reached and the means to employ, and each one of us felt that
+      it must be right."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But best of all the things said about Foch in that period of his life, I
+      like this, by Charles Dawbarn, in the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Such was"&mdash;in spite of many disappointments&mdash;"<i>his fine
+      confidence in life, that he communicated to others not his grievances, but
+      his secret satisfactions</i>."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap09"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      IX
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      THE GREAT TEACHER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Foch made the men who sat under him love their work for the work's sake
+      and not for its rewards. He fired them with an ardor for military art
+      which made them feel that in all the world there is nothing so
+      fascinating, so worth while, as knowing how to defend one's country when
+      she needs defense.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was able, in peace times when the military spirit was little applauded
+      and much decried, to give his students an enthusiasm for "preparedness"
+      which flamed as high and burned as pure as that which ordinarily is
+      lighted only by a great national rush to arms to save the country from
+      ravage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was tremendously, incalculably important for France and for all of us
+      that Ferdinand Foch was eager and able to impart this enthusiasm for
+      military skill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But also it is immensely important, to-day, when the war is won, and in
+      all days and all walks of life, that there be those who can kindle and
+      keep alight the enthusiasm of their fellows; who can overlook the failure
+      of their own ardor and faithfulness to win its fair reward, and convey to
+      others only the alluring glow of their "secret satisfactions."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the five years, 1895-1901 (his work at the school was interrupted by
+      politics in 1901), "many hundreds of officers," as René Puaux says, "the
+      very elite of the general staffs of our army, followed his teaching and
+      were imbued with it; and as they practically all, at the beginning of the
+      war, occupied high positions of command, one may estimate as he can the
+      profound and far reaching influence of this one grand spirit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us try to get some idea of the sort of thing that Foch taught those
+      hundreds of French army officers, not only about war but about life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From all his study, he repeatedly declared, one dominant conviction has
+      evolved: Force that is not dominated by spirit is vain force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Victory, in his belief, goes to those who merit it by the greatest
+      strength of will and intelligence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was his endeavor, always, to develop in the hundreds of officers who
+      were his students, that dual strength in which it seemed to him that
+      victory could only lie: moral and intellectual ability to perceive what
+      ought to be done, and intellectual and moral ability to do it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his mind, it is impossible to be intelligent with the brain alone. The
+      Germans do not comprehend this, and therein, to Ferdinand Foch, lies the
+      key to all their failures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He believes that each of us must think with our soul's aid&mdash;that is
+      to say, with our imagination, our emotions, our aspiration&mdash;and
+      employ our intelligence to direct our feeling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he asks this combination not from higher officers alone, but from all
+      their men down to the humblest in the ranks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He believes in the invincibility of men fighting for a principle dearer to
+      them than life&mdash;but he knows that ardor without leadership means a
+      lost cause; that men must know how to fight for their ideals, their
+      principles; but that their officers are charged with the sacred
+      responsibility of making the men's ardor and valor count.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the beginning of his celebrated course of lectures on tactics he always
+      admonished his students thus:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You will be called on later to be the brain of an army. So I say to you
+      to-day: Learn to think."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By this he was far from meaning that officers were to confine thinking to
+      themselves, but that they were to teach themselves to think so that they
+      might the better hand on intelligence and stimulate their men to obey not
+      blindly but comprehendingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a maxim of Napoleon's, of which Foch is very fond, that "as a
+      general rule, the commander-in-chief ought only to indicate the direction,
+      determine the ends to be attained; the means of getting there ought to be
+      left to the free choice of the mediums of execution, without whom success
+      is impossible."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This leaves a great responsibility to officers, but it is the secret of
+      that flexibility which makes the French army so effective.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Foch carries his belief in individual judgment far beyond the officers
+      commanding units; he carries it to the privates in the ranks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An able officer, in Foch's opinion, is one who can take a general command
+      to get his men such-and-such a place and accomplish such-and-such a thing,
+      and so interpret that command to his men that each and every one of them
+      will, while acting in strict obedience to orders, use the largest possible
+      amount of personal intelligence in accomplishing the thing he was told to
+      do.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is said that there was probably never before in history a battle fought
+      in which every man was a general&mdash;so to speak&mdash;as at the battle
+      of Château Thierry, in July, 1918. That is to say, there was probably
+      never before a battle in which so many men comprehended as clearly as if
+      they had been generals what it was all about, and acted as if they had
+      been generals to attain their objectives.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an intelligent democracy, acting under superb leadership that
+      vanquished the forces of autocracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch has worked with a free hand to test the worth of his lifelong
+      principles. And the hundreds of men he trained in those principles were
+      ready to carry them out for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No wonder his first injunction was: Learn to think!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To him, the leadership of units is not a simple question of organization,
+      of careful plans, of strategic and tactical intelligence, but a problem
+      involving enormous adaptability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Battles are not won at headquarters, he contends; they are won in the
+      field; and the conditions that may arise in the field cannot be foreseen
+      or forestalled&mdash;they must be met when they present themselves. In
+      large part they are made by the behavior of men in unexpected
+      circumstances; therefore, the more a commander knows about human nature
+      and its spiritual depressions and exaltations, the better able he is to
+      change his plans as new conditions arise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      German power in war, Foch taught his students, lay in the great masses of
+      their effective troops and their perfect organization for moving men and
+      supplies. German weakness was in the absolute autocracy of great
+      headquarters, building its plans as an architect builds a house and unable
+      to modify them if something happens to make a change necessary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This he deduced from his study of their methods in previous wars,
+      especially in that of 1870.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And with this in mind he labored so that when Germany made her next
+      assault upon France, France might be equipped with hundreds of officers
+      cognizant of Germany's weakness and prepared to turn it to her defeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap10"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      X
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      A COLONEL AT FIFTY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      "It was not," Napoleon wrote, "the Roman legions which conquered Gaul, but
+      Caesar. It was not the Carthaginian soldiers who made Rome tremble, but
+      Hannibal. It was not the Macedonian phalanx which penetrated India, but
+      Alexander. It was not the French army which reached the Weser and the Inn,
+      but Turenne. It was not the Prussian soldiers who defended their country
+      for seven years against the three most formidable powers in Europe; it was
+      Frederick the Great."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And already it has been suggested that historians will write of this war:
+      "It was not the allied armies, struggling hopelessly for four years, that
+      finally drove the Germans across the Rhine, but Ferdinand Foch."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I am sure that Foch would not wish this said of him in the same sense
+      that Napoleon said it of earlier generals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For Foch has a greater vision of generalship than was possible to any
+      commander of long ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His strategy is based upon a close study of theirs; for he says that
+      though the forms of making war evolve, the directing principles do not
+      change, and there is need for every officer to make analyses of Xenophon
+      and Caesar and Hannibal as close as those he makes of Frederick and
+      Napoleon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his conception of military leadership is permeated with the ideals of
+      democracy and justice for which he fights.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of his great lectures to student-officers was that in which he made
+      them realize what, besides the route of the Prussians, happened at Valmy
+      in September, 1792.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his big military map of that region (it is on the western edge of the
+      Argonne) Foch would show his students how the Prussians, Hessians and some
+      Austrian troops; under the Duke of Brunswick, crossed the French frontier
+      on August 19 and came swaggering toward Paris, braggartly announcing their
+      intentions of "celebrating" in Paris in September.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Brunswick and his fellow generals were to banquet with the King of Prussia
+      at the Tuileries. And the soldiers were bent upon the cafés of the Palais
+      Royal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch showed his classes how Dumouriez, who had been training his raw
+      troops of disorganized France at Valenciennes, dashed with them into the
+      Argonne to intercept Brunswick; how this and that happened which I will
+      not repeat here because it is merely technical; and then how the soldiers
+      of the republic, rallied by the cry, "The country is in danger," and
+      thrilled by "The Marseillaise" (written only five months before, but
+      already it had changed the beat of nearly every heart in France), made
+      such a stand that it not only halted Prussia and her allies, but so
+      completely broke their conquering spirit that without firing another shot
+      they took themselves off beyond the Rhine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We," Foch used to tell his students, "are the successors of the
+      revolution and the empire, the inheritors of the art, new-born upon the
+      field of Valmy to astonish the old Europe, to surprise in particular the
+      Duke of Brunswick, the pupil of Frederick the Great, and to tear from
+      Goethe, before the immensity of a fresh horizon, this profound cry: 'I
+      tell you, from this place and this day comes a new era in the history of
+      the world!'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is that new era which Foch typifies&mdash;that new era which his
+      adversaries, deaf to Goethe's cry and blind to Goethe's vision, have not
+      yet realized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was "the old Europe" against which Foch fought&mdash;the old Europe
+      which learned nothing at Valmy and had learned nothing since; the old
+      Europe that fought as Frederick the Great fought and that had not yet seen
+      the dawn of that new day which our nation and the French nation greeted
+      with glad hails much more than a century ago.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1792 Prussia measured her military skill and her masses of trained men
+      against France's disorganization&mdash;and overlooked "The Marseillaise."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1914 she weighed her might against what she knew of the might of France&mdash;and
+      omitted to weigh certain spiritual differences which she could not
+      comprehend, but which she felt at the first battle of the Marne, has been
+      feeling ever since, and before which she had to retire, beaten but still
+      blind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1918 she estimated the probable force of those "raw recruits" whom we
+      were sending overseas&mdash;and laughed. She based her calculations on our
+      lack of military tradition, our hastily trained officers, our "soft,"
+      ease-loving men uneducated in those ideals of blood and iron wherein she
+      has reared her youth always. She overlooked that spiritual force which the
+      "new era" develops and which made our men so responsive to the command of
+      Foch at Château Thierry and later.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The immensity of a fresh horizon" whereon Goethe saw the new era dawning,
+      is still veiled from the vision of his countrymen. But across its roseate
+      reaches unending columns of marching men passed, under the leadership of
+      Ferdinand Foch, to liberate the captives the blind brute has made and to
+      strike down the strongholds of "old Europe" forever.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For nearly six years Foch taught such principles as these and others which
+      I shall recall in connection with great events which they made possible
+      later on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then came the anti-clerical wave in French politics, and on its crest a
+      new commandant to the School of War&mdash;a man elevated by the
+      anti-clericals and eager to keep his elevation by pleasing those who put
+      him there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch adheres devoutly to the religious practices in which he was reared,
+      and one of his brothers belongs to the Jesuit order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These conditions made his continuance at the school under its new head
+      impossible. Whether he resigned because he realized this, or was
+      superseded, I do not know. But he left his post and went as
+      lieutenant-colonel to the Twenty-ninth artillery, at Laon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was there two years and undoubtedly made a thorough study of the
+      country round Laon&mdash;which was for more than four years to be the key
+      to the German tenure in that part of France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Ferdinand Foch, with his brilliant knowledge and high ideals of
+      soldiering, was now past fifty and not yet a colonel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Strong though his spirit was, sustained by faith in God and rewarded by
+      those "secret satisfactions" which come to the man who loves his work and
+      is conscious of having given it his best, he must have had hours, days,
+      when he drank deep of the cup of bitterness. There are, though, bitters
+      that shrivel and bitters that tone and invigorate. Or perhaps they are the
+      same and the difference is in us.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At any rate, Foch was not poisoned at the cup of disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And when the armies under his command encircled the great rock whereon
+      Laon is perched high above the surrounding plains I hope Foch was with
+      them&mdash;in memory of the days when he was "dumped" there, so to speak,
+      far away from his sphere of influence at the School of War.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1903 he was made colonel and sent to the Thirty-fifth artillery at
+      Vannes, in Brittany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only two years later he was called to Orleans as chief of staff of the
+      Fifth army corps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On June 20, 1907, he was made Brigadier General and passed to the general
+      staff of the French army at Paris. Soon afterwards, Georges Clemenceau
+      became Minister of War, and was seeking a new head for the Staff College.
+      Everyone whose advice he sought said: Foch. So the redoubtable old radical
+      and anti-clerical summoned General Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I offer you command of the School of War."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I thank you," Foch replied, "but you are doubtless unaware that one of my
+      brothers is a Jesuit."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I know it very well," was Clemenceau's answer. "But you make good
+      officers, and that is the only thing which counts."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus was foreshadowed, in these two great men, that spirit of "all for
+      France" which, under the civil leadership of one and the military
+      leadership of the other, was to save the country and the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1911 Foch, at 60, was given command of the Thirteenth division at
+      Chaumont, just above the source of the Marne. On December 17, 1912, he was
+      placed at the head of the Eighth Army Corps, at Bourges. And on August 23,
+      1913, he took command of the Twentieth corps at Nancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When," says Marcel Knecht, "we in Nancy heard that Foch had been chosen
+      to command the best troops in France, the Twentieth Army Corps, pride of
+      our capital, everybody went wild with enthusiasm."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is M. Knecht who tells us about the visit to General Foch at Nancy, in
+      the spring of 1914, of three British generals whose presence there Foch
+      utilized for two purposes: He showed them what he was doing to strengthen
+      Nancy's defensibility, and thereby urged upon them France's conviction
+      that an attack by Germany was imminent and unavoidable; and he utilized
+      the occasion to show the Lorrainers his warm friendliness for England&mdash;which
+      Lorraine was inclined still to blame for the death of Joan of Arc. Foch
+      knew that German propagandists were continually fanning this resentment
+      against England. And he made it part of his business to overcome that
+      prejudice by showing the honor in which he held Great Britain's eminent
+      soldiers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap11"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XI
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      FORTIFYING FRANCE WITH GREAT PRINCIPLES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      So much has been said about France's unreadiness for the war that it is
+      easy for those who do not know what the real situation was to suppose that
+      the French were something akin to fools. For twenty centuries the Germans
+      had been swarming over the Rhine in preying, ravaging hordes, and France
+      had been beating them back to save her national life. That they would
+      swarm again, more insolent and more rapacious than ever after their
+      triumph of 1870, was not to be doubted. Everyone in France who had the
+      slightest knowledge of the spirit that has animated the Hohenzollern
+      empire knew its envy of France, its cupidity of France's wealth, its
+      hatred of France's attractions for all the world. Everyone who came in
+      contact with the Germans felt the bullet-headed belligerence of their
+      attitude which they were never at any pains to conceal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The military men of France knew that Germany had for years been preparing
+      for aggression on a large scale. They knew that she would strike when she
+      felt that she was readiest and her opponents of the Triple Entente were
+      least ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The state of mind of the civilians&mdash;busy, prosperous, peace-loving,
+      concerned with conversational warfare about a multitude of petty internal
+      affairs&mdash;is difficult to describe. But I think it may not be
+      impertinent to say of it that it was something like the state of mind of a
+      congregation, well fed, comfortable, conscious of many pleasant virtues
+      and few corroding sins, before whom a preacher holds up the last judgment.
+      None of them hopes to escape it, none of them can tell at what moment he
+      may be called to his account, none of them would wish to go in just his
+      present state, and yet none of them does anything when he leaves church to
+      put himself more definitely in readiness for that great decision which is
+      to determine where he shall spend eternity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1911 it seemed for a brief while that the irruption from the east was
+      at hand. But Germany did not feel quite ready; she "dickered"; and things
+      went on seemingly as before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      France seemed to forget. But she was not so completely abandoned to
+      hopefulness as was England&mdash;England, who turned her deafest ear to
+      Lord Roberts' impassioned pleas for preparedness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      France has an institution called the Superior War Council. It is the
+      supreme organ of military authority and the center of national defense; it
+      consists of eleven members supposed to be the ablest commanding generals
+      in the nation. The president of this council is the Minister of War; the
+      vice president is known as the generalissimo of the French army.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1910 General Joseph Joffre became a member of the Superior War Council,
+      and in 1911 he became generalissimo.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was because the Council felt the imminence of war with Germany that
+      General Pau&mdash;to whom the vice presidency should have gone by right of
+      his priority and also of his eminent fitness&mdash;patriotically waived
+      the honor, because in two years he would be sixty-five and would have to
+      retire; he felt that the defense of the country needed a younger man who
+      could remain more years in service. So Joffre was chosen and almost
+      immediately he began to justify the choice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joffre and his associates of the council not only foresaw the war, but
+      they quite clearly previsioned its extent and something of its character.
+      In 1912 Joffre declared "the fighting front will extend from four hundred
+      to five hundred miles." He talked little, but he worked prodigiously; and
+      always his insistence was: "We must be prepared!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "With whole nations," he said, "engaged in a mortal combat, disaster is
+      certain for those who in time of peace failed to prepare for war." And "To
+      be ready means, to-day, to have mustered in advance all the resources of
+      the country, all the intelligence of its citizens, all their moral energy,
+      for the purpose of attaining this one aim&mdash;victory. Getting ready is
+      a duty that devolves not only upon the army, but upon all public
+      officials, upon all organizations, upon all societies, upon all families,
+      upon all citizens."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This complete readiness was beyond his power to effect. But in his
+      province&mdash;the army&mdash;he achieved marvels that were almost
+      miracles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was France's good fortune (and that of her allies) that in all he
+      undertook for the purification and strengthening of the army Joffre had,
+      from January, 1912, the complete co-operation of the Minister of War, M.
+      Millerand. Together, these two men, brilliantly supported by some of
+      Joffre's colleagues in the Superior Council&mdash;notably Pau and
+      Castelnau&mdash;achieved results that have been pronounced "unparalleled
+      in the history of the Third Republic." They freed the army from the worst
+      effects of political influence, made it once more a popular institution,
+      and organized it into an effectiveness which needs, now, no comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When Foch was put in command of the Twentieth army corps at Nancy it was
+      in the expectation that Nancy would sustain the first shock of the German
+      invasion when it came. The opinion prevailed that Nancy could not be held.
+      Whether Joffre was of this opinion or not, I do not know. If he was, he
+      probably felt that Foch would give it up only after harder fighting than
+      any other general. But Foch believed that Nancy could be defended, and so
+      did his immediate superior, the gallant General Castelnau, in command of
+      the Second Army of Lorraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For nearly a year following upon his appointment to Nancy, Foch labored
+      mightily to strengthen Nancy against the attack which was impending. He
+      seems never to have doubted that Germany would make her first aggression
+      there, only seventeen miles from her own border, and with Metz and
+      Strassburg to back the invading army.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But that there were other opinions, even at Nancy, I happen to know. For,
+      one day while the war was still new, I chanced in rooting in an old
+      bookstall in Paris, to find a book which was written by an officer of the
+      Twentieth Corps, in 1911.[1]
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The officer was, if I mistake not, of the artillery, and he wrote this
+      "forecast" to entertain the members of his mess or battery.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He predicted with amazing accuracy the successive events which happened
+      nearly three years later, only he "guessed" the order for mobilization in
+      France to fall on August 14, instead of August 1; and all his subsequent
+      dates were just about two weeks later than the actualities. But he
+      "foresaw" the invasion of Belgium, the resistance at Liége and Namur, the
+      fall of Brussels, the invasion of France by her northeastern portals.
+      Almost&mdash;at the time I read this book&mdash;it might have served as
+      history instead of prophecy. I would that I had it now! But I clearly
+      remember that it located the final battle of the war in Westphalia,
+      describing the location exactly. And that it said the Emperor would perish
+      in that downfall of his empire. And it cited two prophecies current in
+      Germany&mdash;the long-standing one to the effect that Germany's greatest
+      disaster would come to her under an Emperor with a withered arm, and one
+      made in Strassburg in 1870, declaring that the new empire would dissolve
+      under its third Emperor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The book was published in January, 1912, if I remember rightly, and was
+      almost immediately translated into German. And I was told that one hundred
+      thousand copies were sold in Germany in a very short time, and it was made
+      the subject of editorials in nearly every prominent German paper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Probably Foch read it. He may even have discussed it with the author. But
+      he held to the belief that when the attack came it would come through
+      Nancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was not, however, expecting it when it came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p class="noindent">
+      [1] The reason I cannot give his name, nor quote directly from his book,
+      is that a fellow-traveler borrowed the book from me and I have never seen
+      it since.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap12"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XII
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      ON THE EVE OF WAR
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      In the first days of July, 1914, divisional maneuvers were held as usual
+      in Lorraine. Castelnau and Foch reviewed the troops, known throughout the
+      army as "the division of iron."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A young captain, recently assigned from the School of War to a regiment of
+      Hussars forming part of the Twentieth army corps, wrote to his parents on
+      July 5 an account of the maneuvers in which he had just taken part. He
+      said that "the presence of these two eminent men gave a great interest" to
+      the events he described. And the impression made upon him by Foch is so
+      remarkable that his letter is likely to become one of the small classics
+      of the war&mdash;endlessly reproduced whenever the story of Foch is told.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "General Foch," he reminds his parents, "is a former commander of the
+      School of War, where he played, on account of his great fitness, a very
+      remarkable role.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is a man still young [he was almost 63!], slender and supple, and
+      rather frail; his powerful head seems like a flower too heavy for a stem
+      too slight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What first strikes one about him is his clear gaze, penetrating,
+      intellectual, but above all and in spite of his tremendous energy,
+      luminous. This light in his eyes spiritualizes a countenance which
+      otherwise would be brutal, with its big mustache bristling above a very
+      prominent, dominant jaw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "When he speaks, pointing lessons from the maneuver, he becomes animated
+      to the extent of impassionedness, but never expressing himself otherwise
+      than with simplicity and purity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His speech is sober, direct; he affirms principles, condemns faults,
+      appeals to our energies in a brief but comprehensive style.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He is a priest, who judges, condemns, and instructs in the name of the
+      faith which illumines him and to which he has consecrated all the powers
+      of his mind and his heart. General Foch is a prophet whom his God
+      transports."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The young officer who wrote thus to his parents was Captain André Dubarle;
+      and he later laid down his life for his country on the field of honor
+      commanded by General Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The letter seems to me as treasurable for what it conveys to us of the
+      sort of young man Foch found among his officers and soldiers (there were
+      many such!) as for what it tells us of the impression Foch created even in
+      those days before men's souls were set on fire with fervor for France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On July 18 General Foch asked and obtained a leave of absence for fifteen
+      days, so that he might join the family group gathered at his home near
+      Morlaix in Brittany. His two sons-in-law, Captain Fournier and Captain
+      Becourt, also obtained leave. The former was attached to the general army
+      staff at Paris, and was granted seventeen days. The latter was in command
+      of a company of the Twenty-sixth battalion of Foot Chasseurs at
+      Pont-à-Mousson. He was given twenty-five days' leave. The wives and
+      children of both were at Morlaix with Madame Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So little expectation of immediate war had France on July 18 that she
+      granted a fortnight's absence to the commander of those troops which were
+      expected to bear the first shock of German aggression when it came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But I happen to know of a French family reunion held at Nancy on July 14
+      and the days following, which was incomplete. One of the women of this
+      family was married to a German official at Metz whose job it was to be
+      caretaker for three thousand locomotives belonging to the imperial
+      government and kept at Metz for "emergencies." On July 12 (as it
+      afterwards transpired) he was ordered to have fires lighted and steam got
+      up in those three thousand engines, and to keep them, night and day, ready
+      for use at a moment's notice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Those smoking iron horses in Metz are a small sample of what was going on
+      all over Germany while France's frontier-defenders were being given
+      permission to visit Brittany.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But for that matter German war-preparations were going on much nearer to
+      Nancy than in Metz, while Foch was playing with his grandchildren at
+      Morlaix.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Beginning about July 21 and ending about the 25th, twelve thousand Germans
+      left Nancy for "points east," and six thousand others left the remainder
+      of French Lorraine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pretexts they gave were various&mdash;vacations, urgent business
+      matters, "cures" at German watering places. They all knew, when they left,
+      that Germany was mobilizing for attack upon France. They had known it for
+      some time before they left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Since the beginning of July they had been working in Nancy to aid the
+      German attack. They had visited the principal buildings, public and
+      private, and especially the highest ones, with plans for the installation
+      of wireless at the modest price of $34. "It is so interesting," they said,
+      "to get the exact time, every day, from the Eiffel Tower!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They had also some amazingly inexpensive contrivances for heating houses,
+      or regulating the heating already installed, or for home refrigeration&mdash;things
+      which took them into cellars in Nancy&mdash;and before they left to join
+      their regiments they were exceedingly busy demonstrating those things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were all gone when General Foch was recalled, on July 26.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On July 30 German under-officers crossed the frontier.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On August 3 Uhlans and infantrymen on motorcycles were shooting and
+      pillaging on the French side of the border, although it was not until 6:45
+      P.M. that day that Germany declared war on France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That which France had been unable to suppose even Germany capable of,
+      happened: The treaty with Belgium became a scrap of paper and the main
+      attack upon France was made by way of the north.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the expectation that Nancy would be one of the first objectives of the
+      Hun-rampant was not without fulfillment. For the hordes advanced in five
+      armies; and the fifth, the German left wing under Crown Prince Rupprecht
+      of Bavaria, was ordered to swarm into France south of that of the Imperial
+      Crown Prince, spread itself across country behind the French armies facing
+      northward, join with Von Kluck's right wing somewhere west of Paris, and
+      "bag" the French&mdash;armies, capital and all&mdash;"on or about"
+      September 1.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was all perfectly practicable&mdash;on paper. The only difficulty was
+      that there were so many things the German staff had omitted from its
+      careful calculations&mdash;omitted, perforce, because it had never guessed
+      their existence. And that spoiled their reckoning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch had, for years, been teaching that fighting demands supreme
+      flexibility, adaptability; that war is full of surprises which must be met
+      as they arise; that morale, the spiritual force of an army, is subject to
+      fluctuations caused by dozens of conditions which cannot be foreseen and
+      must be overcome. The phrase oftenest on his lips was: "What have we to do
+      here?" For, as he conceived warfare, officers and even privates must
+      constantly be asking themselves that. One plan goes awry. Very well! we'll
+      find a better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Foch had not trained the German general staff. They made war
+      otherwise. And well he knew it! Well he knew what happened to them when
+      their "blue prints" would not fit unexpected conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew that they expected to take Nancy easily, that they were looking
+      for some effort to defend it, but not for a French attack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They did not know his maxim: "The best means of defense is to attack."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He attacked. His Twentieth corps fought its way through the center of the
+      Bavarian army, into German Lorraine. Then something happened. Just what it
+      was is not clear&mdash;but doubtless will be some day. The offensive had
+      to be abandoned and the French troops had to withdraw from German soil to
+      defend their own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How bitter was the disappointment to Foch we may guess but shall never
+      know. But remaking plans in his genius.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "What have we to do here?" he asked himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, "in the twinkling of an eye," says one military historian, "General
+      Foch found the solution to the defense problem wherewith he was so
+      suddenly confronted when his offensive failed of support."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap13"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XIII
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      THE BATTLE OF LORRAINE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      What is known as the battle of Lorraine began at the declaration of war
+      and lasted till August 26&mdash;though the major part of it was fought in
+      the last six of those days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I shall not go into details about it here, except to recall that it was in
+      this fighting that General Castelnau lost his oldest son, stricken almost
+      at the father's side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A German military telegram intercepted on August 27 said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "On no account make known to our armies of the west [that is to say, the
+      right wing, in Belgium] the checks sustained by our armies of the east
+      [the left wing, in Lorraine]."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So much depended on those plans which Castelnau and Dubail and Foch&mdash;and
+      very particularly Foch!&mdash;had frustrated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joffre realized what had been achieved. And on August 27 he issued the
+      following "order of the day":
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The First and Second armies are at this moment giving an example of
+      tenacity and of courage which the commander-in-chief is happy to bring to
+      the knowledge of the troops under his orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "These two armies undertook a general offensive and met with brilliant
+      success, until they hurled themselves at a barrier fortified and defended
+      by very superior forces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "After a retreat in perfect order, the two armies resumed the offensive
+      and, combining their efforts, retook a great part of the territory they
+      had given up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The enemy bent before them and his recoil enabled us to establish
+      undeniably the very serious losses he had suffered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "These armies have fought for fourteen days without a moment's respite,
+      and with an unshakable confidence in victory as the reward of their
+      tenacity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The general-in-chief knows that the other armies will be moved to follow
+      the example of the First and Second armies."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, where were those other armies? And what were they doing?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      France had then eight armies in the field, and was soon to have a ninth&mdash;commanded
+      by General Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the First army, under General Dubail; the Second, under General
+      Castelnau; the Third, under General Sarrail; the Fourth, under General
+      Langle de Cary; the Fifth, under General Franchet d'Espérey; the Sixth,
+      under General Manoury; the Seventh and Eighth armies are not mentioned in
+      the Battle of the Marne, and I have not been able to find out where they
+      were in service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The First and Second armies, fighting in Lorraine, we know about. They
+      developed, in that battle, more than one great commander of whose
+      abilities Joffre hastened to avail himself. On the day he issued that
+      order commending the First and Second armies, the generalissimo called
+      Manoury from the Lorraine front, where he had shown conspicuous
+      leadership, and put him in command of the newly-created Sixth army, which
+      was to play the leading part in routing Von Kluck. And on the next day
+      (August 28) Joffre called Foch from Lorraine to head the new Ninth army,
+      which was to hold the center at the Battle of the Marne and deal the
+      smashing, decisive blow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In two days, while his troops were retreating before an apparently
+      irresistible force, Joffre created two new armies, put at the head of each
+      a man of magnificent leadership, and intrusted to those two armies and
+      their leaders the most vital positions in the great battle he was
+      planning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German soldiers facing Joffre were acting on general orders printed
+      for them eight years before, and under specific orders which had been
+      worked out by their high command with the particularity of machine
+      specifications. And all their presumptions were based on the French doing
+      what Teutons would do in the same circumstances. Their
+      extra-suspender-button efficiency and preparedness were pitted against the
+      flexible genius of a man who could assemble his two "shock" armies in two
+      days and put them under the command of men picked not from the top of his
+      list of available commanders, but practically from the bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Third, Fourth and Fifth armies of Joffre were those which had
+      sustained the terrific onslaught in the north and had been fighting in
+      retreat, practically since the beginning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On August 25 Joffre declared; "We have escaped envelopment"&mdash;thanks
+      largely to the action in Lorraine, holding back the Bavarians&mdash;and,
+      clearly seeing that he could not hope for favorable results from a great
+      battle fought in the north, he gave the order for retreat which meant the
+      abandonment of north-eastern France to the Hunnish hordes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What anguish that order caused him we shall never know. He realized to the
+      full what the people of that great, prosperous part of France would have
+      to suffer. He was aware what the loss of those resources would mean to the
+      French, and also what their gain would mean to the Germans. He understood
+      the effect of retreat upon the morale of his men. And he must have been
+      aware of the panic his order would create throughout the yet-uninvaded
+      parts of France where no one could know at what point the invasion would
+      be checked. He knew that the nation's faith in him would be severely
+      shaken, and that even his army's faith in him would be put to a supreme
+      test.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But when a man trains himself to be a commander of men, he trains himself
+      to go through, heroically and at any cost, what he believes must be done.
+      To sacrifice one's self comes comparatively easy&mdash;given compelling
+      circumstances and an obedient soul. But to sacrifice others never becomes
+      easy to a man who respects the rights of others. And we shall never begin
+      to comprehend men like Joffre and Foch until we shake ourselves free from
+      any notion we may have that military expediency makes it easy for them to
+      order great mental and physical suffering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Foch detached himself, on August 29, from his beloved Twentieth
+      corps and betook himself to the little village of Machault, about twenty
+      miles northeast of Châlons-sur-Marne, where he found assembled for his
+      command an army made up of units from other armies. They were all more or
+      less strange to one another and to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was the Ninth army corps, from Tours, made up of Angevins (men such
+      as Foch had learned to know when he was at Saumur) and Vendeans (the
+      Bretons' south neighbors). Some of these men had been fighting without
+      respite for nine days as they fell back, with the Fourth army, from the
+      Belgian border. With them, since August 22, had been the remarkable
+      Moroccan division under General Humbert.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then there was the Eleventh corps of Bretons and Vendeans, which had been
+      through the same terrible retreat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And&mdash;not to enumerate too far&mdash;there was that Forty-second
+      division of infantry which was destined to play one of the most dramatic,
+      thrilling, forever-memorable parts in all warfare. It had been in the
+      Ardennes, and had fallen back, fighting fiercely as it came.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To help him command these weary men whose hearts were heavy with
+      forebodings for France, Foch had, as he himself has said, "a general staff
+      of five or six officers, gathered in haste to start with, little or no
+      working material, our note books and a few maps."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Those who lived through these tragic hours near him," says René Puaux,
+      "recall the chief questioning the liaison officers who did not know
+      exactly where the different units were, punctuating his questions with:
+      'You don't know? Very well, then go and find out!'; putting together in
+      his head the mosaic of which there were still so many pieces missing;
+      gradually visioning a plan for bringing them together; calculating his
+      effectives; estimating approximately his reserves of ammunition;
+      discovering his bases of food supply."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And through all this stress he had the personal anguish of being unable to
+      get word of his only son, Germain Foch, or of his son-in-law, Captain
+      Becourt, both of whom had been fighting on the Belgian front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was not, however," M. Puaux says, "the time for personal emotions. The
+      father effaced himself before the soldier. There was nothing to be thought
+      of save the country."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus we see Ferdinand Foch, on the eve of the first Battle of the Marne.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap14"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XIV
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      THE FIRST VICTORY AT THE MARNE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was Saturday, August 29, 1914, when General Foch went to Machault to
+      take command of the various units he was to weld into the Ninth army.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Tuesday following (September 1) Joffre was quartered with his
+      general staff at the little old town of Bar-sur-Aube, fifty miles south of
+      Châlons, and he had then determined the limits to which he would permit
+      the retreat of his armies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If a stand could be taken and an offensive launched further north than the
+      Aube River, it should be done; but in no event would the withdrawal go
+      beyond the Seine, the Aube and the region north of Bar-le-Duc.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He then placed his armies in the field in the relation in which he deemed
+      they would be most effective: the First army, under General Dubail, was in
+      the Vosges, and the Second army, under General Castelnau, was round about
+      Nancy; the Third army, under General Sarrail, east and south of the
+      Argonne in a kind of "elbow," joining the Fourth army, under General de
+      Langle de Cary; then the Ninth army, under General Foch; then the Fifth
+      army, under General Franchet d'Espérey; then the little British army of
+      three corps, under General Sir John French; and then the new Sixth army,
+      under General Manoury.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So Foch, on the third day of organizing his new command, received orders&mdash;at
+      once terrible and immensely flattering&mdash;that he was to occupy the
+      center of Joffre's battle line and to sustain the onslaught of Von Buelow
+      and the famous Prussian Guards.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the morning of Saturday, September 5, all commanders received from
+      Joffre the now historic message:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The moment has come for the army to advance at all costs and allow itself
+      to be slain where it stands rather than give way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The men to whom this order was relayed by their commanders had,
+      five-sixths of them, been ceaselessly engaged, without one single day's
+      rest of any kind and much of the time without night rest either, for
+      fourteen days, fighting as they fell back, and falling back as they
+      fought; the skin was all worn from the soles of their feet, and what shoes
+      they had left were stuck to their feet with blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "They had marched under a torrid sky," says Louis Madelin, "on scorching
+      roads, parched and suffocated with dust. In reality they moved with their
+      hearts rather than with their legs. According to Pierre Lasserre's happy
+      expression, 'Our bodies had beaten a retreat, but not our hearts,'&nbsp;&#8230;
+      But when, worn out with fatigue, faces black with powder, blinded by the
+      chalk of Champagne, almost dying, they learned Joffre's order announcing
+      the offensive, then the faces of our troops from Paris to Verdun beamed
+      with joy. They fought with tired limbs, and yet no army ever showed such
+      strength, for their hearts were filled with faith and hope."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At daybreak on Sunday, the 6th, Foch pitched his headquarters in a modern
+      château near the little village of Pleurs, which you probably will not
+      find on any map except a military one, but it is some six miles southeast
+      of Sézanne. And the front assigned to Foch ran from Sézanne to the Camp de
+      Mailly, twenty-five miles east by a little south. The Marne was
+      twenty-five miles to north of him. Between him and its south bank were
+      many towns and villages; the clay pocket (ten miles long) called the
+      Marshes of St. Gond, but far from marshy in that parching heat; and north
+      of that the forest of Epernay. His vanguards were north of the marshes.
+      But as that Sunday wore on, the Prussian Guards drove Foch's Angevins and
+      Vendeans of the Ninth Corps back and occupied the marshes. The Bretons on
+      the east of Foch's line were obliged to dislodge, and the Moroccans and
+      Forty-second Division had to yield on Foch's left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus, at nightfall of the first day's fighting, Foch's new army had given
+      ground practically everywhere.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The next day the German attack became fiercer, and it seemed that more
+      ground must be yielded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That was the day when Foch made his memorable deduction: "They are trying
+      to throw us back with such fury I am sure that means things are going
+      badly for them elsewhere and they are seeking compensation."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was right! Von Kluck was retiring in a northeasterly direction under
+      Manoury's blows; and even Von Buelow (whom Foch faced) was withdrawing
+      parts of his troops from the line at Foch's left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the attempt to break through the center Foch held, waxed fiercer as
+      the Germans realized the strength opposing them on their right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And on Tuesday, the 8th, Foch was unable to hold&mdash;save at certain
+      points&mdash;and had to move his headquarters eleven miles south, to
+      Plancy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He had now reached the Aube, beyond which Joffre had decreed that he must
+      not retire. On its north bank his gallant army must, if it could not do
+      otherwise, "allow itself to be slain where it stands rather than give
+      way."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On that evening he sent Major Réquin to the Forty-second Division with
+      orders for the morrow. The most incredible orders!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The enemy had found his point of least resistance&mdash;on his right wing.
+      He ought to strengthen that wing, but he could not. All the reserves were
+      engaged&mdash;and the enemy knew it as well as he did. And it is a fixed
+      principle of war not to withdraw active troops from one part of the line
+      to strengthen another.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Only one part of his army had had any success that day: Toward evening the
+      Forty-second Division and the Moroccans had made an irresistible lunge
+      forward and driven the enemy to the north edge of the marshes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were weary&mdash;those splendid troops&mdash;but they were exalted;
+      they had advanced!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch believes in the power of the spirit. He appealed to the Forty-second
+      to do an extraordinary thing&mdash;to march, weary as it was, from left to
+      right of his long line and brace the weak spot. And to cover up the gap
+      their withdrawal would make he asked General Franchet d'Espérey to stretch
+      out the front covered by his right wing and adjoining Foch's left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a letter to me, Lieutenant-Colonel (then Major) Réquin gives some
+      graphic bits descriptive of that historic errand. He was a sort of liaison
+      officer between General Grossetti, commanding the Forty-second Division,
+      and the latter's chief, General Foch, his special duty being to carry
+      General Foch's orders to General Grossetti and to keep the army chief
+      informed, each evening, how his commands were being carried out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It was 10 P.M.," he writes, "when I roused General Grossetti from his
+      sleep in the straw, in the miserable little shell-riddled farm of Chapton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The order astonished him; but like a disciplined leader, he started to
+      execute it with all the energy of which this legendary soldier was
+      capable."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Forty-second came! While they were marching to the rescue the Prussian
+      Guard in a colossal effort smashed through Foch's right. They were wild
+      with joy. The French line was pierced. They at once began celebrating, at
+      La Fère-Champenoise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When this was announced to Foch he telegraphed to general headquarters:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "My center gives way, my right recedes; the situation is excellent. I
+      shall attack."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For this, we must remember, is the man who says: "A battle won is a battle
+      in which one is not able to believe one's self vanquished."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He gave the order to attack. Everything that he cared about in this world
+      was at stake. This desperate maneuver would save it all&mdash;or it would
+      not. He gave the order to attack&mdash;and then he went for a walk on the
+      outskirts of the little village of Plancy. His companion was one of his
+      staff officers, Lieutenant Ferasson of the artillery; and as they walked
+      they discussed metallurgy and economics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There could be nothing more typically French or more diametrically opposed
+      to the conceptions of French character which prevailed in other countries
+      before this war. And I hope that if Lieutenant Ferasson survives, he will
+      accurately designate (if he can) exactly where Foch walked on that
+      Wednesday afternoon, September 9, when, his center having given way, his
+      right wing receded, he pronounced the "situation excellent," gave the
+      order for attack, and went out to discuss metallurgy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Toward six o'clock on that evening the Germans, celebrating their certain
+      victory, saw themselves confronted by a "new" French army pouring into the
+      gap they had thought their road to Paris.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Forty-second Division (more than half dead of fatigue, but their eyes
+      blazing with such immensity and intensity of purpose it has been said the
+      Germans fled, as before spirits, when they saw these men) had not only
+      blocked the roundabout road to Paris; they had broken the morale of Von
+      Buelow's crack troops. Without this brilliant maneuver and superb
+      execution the successes of all the other armies must have gone for naught.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "To be victorious," said Napoleon, "it is necessary only to be stronger
+      than your enemy at a given point and at a given moment."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch's preferred way to take advantage of that given point and moment is
+      with reserves, which he called the reservoirs of force. "The art of war
+      consists in having them when the enemy has none."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But as there were no reserves available at that first Battle of the Marne,
+      he exemplified his other principle that conditions must be met as they
+      arise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I still seem," says René Puaux, "to hear General Foch telling us, one
+      evening after dinner at Cassel several months later, about that maneuver
+      of September 9.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "He had put matches on the tablecloth"&mdash;some red matches which
+      Colonel Réquin treasures as a souvenir&mdash;"and he illustrated with them
+      the disposition of the troops engaged. For the Forty-second Division he
+      had only half a match, which he moved here and there with his quick, deft
+      fingers as he talked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The match representing the Twelfth German Corps (which with the Prussian
+      Guard was cutting the gap in Foch's weak spot) was about to make a
+      half-turn which would bring it in the rear of the French armies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The general, laying down the half-match that was the Forty-second
+      Division, made an eloquent gesture with his hand, indicating the move that
+      the Forty-second made.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'It might succeed,' he said, laconically, 'or it might fail. It
+      succeeded. Those men were exhausted; they won, nevertheless.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At nine o'clock the next morning (September 10) the Forty-second entered
+      La Fère-Champenoise, where they found officers of the Prussian Guard
+      lying, dead drunk, on the floors in the cantonments, surrounded by
+      innumerable bottles of stolen champagne wherewith they had been
+      celebrating their victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two days later Foch was at Châlons, to direct in person the crossing of
+      the Marne by his army in pursuit of the fleeing enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The cavalry, the artillery, the unending lines of supply wagons," says
+      Colonel Réquin, "the infantry in two columns on either side of the road;
+      all this in close formation descending like a torrent to resume its place
+      of battle above the passage on the other side of the river; was an
+      unforgettable sight and one that gave all who witnessed it an impression
+      of the tremendous energy General Foch has for the command of enormous
+      material difficulties."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap15"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XV
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      SENT NORTH TO SAVE THE CHANNEL PORTS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Germany's plan to enter France by the east gate, in Lorraine, was
+      frustrated with the aid of Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her plan to smash through the center of the armies on the Marne was
+      frustrated, with the very special aid of Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Blocked in both these moves, there was just one other for Germany to make,
+      then, on the western front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And on September 14, Joffre, instead of celebrating the victory on the
+      Marne, was deep in plans to forestall an advance upon the Channel ports,
+      and began issuing orders for the transfer of his main fighting bodies to
+      the north.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All this, of course, had to be done so as to leave no vulnerable spot in
+      all that long battle line from Belfort to Calais.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joffre had clearly foreseen the length of that line. He predicted it, as
+      we have seen, in 1912. Doubtless he had foreseen also that it would be too
+      long a line to direct from one viewpoint, from one general headquarters.
+      What he was too wise to try to foresee before the war began was, which one
+      of France's trained fighting men he would call to his aid as his second in
+      command. He waited, and watched, before deciding that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And late in the afternoon of October 4 he telegraphed to General Foch at
+      Châlons, telling him that he was appointed first in command under the
+      generalissimo, and asking him to leave at once for the north, there to
+      coordinate the French, English and Belgian forces that were opposing the
+      German march to the sea.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Five weeks previously Foch had been called to the vicinity of Châlons to
+      assemble an army just coming into existence. Now he was called to leave
+      Châlons and that army he had come to know&mdash;that army of which he must
+      have been so very, very proud&mdash;and go far away to another task of
+      unknown factors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But in a few hours he had his affairs in order and was ready to leave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was ten o'clock that Sunday night when he got into his automobile to be
+      whirled from the Marne to the Somme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At four in the morning he was at Breteuil, where General Castelnau had the
+      headquarters of his new army, created on September 20 and designated to
+      service on Manoury's left. General Castelnau had not yet heard of the
+      generalissimo's new order. He was sound asleep when the big gray car came
+      to a stop at the door of his headquarters after its
+      one-hundred-and-fifty-mile dash through silent towns and dark,
+      war-invested country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Six weeks ago Foch had been his subordinate. Then they became equals in
+      command. Now the magnificent hero of Lorraine who, before the war, had
+      done so much on the Superior War Council to aid Joffre in reorganizing the
+      army, rose from his bed in the chill of a fall morning not yet dawned, to
+      greet his superior officer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Some black coffee was heated for them, and for two hours they discussed
+      the problems of this new front&mdash;Castelnau as eager to serve under
+      Foch, for France, as, eight weeks ago, Foch had been to serve under
+      Castelnau. If the sublime unselfishness of such men could have
+      communicated itself to some of the minor figures of this war, how much
+      more inspiring might be the stories of these civilian commanders!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At six o'clock Foch was under way again&mdash;to Amiens, Doullens, St.
+      Pol, and then, at nine, to Aubigny, where General Maud'huy had the
+      headquarters of his army, holding the line north of Castelnau's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The difficulties of Foch's new undertaking were not military alone, but
+      diplomatic. He had to take account of the English and Belgian armies, each
+      under independent command, and each small. It was the fitness of Foch for
+      the diplomacy needed here, as well as his fitness for the great military
+      task of barring the enemy from the Channel ports, that determined Joffre
+      in nominating him to the place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In 1912 General Foch had been the head of the French military commission
+      sent to witness the British army maneuvers at Cambridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He speaks no English; and not many British generals at that time spoke
+      much French. Yet he somehow managed to get on, with the aid of
+      interpreters, so that his relations with the British officers were not
+      only cordial, in a superficial social way, but important in their results
+      of deepened understanding on his part and of respect on theirs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His study of what seemed to him the military strength and weakness of
+      France's great neighbor and ally was minute and comprehensive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In his opinion, the soldiers of Britain were excellent; but he was fearful
+      that their commanders lacked seasoned skill to direct them effectively.
+      This lack he laid to that apparent inability to believe in the imminence
+      of war, which was even more prevalent in Britain, with her centuries of
+      inviolate security, than in France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Two years before the long-suspended sword fell, Foch foresaw clearly what
+      would be the difficulties in the way of England when she should gird
+      herself for land conflict. Doubtless he had resolved in his mind plans for
+      helping her to meet and to overcome them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now he was placed where he could render aid&mdash;where he <i>must</i>
+      render aid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After the Battle of the Marne Sir John French wanted his army moved up
+      north, nearer to its channel communications&mdash;that is to say, to its
+      source of supplies. And on October 1 Joffre began to facilitate this
+      movement. It was just well under way when Foch arrived in the north.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And on October 9 the gallant Belgian army withdrew from Antwerp and made
+      its way to the Yser under cover of French and British troops.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch soon saw that an allied offensive would not be possible then; that
+      the most they could hope to do was to hold back the invading forces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Until October 24 he remained at Doullens, twenty miles north of Amiens.
+      Then he removed his headquarters to the ancient town of Cassel, about
+      eighteen miles west and a little south of Ypres.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From there he was able to reach in a few hours' time any strategic part of
+      the north front and from this actual watch-tower (Cassel is on an isolated
+      hill more than 500 feet high, and commands views of portions of France,
+      Belgium, and even&mdash;on a clear day&mdash;of the chalky cliffs of
+      England; St. Omer, Dunkirk, Ypres, and Ostend are all visible from its
+      heights), he was to direct movements affecting the destinies of all three
+      nations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Belgians, whose sublime stand had thwarted Germany's murderous plan
+      against an unready world, were a sad little army when they reached the
+      Yser about mid October. It was not what they had endured that contributed
+      most to break their spirit; but what they had been unable to prevent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To those heroic men who had left their beautiful country to the
+      arch-fiends of destruction, their parents and wives and children to
+      savages who befoul the name of beasts; who no longer had any possessions,
+      nor munitions wherewith to make another stand on Belgian soil; to them
+      Foch took fresh inspiration with his calm and tremendous personality; to
+      them he sent his splendid Forty-second Division to swell their ranks so
+      frightfully depleted in Honor's cause; to them he gave the suggestion of
+      opening their sluices and drowning out of their last little corner of
+      Belgium the enemy they could not otherwise dislodge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This done, the next problem of Foch was to establish relations with Sir
+      John French whereby the most cordial and complete cooperation might be
+      insured between the British Field Marshal and the French commander of the
+      armies in the north.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are several graphic accounts of interviews which took place between
+      these generals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was on October 28 that Foch saw the success of the opened sluices and
+      the consequent salvation to the heroic Belgians of a corner of their own
+      earth whereon to maintain their sovereignty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 30th the English suffered severe reverses in spite of the aid lent
+      them by eight battalions of French soldiers and artillery reinforcements.
+      In consequence, they had had to cede considerable ground, their line was
+      pierced, and the flank of General Dubois' army, adjoining theirs, was
+      menaced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When word of this disaster reached Foch that night he at once set out from
+      Cassel for French's headquarters at Saint Omer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was 1 A.M. when he arrived. Marshal French was asleep. He was waked to
+      receive his visitor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Marshal," said Foch, "your line is cracked?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Yes."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Have you any resources?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I have none."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then I give you mine; the gap must be stopped at once; if we allow our
+      lines to be pierced at a single point we are lost, because of the masses
+      our enemy has to pour through it. I have eight battalions of the
+      Thirty-second Division that General Joffre has sent me. Take them and go
+      forward!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The offer was most gratefully received. At two o'clock the orders were
+      given; the gap was stopped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Nevertheless, the British despaired of their ability to hold. Marshal
+      French had no reserves, and decided to fall back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A liaison officer hastened to notify General Dubois that the British were
+      about to retire, and General Dubois betook himself in all speed to
+      Vlamertinghe, the Belgian headquarters, to notify their commanding
+      general. Foch happened to be with the Belgian general. And while these
+      three were conferring, the liaison officer (Jamet) saw the automobile of
+      Marshal French pass by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Realizing the importance of the British commander's presence at that
+      interview, Jamet ventured to stop him and suggest his attendance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch implored French to prevent retreat. French declared there was nothing
+      else for him to do&mdash;his men were exhausted, he had no reserves. Foch
+      pointed out to him the incalculable consequences of yielding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is necessary to hold in spite of everything!" he cried; "to hold until
+      death. What you propose would mean a catastrophe. Hold on! I'll help you."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And as he talked he wrote his suggestions on a piece of paper he found on
+      the table before him, and passed it to the British commander.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Marshal French read what was written, at once added to it, "execute the
+      order of General Foch," signed it, and gave it to one of his staff
+      officers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the Channel ports were saved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But a greater thing even than that was foreshadowed: Foch had begun to
+      demonstrate what was in him before which not only the men of his command
+      must bow but the generals of other nations also.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      One of the staff officers of General Foch who was closely associated with
+      him there in the north in that time of great anxiety, has given us a
+      pen-picture of the chief as his aides often saw him then. Doubtless it is
+      a good picture also, except for differences in trifling details, of the
+      great commander as he has been on many and many a night since, while the
+      destinies of millions hung in the balance of his decisions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "All is silence. The little town of Cassel is early asleep. On the rough
+      pavement of the Grande Place, occasional footsteps break the stillness.
+      Now they are those of a staff officer on his way to his billet. Now it is
+      the sentry moving about to warm himself up a bit. Then silence again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In a little office of the Hotel de Ville, a man is seated at a table. His
+      elbows are on a big military map. A telephone is at his hand. He waits&mdash;to
+      hear the results of orders he has given. And while he waits he chews an
+      unlighted cigar and divides his attention between the map and the clock&mdash;an
+      old Louis XVI timepiece with marble columns, which ticks off the minutes
+      almost soundlessly. How slowly its hands go round! How interminable seems
+      the wait for news!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Someone knocks, and Colonel Weygand, chief of staff, enters; he has a
+      paper in his hand: 'Telephoned from the Ninth army at 1.15 A.M.'&nbsp;&#8230;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The general has raised his head; his eyes are shining.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "'Good! good!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "His plans are working out successfully; the reinforcements he sent for
+      have arrived in time. There is nothing more he can do now; so he will go
+      to bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A last look at the map. Then his eye-glasses, at the end of their string,
+      are tucked away in the upper pocket of his coat. The general puts on his
+      black topcoat and his cap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "In the hall, the gendarme on guard duty gets up, quickly, from the chair
+      wherein he is dozing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The general salutes him with a brisk gesture, but with it he seems to
+      say: 'Sleep on, my good fellow; I'm sorry to have disturbed you.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "At the foot of the grand staircase, the sentry presents arms; and one of
+      the staff officers joins the commander, to accompany him to the house of
+      the notary who is extending him hospitality.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "A few hours later, very early in the morning, the general is back again
+      at his office."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Thus he was at Cassel, as he directed those operations on the Yser by
+      which he checked the German attempt to reach Calais and Dunkirk, and
+      revealed to the military world a new strategist of the first order.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By November 15 (six weeks after arriving in the north) Foch had the high
+      command of the German army as completely thwarted in its design as it had
+      been at the Marne. It had fallen to Foch to defeat the German plan on the
+      east (Lorraine), in the center (Marne) and on the west (Ypres). And the
+      consequences of this frustration that he dealt them in Flanders were
+      calculated to be "at least equal to the victory of the Marne." Colonel
+      Réquin calls that Battle of the Yser "like a preface to the great victory
+      of 1918."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the spring of 1915 Foch left Cassel and took up headquarters at
+      Frévent, between Amiens and Doullens, whence he directed those engagements
+      in Artois which demonstrated that though trench warfare was not the
+      warfare he had studied and prepared for, and nearly all its problems were
+      new, he was master of it not less than he would have been of a cavalry
+      warfare.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the autumn of 1915, Foch moved nearer to Amiens&mdash;to the village of
+      Dury in the immediate outskirts of the ancient capital of Picardy. For the
+      next chapter in his history was to be the campaign of the Somme including
+      the first great offensive of France in the war, which, together with the
+      Verdun defense, forced the Germans not only again to re-make their
+      calculations, but to withdraw to the Hindenburg line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On September 30, 1916 (just before his sixty-fifth birthday, on which his
+      retirement from active service was due), he was "retained without age
+      limit" in the first section of the general staff of the French army.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Honors were beginning to crowd upon him as the debt of France and of her
+      allies to his genius began to be realized. Responsibility vested in him
+      became heavier and heavier as he demonstrated his ability to bear it. But
+      always, say those who were nearest him, "a great, religious serenity
+      pervaded and illumined his soul."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a serenity not of physical calm. Foch is intensely nervous, almost
+      ceaselessly active. His body is frail, racked with suffering, worn down by
+      the enormous strains imposed upon it. But the self-mastery <i>within</i>
+      is always apparent; and it inspires confidence, and renewed effort, in all
+      who come in contact with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap16"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XVI
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      THE SUPREME COMMANDER OF THE ALLIED ARMIES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      After his position in the first section of the General Staff had been made
+      independent of age limits, General Foch was relieved (for the autumn and
+      winter at least, during which time no operations of importance were
+      expected) of active command of a group of armies; and at once began the
+      organization of a bureau devoted to the study of great military questions
+      affecting not the French lines alone but those of France's allies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="img-142"></a> <img src="images/img-142.jpg"
+      alt="General Pétain--Marshal Haig--General Foch--General Pershing"
+      width="345" height="491" />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      [Illustration: General Pétain--Marshal Haig--General Foch--General
+      Pershing]
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      At first the headquarters of this bureau were at Senlis, near Paris. Then
+      they were moved close to France's eastern border where Foch and his
+      associates studied ways and means of meeting a possible attack through
+      Switzerland&mdash;if Germany resolved to add that crime to her category&mdash;or
+      across northern Italy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So clearly had Foch foreseen what would happen in the Venetian plain, that
+      he had his plan of French reinforcement perfected long in advance, even to
+      the schedule for dispatching troop trains to the Piave front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In January, 1917, Marshal Joffre reached the age of retirement (65). He
+      was venerated and loved throughout France as few men have ever been.
+      Gratitude for his great gifts and great character filled every heart to
+      overflowing. His country had no honor great enough to express its sense of
+      his service to France. Yet it was felt that for the operations of the
+      future, the interests of France and of her allies would be best furthered
+      with another strategist in command of the armies in the field. Joffre's
+      retirement was therefore effected.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joffre is an engineer, a master-builder of fortifications, a great defense
+      soldier. But defense would not end the war. France must look to her
+      greatest offensive strategist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There could be no question who that strategist was. No one knew it quite
+      so well as Marshal Joffre. And one of the most splendid things about that
+      mighty and noble man is the spirit in which he concurred in (if, indeed,
+      he did not suggest) the change which meant that another should lead the
+      armies of France to victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The appointment of General Foch as head of the General Staff was made on
+      May 15, 1917, while Marshal Joffre was in the United States to confer with
+      our officials regarding our part in the war. On the same date General
+      Philippe Pétain, the heroic defender of Verdun, who had been Chief of
+      Staff for a month, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of all French armies
+      operating on the French front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      General Foch installed himself at the Invalides, and addressed himself to
+      the study of all the allies' fronts, the assembling American army, and to
+      another task for which he was signally fitted: that of coordinating the
+      plans and purposes of the Generalissimo and the government.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Wherever General Foch goes, one finds him creating harmony and, through
+      harmony, doubling everyone's strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He "gets on" with everybody, but not in the way that sort of thing is too
+      generally done&mdash;not by methods which have come to be called
+      diplomatic and which involve a great deal of surface affability, of wordy
+      beating about the bush and concealing one's real purposes from persons who
+      see his hand and wonder if they are bluffing him about theirs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch has no stomach for this sort of thing. His whole bent is toward
+      discovering the right thing to do and then making it so plain to others
+      that it is the right thing that they adopt it gladly and cooperate in it
+      with ardor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In council he is still the great teacher striving always not merely to
+      make his principles remembered, but to have them shared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The eminent French painter, Lucien Jonas, who has served in Artois, at
+      Verdun, on the Somme and in Italy, and has been appointed painter of the
+      Army Museum at Des Invalides, was commissioned to make a picture of
+      General Foch holding an allies' council of war at Versailles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was, of course, impossible for Jonas to be actually present at a
+      council meeting. But it was arranged that he should sit outside a glass
+      door through which he could see all, but hear nothing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "General Foch," he tells us, "held his auditors in a sort of fascination.
+      One felt that in his explanations there was not a flaw, not a hesitancy.
+      All seemed clear, plain, irresistible."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This power was his in great degree in the years before the war. But now
+      men who listen to him know that his perceptions are not merely logical&mdash;they
+      are workable. His performances prove the worth of his theories.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On March 21, 1918, Ludendorff launched his great offensive against the
+      British army. The line bent; it cracked. Amiens seemed doomed; the British
+      in France were threatened with severance from their allies&mdash;with
+      envelopment!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After four days of onrushing disaster a conference was called to meet at
+      Doullens&mdash;a conference of representatives of the allied governments.
+      Something must be done to coordinate the various "fronts," to put them
+      under a supreme command.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch was hastily empowered to order whatever he deemed advisable to
+      prevent the separation of the English and French armies. It is apparent
+      that the wide powers thus hurriedly given to him were bestowed with the
+      approval of every member of the conference. In October, 1918, however, in
+      responding to a note of greeting from Lloyd-George on the occasion of his
+      sixty-seventh birthday, Foch recognized the weight of the British Prime
+      Minister's influence at the conference:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I am greatly touched," he replied, "by your congratulations and thank you
+      sincerely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I do not forget that it was to your insistence that I owe the position
+      which I occupy to-day."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch's new responsibilities were laid upon him on March 26. By evening of
+      the 28th he had the situation so well in hand that he was able to hold in
+      check the German onslaught without even employing all the troops he had
+      brought up for that purpose. He had averted what threatened to be the
+      worst disaster of the war, and he had reserves in readiness against a new
+      and augmented attack. This in two days!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 30th an official announcement told all the world that the destinies
+      of the allied armies were by common consent confided to the general
+      direction of Ferdinand Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On that same day there was made public, by the French war authorities,
+      something which had taken place and had contributed in a degree we are not
+      yet able to state, to the investment of Foch with supreme power. This was
+      a visit made by General Pershing to Foch. In the presence of Foch, Pétain,
+      Clemenceau and Loucheur (Minister of Munitions) Pershing made the
+      following declaration:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I come to tell you that the American people would hold it a great honor
+      if our troops were engaged in the present battle. I ask you this in my
+      name and in theirs. At this moment there is nothing to be thought of but
+      combat. Infantry, artillery, aviation&mdash;all that we have is yours. Use
+      them as you will. There are more to come&mdash;as many more as shall be
+      needed. I am here solely to say to you that the American people will be
+      proud to be engaged in the greatest and most glorious battle in history."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="img-148"></a> <img src="images/img-148.jpg"
+      alt="General Foch--General Pershing" width="358" height="511" />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      [Illustration: General Foch--General Pershing]
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      On April 5, a week after his appointment to the supreme command was
+      announced, Foch granted an interview to a group of war correspondents.
+      Their various accounts differ very slightly. Instead of quoting any one I
+      will make a digest of them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They found the general installed in a provincial mansion, place not named.
+      The room he occupied was nearly bare; an old table, an armchair, a
+      telephone, a huge war map, no profusion of papers, no "air of importance."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch was writing in a notebook. He rose, when he had finished his entry
+      among those epoch-making memoranda, and received his visitors. He had but
+      a few minutes to give, yet he realized the importance of the occasion and
+      treated it accordingly. These men were to send to millions of people in
+      the great democracies of France, Britain and America their pen pictures of
+      the man just invested with the greatest military responsibility any man in
+      the world's history has ever borne. Battles must be fought, but also those
+      people had a right to such a sense of participation as only their press
+      could give them; it was their issue; their attitude toward it was the
+      foundation of their nation's morale. Foch has neither time nor taste for
+      talk about himself, but he is no war autocrat; he is, as he constantly
+      reiterates, a son of France, defending human liberties. He might not have
+      much time to give journalists, but it is not in him to minimize their
+      place in a world where the will of the majority prevails and the press
+      does much to shape that will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His manner on that occasion was calm, unhurried, but very direct, to the
+      point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Well, gentlemen," said he, "our affairs are not going badly; are they?
+      The boche has been halted since March 27. He has, doubtless, encountered
+      some obstacle. We have stopped him. Now we shall endeavor to do better. I
+      do not see that there is anything more to say.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "But as to yourselves, keep at your task. It is a time when everyone ought
+      to work steadfastly. Work with your pens. We will go on working with our
+      arms."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I regret," wrote Lieutenant d'Entraygues in the Paris <i>Temps</i>, "only
+      one thing: that all the people of France were not able to see and hear
+      this soldier as he spoke to us. They would know why it is not possible to
+      doubt our victory."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was probably about that time that Major Darnley Stuart-Stephens wrote
+      of Foch, for the <i>English Review</i>.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The man who has been consecrated by destiny to the saving from Moloch of
+      this globe's civilization, is he who will prove once more that in the
+      conflict between the finely tempered sword and the finely tempered brain,
+      it is the mental asset that will prevail."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Major Stuart-Stephens had studied the "mental assets" of Ferdinand Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Now and again at his lectures." he wrote, "I have noticed that far-away
+      look of the mystic in his eyes that I remember so well in those of that
+      other soldier-saint, Charles Gordon."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was that spiritual greatness in Foch which everyone felt, on which
+      everyone brought into contact with him based his unfaltering faith in the
+      outcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "We do not know," says an editorial writer in the New York <i>Evening Sun</i>,
+      "what the judgments of the military critics will be when they have
+      carefully studied and sifted the evidence, but to a layman it looks as if
+      Foch was not merely a very great general but one of the greatest generals
+      of all recorded history&nbsp;&#8230; as great a general as Napoleon or
+      Caesar or Hannibal or Alexander."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But whether they put him, as a military man, on a par with Napoleon, or
+      come sapiently to the conclusion that he was no more than a very able
+      general fortunate in being in command at the time the Germanic morale was
+      breaking, it will never be possible to disprove that he was a supreme
+      leader of men in a great war of ideals&mdash;an incarnation of all those
+      qualities of faith and fervor, of self-mastery and dependence on the
+      Divine, of self-realization and with it devotion to the rights and
+      progress of others, which are embodied in the Christian democracy for
+      whose preservation millions have gladly died.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap17"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XVII
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      BRINGING GERMANY TO ITS KNEES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Faith in the ability of Foch to lead us all to victory was, however, not
+      to endure without its grave tests.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German drive of March 21 was checked by his co-ordination of Allied
+      forces. But checking the enemy just before he reached the key of the
+      Channel ports was not defeating him; preventing him from driving a wedge
+      between the British and French armies was only diverting him to another
+      point of attack. He was desperate&mdash;that enemy! He knew that he must
+      win a decisive victory soon, or see his own maladies destroy him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He knew the genius of Foch; he knew the immense increase in strength that
+      the Allies had achieved in unifying their command. He may have
+      underestimated the worth in battle of our American fighters; but it is
+      scarcely probable that he underestimated the worth, behind the lines, of
+      our army of railroad builders, harbor constructors, supply handlers, and
+      the like. He knew that whether we could fight or not, we had money and men
+      and were pouring both into France to help win the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And he also knew that victory after victory which he had won had not only
+      failed to increase his might but had, somehow, weakened him; country after
+      country had fallen before his sword or before his poison-propaganda&mdash;or
+      both!&mdash;his plunder was vast, his accessions in fighting men available
+      for the Western front were formidable&mdash;yet something in his vitals
+      was wrong, terribly wrong; he must stop, soon, and look to his health, or
+      he would be too far-gone for recovery. But not now! not now! "They" must
+      be crushed now or never!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So he fought like a maddened beast whose usual cunning has given place to
+      frenzied desperation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again and again and again he lunged&mdash;now here, now there. And the
+      defenders of civilization fell back and back, before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Where was that calm, quiet man who had said: "Well, gentlemen, our affairs
+      are not going badly; are they?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The boche," he had said, "has been halted&nbsp;&#8230; now we shall
+      endeavor to do better."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What had happened? The boche was <i>not</i> halted! He was, in fact,
+      shelling Paris!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in those days that the "soldier-saint," as Major Stuart-Stephens
+      has called him, must have had need of all his faith and all his fortitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      We don't know much, yet, except of a very superficial sort, about those
+      days. We know what happened in them insofar as army movements are
+      concerned, and the heartbreaking re-occupation of towns and villages where
+      French and American restoration squads were working to make habitable
+      those places the Huns had laid waste; and the continued shelling of Paris
+      by the "mystery gun"; and the great exodus of civilians from the capital
+      as the ravaging hordes drew nearer and always nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These things we know; but not what Foch was thinking&mdash;except that he
+      was not thinking of defeat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If there was a true heart in France that ever for a moment doubted the
+      outcome of the war, or dreamed of abandoning the conflict before it had
+      made the future safe, I have never heard of that one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Certainly the man who was leading them never doubted. Nor was it on his
+      own skill that his faith was founded. He knew Who would give his cause the
+      victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the fifth German drive of 1918 the enemy crossed the Marne! Paris was
+      almost in sight&mdash;Paris! where millions of French were celebrating the
+      fall of the Bastille and the birth of freedom as if the leering, jeering
+      enemies of all freemen were not so close to the gates of the Capital that
+      the gleam of their tusks might almost have been seen from the city's
+      outermost ramparts. Certainly the drunken fools within&mdash;drunk with
+      their deep draughts of liberty&mdash;could hear the snarling and snapping
+      of the approaching wolves, the baying of Big Bertha, the barking of her
+      smaller sisters! But it would be like those crazy French to dance and sing
+      and celebrate the overthrow of autocracy, while an autocracy the like of
+      which no French King had ever exercised was on the eve of engulfing them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So the German General Staff said, sneering, as it laid its plans for the
+      final drive on Paris. They would start that drive on the night of July 14,
+      while the fools were celebrating, when they were least expecting an
+      attack. Probably most of them would be drunk. Oh, almost certainly! Their
+      resistance would be weak, And for all time thereafter it would make an
+      impressive tale for schoolbooks throughout the Pan-Germanized world, that
+      democracy was dispatched in her last orgy of exultation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As clearly as if he were not only present in the councils of German
+      Headquarters, but present inside the thick round skulls about the council
+      table, this boche attitude and intent was comprehended by the small frail
+      man at Mormant, where his Headquarters then were.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On that night of July 14 he began the great offensive which never stopped
+      until the whining boche was east of the Rhine!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His Intelligence Department told him that the German drive would probably
+      begin at ten minutes past midnight. They might be quite wrong, but that
+      was their guess. Foch was all-but sure they were not wrong; that it was
+      not in German nature to reason other than as I have described.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour before midnight the Germans were (doubtless) surprised by some
+      lively action of French artillery. Strange! But it couldn't mean anything,
+      of course! So the boche came on. The behavior of the French was not quite
+      what he had expected; one thing after another happened that was not in his
+      calculations. But that did not argue aught against the calculations! It
+      was the exasperating habit of the French to do unexpected things. Most
+      annoying! But not able to affect the outcome, of course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On July 18th they got "more unexpected still"&mdash;they and sundry
+      "green" troops from the flaccid, fatuous U. S. A.! Some "hounds of the
+      devil" were let loose upon the gray-clad armies of righteousness. It was
+      outrageous the way those sons of Satan fought! They rushed upon the
+      legions of the Lord's anointed as if killing Germans were the noblest work
+      a man could be about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So many things happened that were not down on paper&mdash;in the plans of
+      the German General Headquarters! It became distressingly evident that
+      these Yanks knew as little, and cared as little, what was expected of them
+      as the stupid Britishers or the mercurial French or the suicidal Belgians.
+      They didn't know how to fight&mdash;they couldn't know&mdash;they had
+      never done any fighting, and whom had they had to teach them warfare? They
+      were absurd. They didn't know the simplest rules of war&mdash;they didn't
+      know enough to surrender when they were surrounded, cut off, outnumbered.
+      They fought on! They didn't know how to fight; but Lord! how they could
+      kill Germans. And then they were such fools that their medical corps came
+      out onto the battlefield and when they found a German who wasn't dead but
+      was suffering, their doctors bound up his wounds and gave him water to
+      quench his raging thirst, and left him for his own comrades to carry away
+      and nurse&mdash;that, instead of gouging his eyes out with a bayonet's end
+      or bashing in his skull with the butt of a gun! Strange people! They never
+      could become good slaves of Kultur; so the wounded Germans whose agonies
+      they had assuaged, rose up on their elbows and shot them dead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In six hours the Allies, not only reinforced but recreated by this tide of
+      new life, new eagerness, re-took twice as much ground on the
+      Soissons-Rheims salient as the Germans had won in six days' desperate
+      advance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the word to fight came to the men of the American army, it was less
+      like a command to them than like a release, a long-desired permission.
+      Many, if not most, of them had for nearly four years been straining at the
+      leash which held them from the place where their sense of honor told them
+      they should be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="img-160"></a> <img src="images/img-160.jpg"
+      alt="Marshal Foch, Executive Head of the Allied Forces" width="356"
+      height="541" />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      [Illustration: Marshal Foch, Executive Head of the Allied Forces]
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      "They were superb," Marshal Foch has said, paying wholehearted tribute to
+      them. "There is no other word. Our armies were fatigued by years of
+      relentless struggle and the mantle of war lay heavily upon them. We were
+      magnificently comforted by the virility of the Americans. The youth of the
+      United States brought a renewal of the hope that hastened victory. Not
+      only was this moral factor of the highest importance, but also the
+      enormous material aid placed at our disposal. Nobody among us will ever
+      forget what America did."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Let us hope that neither will any among us ever forget for a single
+      instant how much was paid for us in blood and anguish by those who held
+      the beast at bay from us for long years before we put forth a stroke in
+      our own defense or in friendly help or in support of our ideals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That our aid arrived in time to help turn the tide, that our men were
+      magnificent when their opportunity was given them, is cause not for
+      vaunting ourselves, but only for gratefulness that our honor remains to us&mdash;that
+      we have not had to accept life and liberty at other men's hands while our
+      hands stayed in our pockets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Our fighting men redeemed us in our own eyes; they restored our souls'
+      dignity; for this we can never be grateful enough to them. But we can
+      never be braggart about it. It might so easily have come too late!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On August 6, Foch was made Marshal of France.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And two days later, the British, on the Somme, launched the first really
+      successful offensive of the war&mdash;not stopping a drive, but
+      inaugurating one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At last Foch was able to make war as he had for years contended that war
+      should be made: The way to make war is to attack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was his plan, now that he had the men to make this possible, to keep
+      the enemy busy by striking first at one point of the long line running
+      from Belgium to the Piave, and then at another. And by the first of
+      September the Allied line on the Western front was back where it ran in
+      the deadlock of 1915-16 while the attack on Verdun was raging.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "General Pershing," Foch has said, "wished to have his army concentrated,
+      as far as possible, in an American sector. The Argonne and the heights of
+      the Meuse were a sector hard to tackle. So I said to him: 'All right; your
+      men have the devil's own punch. They will get away with it. Go to it.'"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And they went! That was the famous St. Mihiel salient. The American
+      infantry started their advance there on September 26. They went forward
+      with a rush. On their left, the French advanced as rapidly, and on October
+      1 re-took St. Quentin, which the Germans had held since the beginning of
+      the war. October 2 the British, operating on the left of the French,
+      reached Cambrai which also had been in German hands for more than four
+      years.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      October 4 the Hohenzollern King of Bulgaria deserted his doomed allies and
+      his throne and began looking for a place of refuge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And on that day the Hohenzollern government at Berlin had so little relish
+      for the situation on all fronts, that it besought the President of the
+      United States "to take in hand the restoration of peace, acquaint all the
+      belligerent states with this request and invite them to send
+      plenipotentiaries for the purpose of opening negotiations.&#8230; With a
+      view to avoiding further bloodshed, the German Government requests the
+      immediate conclusion of an armistice on land and water and in air."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      October 10, Austria and Turkey joined Germany in appealing for peace
+      terms. Notes continued to pass between the Germanic capitals and
+      Washington, D. C.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Foch fought on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Americans had cleared the last corner of the Argonne of German
+      machine-gun nests and gunners, and were widening their offensive on the
+      Meuse. The French had taken Laon, and were pushing on. The British had
+      taken Lens and Cambrai and were advancing on Douai and Lille.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 23rd of October the President of the United States referred the
+      matter of the armistice to the Allies. On the 29th, the Allied War Council
+      met at Versailles to fix the armistice conditions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      (Foch meanwhile had launched an offensive against the Austrians on the
+      Piave.)
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Now, an armistice is supposed to be a cessation of hostilities for an
+      agreed period, all combatants to remain as they were; if the parley for
+      peace is not successful, the struggle is to resume where it paused,
+      neither side having gained or lost, except as delay may or may not have
+      been favorable to them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch had not the smallest intention of granting the hard-pushed enemy that
+      sort of an armistice&mdash;time to recuperate, to parley while Winter came
+      on and postponed the resumption of his offensive until Spring. To do that
+      meant to prolong the war probably another year, at enormous cost in lives,
+      suffering, materials.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      What he would grant would be an armistice in which the enemy, so far from
+      keeping his positions would abandon them all and retire far behind the
+      Rhine; in which the Allies, so far from keeping their positions, would
+      follow the retreating enemy into his own country, and police it; in which
+      the enemy, so far from resting on his sword, would hand it over&mdash;his
+      swords, and his cannon, and his machine-guns, and his fleet and his
+      submarines and his aircraft and his locomotives; in which he would release
+      all Allied prisoners and not ask the release of any of his captured men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The terms were the most ignominious ever imposed upon a prostrate enemy.
+      The sole reason for referring to them as "armistice terms" was that peace
+      terms are final and absolute, and these were not final&mdash;they would be
+      made much worse if the Germans failed to satisfy their conquerors on every
+      point.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the Allied War Council had agreed with Foch on the armistice terms,
+      he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Within ten days or a fortnight I can break the German army in three,
+      envelop a section of it, and take a million prisoners. Is there any
+      condition which, in the opinion of any of you, could be imposed upon the
+      enemy then, more conclusive than those of the armistice?"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      No one could think of anything that might add a jot to the completeness of
+      Germany's subjugation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "Then, gentlemen," answered the Commander-in-Chief, "we will proceed with
+      the armistice. When all is won that can be won for the safety and honor of
+      France and her Allies, I cannot for the sake of prestige or gratification
+      or personal glory, order action that would cost the life of any parents'
+      young son, any little child's father. I am a bereaved father. I think of
+      the fathers and mothers whom further fighting must bereave. The enveloping
+      advance which our armies could make in ten to fourteen days would cost us
+      thousands of lives, many maimed men. If those things must be to bring the
+      triumph of Right, we can bear them again as we have borne them these years
+      past. But not for any other reason!"
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The German high command," he said later, at Trèves, "was not ignorant of
+      the fact that it faced a colossal disaster. When it surrendered,
+      everything was prepared for an offensive in which it would infallibly have
+      succumbed. The Germans were lost. They capitulated. That is the whole
+      story."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The German plenipotentiaries arrived at the French front at nine o'clock
+      on the evening of November 7, and were escorted to the Château Francfort
+      to spend the night. The next morning they were taken to Rethondes in the
+      forest of Compiègne. There Foch (whose headquarters were at Semis,
+      twenty-two miles nearer Paris) awaited them in his special train.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      I may be quite wrong about his reason for receiving the German envoys in a
+      railway carriage. But my surmise about it is that he did not want any
+      fixed place associated with Germany's humiliation until those empowered to
+      act for the defunct empire of William I came to the Gallery of Mirrors at
+      Versailles and there, where the German empire had been proclaimed,
+      witnessed the formal degradation before the representatives of all
+      civilization of their nation that was built on the principle that Might is
+      Right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next to this in poetic justice would have been to summon those
+      plenipotentiaries before him at Senlis where their troops had committed
+      such insensate horrors in September, 1914. But for reasons of his own
+      (which we may be sure had nothing to do with courtesy) Foch went part way
+      to meet them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They complained, afterwards, that he received them coldly. If he was able
+      to keep his manner cold, it was only because his self-command is so great.
+      For no other man in the world knows so well as he the extent and the
+      enormity of the crimes those men and their masters and their minions are
+      guilty of. A primitive man, or any undisciplined modern man, would have
+      leaped at their throats. Instead, Foch treated them as if they were human
+      though not humane beings, and read to them slowly and in a loud voice, the
+      terms of the armistice for which they had asked.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mathias Erzberger, their spokesman, requested a cessation of hostilities
+      whilst a courier carried the terms to German General Headquarters at Spa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There the Kaiser, Hindenburg and others awaited particulars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch declined to cease hostilities. He knew his enemy too well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the Kaiser learned what the terms were, he abdicated his throne
+      and fled his country. When the courier had returned, and the German
+      plenipotentiaries once more presented themselves before Foch (again in his
+      car) the "War Lord" of all the world was cowering in a Holland hiding
+      place, his blubbering heir was in another, and a Social Republic had been
+      declared in Berlin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      How the Hohenzollerns knew the terms of the armistice full twenty-four
+      hours before the courier's return to German Headquarters at Spa, I have
+      not seen explained or heard any one conjecture.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From Rethondes to Spa is a matter of some two hundred and fifty miles, by
+      road, and nearly forty-eight hours were consumed by the courier in
+      covering that distance; he did not reach German Headquarters until ten
+      o'clock Sunday morning, November 10. But the Kaiser abdicated and the
+      Crown Prince renounced his claims to the throne, in Spa on Saturday
+      morning, and they were both out of the country when the courier was
+      received, his papers were read, and he was sent back with word to the
+      plenipotentiaries to get amelioration of some conditions, if possible, but
+      in any event to sign.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      If the press reports are not in error as to the time the courier arrived
+      at Spa, then the terms of the armistice must have been made known to the
+      Hohenzollerns by telegraph or other quick communication very early on
+      Saturday&mdash;probably as soon as the courier recrossed his own lines,
+      which he could have done not many hours after quitting Compiègne forest.
+      And Berlin seems to have known the terms at least as soon; for it was "the
+      receipt of an urgent telegram" from Berlin, which the Kaiser is reported
+      to have read with a shiver, that precipitated the abdication and flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      These details are significant, even in so brief a sketch of Foch's life as
+      this is; for in their very confusion and obscurity they tell a great story
+      of what was either realized or feared in the German camps and in the
+      German capital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The magnitude of that which Foch was ready (and was by his enemies known
+      to be ready) to do could not be better conveyed to us than by the panicky
+      haste of those who knew themselves doomed, to make any concessions but at
+      all costs to avert Foch's next move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Shortly after midnight on Sunday, the German delegation (which had by
+      Foch's orders been scrupulously served in the matter of their creature
+      comforts) again presented itself before him in his railway car. Four hours
+      were spent discussing the possibility of performing some of the conditions
+      exacted, and modifications were made which in no degree altered the
+      completeness of Germany's subjugation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the papers were signed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Germans were punctiliously escorted to their own lines. I have not
+      heard what Foch did; but it would not surprise me to learn that he went
+      back to bed, and to sleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perhaps, after giving orders for notifying his Government and her Allies,
+      he sent a message to Madame Foch. But I am quite sure that otherwise he
+      did not "celebrate," except that he gave God thanks for the victory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /> <a name="chap18"></a>
+    </p>
+    <h3>
+      XVIII
+    </h3>
+    <h3>
+      DURING THE ARMISTICE AND AFTER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      When the French army rode into Metz, Foch was not at its head. There may
+      or there may not be another man who could and would have foregone that
+      satisfaction; but certainly there are not many.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It does not seem probable that he avoided the occasion; although it would
+      be like him to take advantage of some good excuse for absence if he
+      thought there was one of his generals who specially deserved and desired
+      the honor of that triumphant entry into reclaimed Metz.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The attitude of Foch toward praise and plaudits and personal glory is, it
+      seems to me, one of the supremely great things about him. I cannot imagine
+      him "ducking" shyly away from any place where he knew he ought to for fear
+      of salvos of acclaim; it would be as unsoldierly to him to dodge cheers as
+      to flee from battle, if that way his duty lay. And, similarly, I cannot
+      imagine him going anywhere to gratify his personal feelings and collect
+      the praises due him, if there was an urgent reason for his being somewhere
+      else.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="img-174"></a> <img src="images/img-174.jpg"
+      alt="Ferdinand Foch.  Showing His Insignia as a Marshal of France, Consisting of Seven Stars on Each Sleeve and Four Rows of Oak Leaves on His Cap."
+      width="388" height="632" />
+    </p>
+    <h4>
+      [Illustration: Ferdinand Foch. Showing His Insignia as a Marshal of
+      France, Consisting of Seven Stars on Each Sleeve and Four Rows of Oak
+      Leaves on His Cap.]
+    </h4>
+    <p>
+      The business, military and executive, of seeing that the armistice terms
+      were fulfilled, was tremendous. Much of it devolved upon him and made
+      inconceivably great requisitions on that genius he has "for the command of
+      enormous material difficulties"&mdash;a genius he first displayed in
+      getting the Ninth Army across the Marne in pursuit of the fleeing Germans,
+      in September, 1914; and which he further evidenced in every succeeding
+      phase, beginning with the reconstitution of all the forces fighting on the
+      Yser.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The armistice period was a period of extreme demands on him. In it there
+      was scant opportunity to go here or there with his triumphant armies. His
+      work in the field, as a commanding general, had practically ceased with
+      his removal from the Ninth Army after little more than a month of such
+      command. From the time he took up his headquarters on the hill at Cassel,
+      he became "a desk man"; it was no longer his function to execute orders;
+      thenceforth he had the far more trying duty of issuing orders&mdash;a
+      truly awful responsibility and one which demands much solitude, much
+      soul-searching as well as map-pondering and other weighing of the
+      ponderable which is so easily off-set by the imponderable, the
+      unguessable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There are few situations possible in life in which a man could be set
+      apart with his soul and have so much demanded of his communings as was
+      demanded of Foch from October, 1914, on to October, 1918. Every decision
+      he made involved lives&mdash;hundreds and thousands or hundreds of
+      thousands of lives&mdash;and not one pang of what must be suffered for
+      each life laid down was strange to him; his only son was among the first
+      to die for France and human liberties; and one of his daughters was
+      widowed; the home he "left in the joyousness of a midsummer Sunday" was
+      desolate, and it stood forever to him as a symbol of the homes in France
+      and latterly, in the lands of all the Allies, with whose best-beloved he
+      made this or that move in the war to preserve civilization. Nor were the
+      lives he staked all that were involved; there were all that were
+      incidentally menaced if his strategy failed&mdash;all that must suffer
+      immediately and all that must suffer ultimately under the heel of the
+      brute if the brute were not destroyed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A man who has lived thus for more than four years, sharing the awfulness
+      of his burden only with Almighty God, must needs have passed to a
+      spiritual plane whereon such self-considerations as still sway the rest of
+      us have ceased to obtrude themselves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The quest of personal glory is as hard to associate with Ferdinand Foch as
+      with the little Maid of France. Both fought for God and for France and for
+      a Cause, as their Voices directed them; that he has one of the best brains
+      of modern or of all times, and that she did "not know her A, B, C," sets
+      them not so far apart as the materialist might imagine; for the thing that
+      made both invincible was the power of their faith to create an
+      unconquerable ardor in themselves and in their men. The churches in France
+      wherein Foch knelt seeking guidance, beseeching strength, are likely to be
+      doubly-consecrate, for ages, no less than those wherein Jeanne d'Arc
+      prayed. She is venerated not as a military leader (though she was that)
+      but as the one who awakened the soul of mediaeval, much-partitioned France
+      and made possible the nationalization of her country. He will be venerated
+      (by the great majority) not as "the first stategist of Europe," but as the
+      supreme incarnation of that spirit which makes modern France transcendent
+      among nations vowed to democracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is Foch's "likeness" to the myriad soldiers of France that France
+      adores&mdash;not his difference from the rest. Her poilu is her beau ideal
+      of faith and courage, of patriotism and devotion to the principles of
+      human rights, of cheerfulness and hopefulness, of invincibility in that
+      his cause is just. France is too essentially democratic to esteem one set
+      of characteristics in the mass of men and another set in the leaders of
+      men. Foch and Joffre will live always in the hearts of their countrymen
+      because, like Jeanne d'Arc, they have so much to say to everyone&mdash;so
+      much that illumines every path in life wherever it is laid.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the 19th of December, 1918, Joffre took his seat among the Immortals of
+      the French Academy. The vacancy to which he had been elected was that made
+      by the death of Jules Claretie who, before his admission to the Academy
+      and before his absorption in the affairs of La Comédie Française, had
+      written several books about the leaders of the French Revolution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Ernest Renan who delivered the address of welcome to Claretie (in
+      February, 1889) and he said that it was still too soon to know whether
+      those leaders of whom Claretie had written were supremely justified or
+      were not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are young," Renan said to the new Immortal, "and you will see this
+      question solved,&nbsp;&#8230; some years hence it will be known; if in ten
+      or twenty years France is prosperous and free, faithful to right, strong
+      in the friendship of the free peoples of the world, then the cause of the
+      young Revolutionists is won; the world will enjoy the fruits of their
+      endeavor without having had to know their unripe bitterness."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Joffre quoted this part of Renan's address, in taking his seat. Claretie
+      had not lived quite long enough to see, save with the eye of faith, that
+      day Renan foretold; but Claretie's successor in the French Academy had
+      seen it! And it was like him to say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I think, gentlemen, that in doing me the honor of receiving me into your
+      august body, your desire is to pay homage to that glorious French army
+      which has proved that the soul of France is steadfast for the rights of
+      man, even unto death that men may be free."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Accepting the honor as paid through him to the men who had proved the
+      worth of that Liberty, Equality and Fraternity the Revolution declared and
+      decreed, Joffre asked permission to name those to whom, he deemed, the
+      gratitude of France and of France's Immortals was due. And first among
+      them he named Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This was gracious; it was generous; but it was more than that. And though
+      Joffre went on to name many leaders, many armies, many moral forces
+      incarnate in many men as co-responsible for victory, no one could know
+      quite so well as he how completely the France of which Renan dreamed as a
+      glorious possibility, is realized and typified in the man whose name leads
+      all the rest as having saved not France only but the liberties of mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Bonaparte, although he was not French (save technically) and not a
+      democrat, captured the hearts of France in spite of all he cost them;
+      because he aggrandized France, made her supreme in many things besides
+      extent and power. It is instinctive in every Frenchman (or woman, or
+      child!) to revere anyone who does new credit to the name of France or
+      brings new glory to it; for the passionate love of country is the primary
+      religion of the French&mdash;they may or may not have another, but unless
+      they are totally renegade they have that faith, that devotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In Ferdinand Foch they have a great leader who is in no sense an
+      "accident" (as Bonaparte was), a sporadic development in their midst, a
+      spectacular growth on an exotic stem. They have, rather, a quintessential
+      Frenchman of to-day, even more widely representative of his countrymen
+      than Lincoln was of ours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The fame of one man," says Henri Bordeaux, "is nothing unless its
+      represents the obscure deeds of the anonymous multitude."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This is a typically modern idea, and typically French. France of to-day
+      would not deny the worth of any development because it was singular,
+      isolate; but what she is particularly interested in is the possibilities
+      of development along the lines that are followed by the many and are open
+      (broadly speaking) to all. Guynemer, for a shining instance, is the idol
+      of every schoolchild in France, not for his daring alone, nor for the
+      number of boche birds of prey he brought down; but because wealth and
+      influence were unavailing to get him an opportunity beyond what the
+      poorest, humblest youngster might have got in the same indomitable way;
+      and because frail health and puny strength could not debar him from the
+      sublimest exploits of daring for France. His circumstance&mdash;physical
+      and material&mdash;tended to bind him to the soft places of earth. His
+      desire to serve France gave him wings to fly far beyond the eagles. He has
+      no grave. He rides the empyrean for all time, to tell the youth of France
+      how surmountable is everything to one who loves his country and the rights
+      of mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch is of less legendary sort, but he, too, epitomizes France; and he
+      will be increasingly potent as time goes on, irrespective of whether the
+      sword is or is not superseded in the affairs of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "The obscure deeds of the anonymous multitude" are much like his own
+      obscure deeds prior to the great day when France needed him and found him
+      ready.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every black-smocked schoolboy in France loitering along historic highways
+      to his gray-stuccoed school, may feel in himself a Foch of to-morrow&mdash;and
+      quicken his steps so that he may make himself a little more ready for his
+      recitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every youth entering upon his military training must find in Foch a
+      comrade whose influence is all toward thoroughness, "Learn to think," was
+      Foch's personal admonition for long years before he thus charged his
+      students.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every teacher toiling to impart not knowledge alone but the thirst for
+      knowledge, the zeal to use it nobly, has in Foch such a fellow as the
+      annals of that great profession do not duplicate. Other teachers may have
+      influenced more pupils; but no human teacher ever saw such a demonstration
+      of his principles&mdash;to the saving of mankind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every good father in France may see himself in Foch&mdash;and especially
+      every father who gave his son for France and her ideals.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Every man whose work in life calls him to lead other men, in peace or in
+      war, has supreme need of Foch; because Foch embodies those principles of
+      leadership to which men are now responsive, those ideals toward which they
+      are striving. Particularly as a coordinator is Foch great&mdash;and potent
+      for the future. There is, probably, no other kind of service so important
+      to the world's welfare, now, as that of bringing men together; making them
+      see that fundamentally they are all, if they are right-minded, fighting
+      for the same thing; and that in union there is strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As a scholar, Foch is brilliant besides being profound. As a man, he is
+      simple&mdash;and France admires simplicity; he is elegant&mdash;and France
+      loves the elegance that is the expression of fine thinking, fine feeling;
+      he is modest of his own attainments, and proud of France's glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For nearly every great commander, victory in arms has led to power in the
+      state.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch is a statesman as preëminently as he is a warrior. His counsel was as
+      weighty in the peace settlement as his strategy was in winning the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But one cannot conceive him using his prestige, military or diplomatic, to
+      increase his personal power.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He has served God and man; he has served his country and his conviction of
+      right. He is content therewith&mdash;just as he hopes millions of men are
+      content who have done the same according to their best ability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "I approach the twilight of my life," he wrote not long ago, "with the
+      consciousness of a good servant who will rest in the peace of his Lord.
+      Faith in eternal life, in a good and merciful God, has sustained me in the
+      hardest hours. Prayer has illumined my soul."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In presenting to Foch the baton of a Marshal of France, President Poincaré
+      recalled certain definitions he had often heard Foch reiterate: "War is
+      the department of moral force; battle, the struggle between two wills;
+      victory, the moral superiority of the conqueror, the moral depression of
+      the conquered."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "This moral superiority," said the President of the French Republic to the
+      new Marshal of France, "you have tended like a sacred flame."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Always, the tone of tribute to Foch is one of veneration for the greatness
+      of his soul and his preëminent ability to represent and to lead his
+      people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "You are not," President Poincaré went on, "of those who let themselves be
+      downcast by danger; neither are you of those whom victory dazzles. You do
+      not believe that we are near the end of our efforts and our sacrifices.
+      You guard against optimism as much as against depression."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      This he said to Foch, in the field, on August 23, 1918, when the fruits of
+      victory though in sight were not yet within grasp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Had the presentation been three months later, President Poincaré would (I
+      think) have spoken not differently; better even than before, he would have
+      known that Foch is not "of those whom victory dazzles"; and not less
+      clearly than before would he have perceived that Foch does not "believe
+      that we are near the end of our efforts and our sacrifices."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Foch may well feel that he has done his utmost for his country and for
+      mankind, in the crisis for which he prepared himself and which he met with
+      such superb faith in the triumph of Right; but he certainly does not feel
+      that he has ushered in the millennium; he knows what other demands there
+      are and will be upon the souls of men, on their devotion to their country,
+      their perception of truth and honor, and their ardor and ability to serve
+      humanity. He knows that not France alone but every nation has need to-day
+      and henceforth of leaders who will do just what he did: personify the
+      highest ideals of their people and prepare themselves to defend those
+      ideals intelligently, unselfishly, devoutly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He has established a new standard in leadership. Far from culminating an
+      old order, he has inaugurated a new&mdash;an order which everyone may join
+      who wills to serve. Its motto is: "Right is Might; believe in the power of
+      Right; learn to uphold it; strengthen others, as they come in contact with
+      you, to meet the enemies of Right and to vanquish them; never forget that
+      the moving power of the world is <i>soul</i>, and the laws of the soul
+      were made by God."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Too deep a student of history, too keen an analyst of human nature to
+      entertain any illusions about the enemy he has conquered but not
+      converted, Foch knows that if what he has been privileged to do for France
+      and for her allies is to have any lasting value, there must be a league of
+      freedom-loving peoples as strong and as united to preserve peace as they
+      were to win it; and that this league must be supported by a general morale
+      not one whit less devoted to the end in view than was the morale which won
+      the war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Too wise to feel that the victory is his save as he was the leader who
+      re-organized millions and showed them how to make their conviction of
+      Right prevail, he is also too wise to wish that his were the power to
+      create the world anew. He knows that not only will the to-morrows of
+      mankind be as the multitudes of mankind make them, but that they should be
+      not otherwise directed; this, of all things, is what the overthrow of
+      autocracy means.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He helped us to shake off the Beast who sought to impose his will on all
+      the world. Briefly, at least, that Menace is restrained&mdash;thanks to
+      the indomitable will of many nations and to the genius of Ferdinand Foch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is for us&mdash;every one of us!&mdash;to say what shall come out of
+      the security that Foch and his armies have maintained for us at so great a
+      price; how long we shall maintain it and how honorably we shall use it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And to us, with this sacred obligation on us, Foch would say:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      "It is not enough to mean well, to desire that righteousness shall
+      prevail; it is not enough even to be willing to give all, should it be
+      required of you. You must <i>know how</i> to serve your ideals, your
+      principles. Victory always goes to those who deserve it by possessing the
+      greatest power of will and intelligence."
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </p>
+    <hr class="full" />
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+      ***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOCH THE MAN***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Foch the Man, by Clara E. Laughlin
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Foch the Man
+       A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies
+
+
+Author: Clara E. Laughlin
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 14, 2006  [eBook #17511]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOCH THE MAN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Al Haines
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 17511-h.htm or 17511-h.zip:
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/5/1/17511/17511-h/17511-h.htm)
+      or
+      (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/5/1/17511/17511-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+FOCH THE MAN
+
+A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies
+
+by
+
+CLARA E. LAUGHLIN
+
+With Appreciation by Lieut.-Col. Edouard Requin
+of the French High Commission to the United States
+
+With Illustrations
+
+Revised and Enlarged Edition
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Frontispiece: Marshal Foch at the Peace Conference.]
+
+
+
+
+
+New York -------- Chicago
+Fleming H. Revell Company
+London and Edinburgh
+Copyright, 1918, 1919, by
+Fleming H. Revell Company
+First Printing - November 11, 1918
+Second Printing - November 19, 1918
+Third Printing - November 29, 1918
+Fourth Printing - December 7, 1918
+Fifth Printing - January 9, 1919
+Sixth Printing - May 1, 1919
+
+
+
+
+  DEDICATION
+
+  TO THE MEN WHO HAVE FOUGHT UNDER GENERAL
+  FOCH'S COMMAND.  TO ALL Of THEM, IN ALL
+  GRATITUDE.  BUT IN AN ESPECIAL WAY TO THE MEN
+  OF THE 42D DIVISION, THE SPLENDOR OF
+  WHOSE CONDUCT ON SEPTEMBER 9, 1914,
+  NO PEN WILL EVER BE ABLE
+  ADEQUATELY TO COMMEMORATE.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Hand-written letter from Foch.]
+
+[Illustration: Page 1 of hand-written letter from Lt.-Colonel E. Requin
+to Clara Laughlin.]
+
+[Illustration: Page 2 of hand-written letter from Lt.-Colonel E. Requin
+to Clara Laughlin.]
+
+
+[Transcriber's note: The letter in the second and third illustrations
+is shown translated on the following page.]
+
+
+Dear MADEMOISELLE LAUGHLIN:
+
+I have read with the keenest interest your sketch of the life of
+Marshal Foch.  It is not yet history: we are too close to events to
+write it now, but it is the story of a great leader of men on which I
+felicitate you because of your real understanding of his character.
+
+Christian, Frenchman, soldier, Foch will be held up as an example for
+future generations as much for his high moral standard as for his
+military genius.
+
+It seems that in writing about him the style rises with the noble
+sentiments which inspire him.
+
+Thus in form of presentation as well as in substance you convey
+admirably the great lesson which applies to each one of us from the
+life of Marshal Foch.
+
+Please accept, Mademoiselle, this expression of my respectful regards.
+
+LT.-COLONEL E. REQUIN.
+
+
+
+
+  "THEY SHALL NOT PASS!"
+
+  Three Spirits stood on the mountain peak
+    And gazed on a world of red,--
+  Red with the blood of heroes,
+    The living and the dead;
+  A mighty force of Evil strove
+    With freemen, mass on mass.
+  Three Spirits stood on the mountain peak
+    And cried: "They shall not pass!"
+
+  The Spirits of Love and Sacrifice,
+    The Spirit of Freedom, too,--
+  They called to the men they had dwelt among
+    Of the Old World and the New!
+  And the men came forth at the trumpet call,
+    Yea, every creed and class;
+  And they stood with the Spirits who called to them,
+    And cried: "They shall not pass!"
+
+  Far down the road of the Future Day
+    I see the world of Tomorrow;
+  Men and women at work and play,
+    In the midst of their joy and sorrow.
+  And every night by the red firelight,
+    When the children gather 'round
+  They tell the tale of the men of old.
+  These noble ancestors, grim and bold,
+    Who bravely held their ground.
+  In thrilling accents they often speak
+  Of the Spirits Three on the mountain peak.
+
+        O Freedom, Love and Sacrifice
+          You claimed our men, alas!
+        Yet everlasting peace is theirs
+          Who cried, "They shall not pass!"
+
+  ARTHUR A. PENN.
+
+
+_Reprinted by permission of M. Witmark & Sons, N. Y._
+
+_Publishers of the musical setting to this poem._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+I. WHERE HE WAS BORN
+
+Stirring traditions and historic scenes which surrounded him in
+childhood.
+
+
+II. BOYHOOD SURROUNDINGS
+
+The horsemarkets at Tarbes.  The school.  Foch at twelve a student of
+Napoleon.
+
+
+III. A YOUNG SOLDIER OF A LOST CAUSE
+
+What Foch suffered in the defeat of France by the Prussians.
+
+
+IV. PARIS AFTER THE GERMANS LEFT
+
+Foch begins his military studies, determined to be ready when France
+should again need defense.
+
+
+V. LEARNING TO BE A ROUGH RIDER
+
+Begins to specialize in cavalry training.  The school at Saumur.
+
+
+VI. FIRST YEARS IN BRITTANY
+
+Seven years at Rennes as artillery captain and always student of war.
+Called to Paris for further training.
+
+
+VII. JOFFRE AND FOCH
+
+Parallels in their careers since their school days together.
+
+
+VIII. THE SUPERIOR SCHOOL OF WAR
+
+Where Foch's great work as teacher prepared hundreds of officers for
+the superb parts they have played in this war.
+
+
+IX. THE GREAT TEACHER
+
+Some of the principles Foch taught.  Why he is not only the greatest
+strategist and tactician of all time, but the ideal leader and
+coordinator of democracy.
+
+
+X. A COLONEL AT FIFTY
+
+Clemenceau's part in giving Foch his opportunity.
+
+
+XI. FORTIFYING FRANCE
+
+How the Superior War Council prepared for the inevitable invasion of
+France.  Foch put in command at Nancy.
+
+
+XII. ON THE EVE OF WAR
+
+True to his belief that "the way to make war is to attack" Foch
+promptly invaded Germany, but was obliged to retire and defend his own
+soil.
+
+
+XIII. THE BATTLE OF LORRAINE
+
+How the brilliant generalship there thwarted the German plan; and how
+Joffre recognized it in reorganizing his army.
+
+
+XIV. THE FIRST VICTORY AT THE MARNE
+
+"The Miracle of the Marne" was Foch.  How he turned defeat to victory.
+
+
+XV. SENT NORTH TO SAVE CHANNEL PORTS
+
+Foch's skill and diplomacy in that crisis show him a great coordinator.
+
+
+XVI. THE SUPREME COMMANDER
+
+How Foch stopped the German drive that nearly separated the French and
+English armies.
+
+
+XVII. BRINGING GERMANY TO ITS KNEES
+
+The completest humiliation ever inflicted on a proud nation.
+
+
+XVIII. DURING THE ARMISTICE--AND AFTER
+
+How Foch carries himself as victor.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+Marshal Foch at the Peace Conference . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
+
+The room in which Ferdinand Foch was born
+
+The house in Tarbes where Foch was born
+
+Ferdinand Foch as a schoolboy of twelve
+
+The school in Tarbes
+
+Marshall Joffre--General Foch
+
+General Petain--Marshal Haig--General Foch--General Pershing
+
+General Foch--General Pershing
+
+Marshal Foch, Executive head of the allied forces
+
+Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of France
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD TO REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION
+
+When the Great War broke out, one military name "led all the rest" in
+world-prominence: Kitchener.  Millions of us were confident that the
+hero of Kartoum would save the world.  It was not so decreed.  Almost
+immediately another name flashed into the ken of every one, until even
+lisping children said _Joffre_ with reverence second only to that
+wherewith they named Omnipotence.  Then the weary years dragged on, and
+so many men were incredibly brave and good that it seemed hard for
+anyone to become pre-eminent.  We began to say that in a war so vast,
+so far-flung, no one man _could_ dominate the scene.
+
+But, after nearly four years of conflict, a name we had heard and seen
+from the first, among many others, began to differentiate itself from
+the rest; and presently the whole wide world was ringing with it: Foch!
+
+He was commanding all the armies of civilization.  Who was he?
+
+Hardly anyone knew.
+
+Up to the very moment when he had compassed the most momentous victory
+in the history of mankind, little was known about him, outside of
+France, beyond the fact that he had been a professor in the Superior
+School of War.
+
+Now and then, as the achievements of his generalship rocked the world,
+someone essayed an account of him.  They said he was a Lorrainer, born
+at Metz; they said his birthday was August 4; they said he was too
+young to serve in the Franco-Prussian war; and they said a great many
+other things of which few happened to be true.
+
+Then, as the summer of 1918 waned, there came to me from France, from
+Intelligence officers of General Foch's staff, authoritative
+information about him.
+
+And also there came those, representing France and her interests in
+this country, who said:
+
+"Won't you put the facts about Foch before your people?"
+
+If I could have fought for France with a sword (or gun) I should have
+been at her service from the first of August, 1914, when I heard her
+tocsin ring, saw her sons march away to fight and die on battlefields
+as familiar to me as my home neighborhood.
+
+Not being permitted that, I have yielded her such service as I could
+with my pen.
+
+And when asked to write, for my countrymen, about General Foch, I felt
+honored in a supreme degree.
+
+In due course we shall have many volumes about him: his life, his
+teachings, his writings, his great deeds will be studied in minutest
+details as long as that civilization endures which he did so much to
+preserve to mankind.
+
+But just now, while all hearts are overflowing with gratefulness to
+him, it may be--I cannot help thinking--as valuable to us to know a
+little about him as it will be for us to know a great deal about him
+later on.
+
+My sources of information are mainly French; and notable among them is
+a work recently published in Paris: "Foch, His Life, His Principles,
+His Work, as a Basis for Faith in Victory," by Rene Puaux, a French
+soldier-author who has served under the supreme commander in a capacity
+which enabled him to study the man as well as the General.
+
+French, English and some few American periodicals have given me bits of
+impression and some information.  French military and other writers
+have also helped.  And noted war correspondents have contributed
+graphic fragments.  The happy fortune which permitted me to know
+France, her history and her people, enabled me to "read into" these
+brief accounts much which does not appear to the reader without that
+acquaintance.  And distinguished Frenchmen, scholars and soldiers,
+including several members of the French High Commission to the United
+States, have helped me greatly; most of them have not only close
+acquaintance with General Foch, having served as staff officers under
+him, but are eminent writers as well, with the highest powers of
+analysis and of expression.
+
+Lieutenant-Colonel Edouard Requin of the French General Staff, who was
+at General Foch's side from the day Foch was made commander of an army,
+has been especially kind to me in this undertaking; I am indebted to
+him, not only for many anecdotes and suggestions, but also for his
+patience in reading my manuscript for verification (or correction) of
+its details and its essential truthfulness.
+
+And I want especially to record my gratefulness to M. Antonin
+Barthelemy, French Consul at Chicago, the extent and quality of whose
+helpfulness, not alone on this but on many occasions, I shall never be
+able to describe.  Through him the Spirit of France has been potent in
+our community.
+
+Thus aided and encouraged, I have done what I could to set before my
+countrymen a sketch of the great, dominant figure of the World War.
+
+The thing about Foch that most impresses us as we come to know him is
+not primarily his greatness as a military genius, but his greatness as
+a spiritual force.
+
+Those identical qualities in him which saved the world in war, will
+serve it no less in peace--if we study them to good purpose.
+
+As a leader of men, his principles need little, if any, adaptation to
+meet the requirements of the re-born world from which, we hope, he has
+banished the sword.
+
+Not to those only who would or who must captain their fellows, but to
+every individual soul fighting alone against weakness and despair and
+other foes, his life-story brings a rising tide of new courage, new
+strength, new faith.
+
+For the young man or woman struggling with the principles of success;
+for the man or woman of middle life, fearful that the time for great
+service has gone by; to the preacher and the teacher and other moulders
+of ideals--to these, and to many more, he speaks at least as
+thrillingly as to the soldier.
+
+This is what I have tried to make clear in my simple sketch here
+offered.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+WHERE HE WAS BORN
+
+Ferdinand Foch was born at Tarbes on October 2, 1851.
+
+His father, of good old Pyrenean stock and modest fortune, was a
+provincial official whose office corresponded to that of secretary of
+state for one of our commonwealths.  So the family lived in Tarbes, the
+capital of the department called the Upper Pyrenees.
+
+The mother of Ferdinand was Sophie Dupre, born at Argeles, twenty miles
+south of Tarbes, nearer the Spanish border.  Her father had been made a
+chevalier of the empire by Napoleon I for services in the war with
+Spain, and the great Emperor's memory was piously venerated in Sophie
+Dupre's new home as it had been in her old one.  So her first-born son
+may be said to have inherited that passion for Napoleon which has
+characterized his life and played so great a part in making him what he
+is.
+
+There was a little sister in the family which welcomed Ferdinand.  And
+in course of time two other boys came.
+
+[Illustration: The Room in Which Ferdinand Foch was Born.]
+
+[Illustration: The House in Tarbes Where Foch was Born.]
+
+These four children led the ordinary life of happy young folks in
+France.  But there was much in their surroundings that was richly
+colorful, romantic.  Probably they took it all for granted, the way
+children (and many who are not children) take their near and intimate
+world.  But even if they did, it must have had its deep effect upon
+them.
+
+To begin with, there was Tarbes.
+
+Tarbes is a very ancient city.  It is twenty-five miles southeast of
+Pau, where Henry of Navarre made his dramatic entry upon a highly
+dramatic career, and just half that distance northeast of Lourdes,
+whose famous pilgrimages began when Ferdinand Foch was a little boy of
+seven.
+
+He must have heard many soul-stirring tales about little Bernadette,
+the peasant girl to whom the grotto's miraculous qualities were
+revealed by the Virgin, and whose stories were weighed by the Bishop of
+Tarbes before the Catholic Church sponsored them.  The procession of
+sufferers through Tarbes on their way to Lourdes, and the joyful return
+of many, must have been part of the background of Ferdinand Foch's
+young days.
+
+Many important highways converge at Tarbes, which lies in a rich,
+elevated plain on the left bank of the River Adour.
+
+The town now has some 30,000 inhabitants, but when Ferdinand Foch was a
+little boy it had fewer than half that many.
+
+For many centuries of eventful history it has consisted principally of
+one very long street, running east and west over so wide a stretch of
+territory that the town was called Tarbes-the-Long.  Here and there
+this "main street" is crossed by little streets running north and south
+and giving glimpses of mountains, green fields and orchards; and many
+of these are threaded by tiny waterways--small, meandering children of
+the Adour, which take themselves where they will, like the chickens in
+France, and nobody minds having to step over or around them, or
+building his house to humor their vagaries.
+
+Tarbes was a prominent city of Gaul under the Romans.  They, who could
+always be trusted to make the most of anything of the nature of baths,
+seem to have been duly appreciative of the hot springs in which that
+region abounds.
+
+But nothing of stirring importance happened at or near Tarbes until
+after the battle of Poitiers (732), when the Saracens were falling back
+after the terrible defeat dealt them by Charles Martel.
+
+Sullen and vengeful, they were pillaging and destroying as they went,
+and probably none of the communities through which they passed felt
+able to offer resistance to their depredations--until they got to
+Tarbes.  And there a valiant priest named Missolin hastily assembled
+some of the men of the vicinity and gave the infidels a good
+drubbing--killing many and hastening the flight, over the mountains, of
+the rest.
+
+This encounter took place on a plain a little to the south of Tarbes
+which is still called the Heath of the Moors.
+
+When Ferdinand Foch was a little boy, more than eleven hundred years
+after that battle, it was not uncommon for the spade or plowshare of
+some husbandman on the heath to uncover bones of Christian or infidel
+slain in what was probably the last conflict fought on French soil to
+preserve France against the Saracens.  And there may still have been
+living some old, old men or women who could tell Ferdinand stories of
+the 24th of May (anniversary of the battle) as it was observed each
+year until the Revolution of 1789.  At the southern extremity of the
+battlefield there stood for many generations a gigantic equestrian
+statue, of wood, representing the holy warrior, Missolin, rallying his
+flock to rout the unbelievers.  And in the presence of a great
+concourse singing songs of grateful praise to Missolin, his statue was
+crowned with garlands by young maidens wearing the picturesque gala
+dress of that vicinity.
+
+Some forty-odd years after Missolin's victory, Charlemagne went with
+his twelve knights and his great army through Tarbes on his way to
+Spain to fight the Moors.  And when that ill-starred expedition was
+defeated and its warriors bold were fleeing back to France, Roland--so
+the story goes--finding no pass in the Pyrenees where he needed one
+desperately, cleaved one with his sword Durandal.
+
+High up among the clouds (almost 10,000 feet) is that Breach of
+Roland--200 feet wide, 330 feet deep, and 165 feet long.  A good
+slice-out for a single stroke!  And when Roland had cut it, he dashed
+through it and across the chasm, his horse making a clean jump to the
+French side of the mountains.  That no one might ever doubt this, the
+horse thoughtfully left the mark of one iron-shod hoof clearly
+imprinted in the rock just where he cleared it, and where it is still
+shown to the curious and the stout of wind.
+
+It is a pity to remember that, in spite of such prowess of knight and
+devotion of beast.  Roland perished on his flight from Spain.
+
+But, like all brave warriors, he became mightier in death even than he
+had been in life, and furnished an ideal of valor which animated the
+most chivalrous youth of all Europe, throughout many centuries.
+
+With such traditions is the country round about Tarbes impregnated.
+
+It has been suggested that the name Foch (which, by the way, is
+pronounced as if it rhymed with "hush") is derived from Foix--a town
+some sixty miles east of St. Gaudens, near which was the ancestral home
+of the Foch family.
+
+Whatever the relatives of Ferdinand may have thought of this as a
+probability, it is certain that Ferdinand was well nurtured in the
+history of Foix and especially in those phases of it that Froissart
+relates.
+
+Froissart, the genial gossip who first courted the favor of kings and
+princes and then was gently entreated by them so that his writing of
+them might be to their renown, was on his way to Blois when he heard of
+the magnificence of Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix.  Whereupon the
+chronicler turned him about and jogged on his way to Foix.  Gaston
+Phoebus was not there, but at Orthez--150 miles west and north--and,
+nothing daunted, to Orthez went Froissart, by way of Tarbes, traveling
+in company with a knight named Espaing de Lyon, who was a graphic and
+charmful raconteur thoroughly acquainted with the country through which
+they were journeying.  A fine, "that-reminds-me" gentleman was Espaing,
+and every turn of the road brought to his mind some stirring tale or
+doughty legend.
+
+"Sainte Marie!" Froissart cried.  "How pleasant are your tales, and how
+much do they profit me while you relate them.  They shall all be set
+down in the history I am writing."
+
+So they were!  And of all Froissart's incomparable recitals, none are
+more fascinating than those of the countryside Ferdinand Foch grew up
+in.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+BOYHOOD SURROUNDINGS
+
+The country round about Tarbes has long been famed for its horses of an
+Arabian breed especially suitable for cavalry.
+
+Practically all the farmers of the region raised these fine, fleet
+animals.  There was a great stud-farm on the outskirts of town, and the
+business of breeding mounts for France's soldiers was one of the first
+that little Ferdinand Foch heard a great deal about.
+
+He learned to ride, as a matter of course, when he was very young.  And
+all his life he has been an ardent and intrepid horseman.
+
+A community devoted to the raising of fine saddle horses is all but
+certain to be a community devotedly fond of horse racing.
+
+Love of racing is almost a universal trait in France; and in Tarbes it
+was a feature of the town life in which business went hand-in-hand with
+pleasure.
+
+In an old French book published before Ferdinand Foch was born, I have
+found the following description of the crowds which flocked into Tarbes
+on the days of the horse markets and races:
+
+"On these days all the streets and public squares are flooded with
+streams of curious people come from all corners of the Pyrenees and
+exhibiting in their infinite variety of type and costume all the races
+of the southern provinces and the mountains.
+
+"There one sees the folk of Provence, irascible, hot-headed, of
+vigorous proportions and lusty voice, passionately declaiming about
+something or other, in the midst of small groups of listeners.
+
+"There are men of the Basque province--small, muscular and proud, agile
+of movement and with bodies beautifully trained; plain of speech and
+childlike in deed.
+
+"There are the men of the Bearnais, mostly from towns of size and
+circumstance--educated men, of self-command, tempering the southern
+warmth which burns in their eyes by the calm intelligence born of
+experience in life and also by a natural languor like that of their
+Spanish neighbors.
+
+"There are the old Catalonians, whose features are of savage strength
+under the thick brush of white hair falling about their leather-colored
+faces; the men of Navarre, with braided hair and other evidences of
+primitiveness--vigorous of build and handsome of feature, but withal a
+little subnormal in expression.
+
+"Then, in the midst of all these characteristic types, moving about in
+a pell-mell fashion, making a constantly changing mosaic of vivid hues,
+there are the inhabitants of the innumerable valleys around Tarbes
+itself, each of them with its own peculiarities of costume, manners,
+speech, which make them easily distinguishable one from another."
+
+It was a remarkable crowd for a little boy to wander in.
+
+If Ferdinand Foch had been destined to be a painter or a writer, the
+impressions made upon his childish mind by that medley of strange folk
+might have been passed on to us long ago on brilliant canvas or on
+glowing page.
+
+[Illustration: Ferdinand Foch (center) as a Schoolboy.]
+
+[Illustration: The School in Tarbes Where Foch Prepared for the
+Military Academy.]
+
+But that was not the way it served him.
+
+I want you who are interested to comprehend Ferdinand Foch, to think of
+those old horsefairs and race meets of his Gascony childhood, and the
+crowds of strange types they brought to Tarbes, when we come to the
+great days of his life that began in 1914--the days when his
+comprehension of many types of men, his ability to "get on with" them
+and harmonize them with one another, meant almost as much to the world
+as his military genius.
+
+Tarbes had suffered so much in civil and religious wars, for many
+centuries, that not many of her ancient buildings were left.  The old
+castle, with its associations with the Black Prince and other renowned
+warriors, was a ramshackle prison in Ferdinand Foch's youth.  The old
+palace of the bishops was used as the prefecture, where Ferdinand's
+father had his office.
+
+There were two old churches, much restored and of no great beauty, but
+very dear to the people of Tarbes nevertheless.
+
+Ferdinand and his brothers and sister were very piously reared, and at
+an early age learned to love the church and to seek it for exaltation
+and consolation.
+
+Later on in these chapters we shall see that phase of a little French
+boy's training in its due relation to a marechal of France, directing
+the greatest army the world has ever seen.
+
+The college of Tarbes, where Ferdinand began his school days, was in a
+venerable building over whose portal there was, in Latin, an
+inscription recording the builder's prayer:
+
+"May this house remain standing until the ant has drunk all the waves
+of the sea and the tortoise has crawled round the world."
+
+Ferdinand was a hard student, serious beyond his years, but not
+conspicuous except for his earnestness and diligence.
+
+When he was twelve years old, his fervor for Napoleon led him to read
+Thiers' "History of the Consulate and the Empire."  And about this time
+his professor of mathematics remarked of him that "he has the stuff of
+a polytechnician."
+
+The vacations of the Foch children were passed at the home of their
+paternal grandparents in Valentine, a large village about two miles
+from the town of St. Gaudens in the foothills of the Pyrenees.  There
+they had the country pleasures of children of good circumstances, in a
+big, substantial house and a vicinity rich in tranquil beauty and
+outdoor opportunities.  And there, as in the children's own home at
+Tarbes, one was ashamed not to be a very excellent child, and, so,
+worthy to be descended from a chevalier of the great Napoleon.
+
+In the mid-sixties the family moved from Tarbes to Rodez--almost two
+hundred miles northeast of their old locality in which both parents had
+been born and where their ancestors had long lived.
+
+It was quite an uprooting--due to the father's appointment as paymaster
+of the treasury at Rodez--and took the Foch family into an atmosphere
+very different from that of their old Gascon home, but one which also
+helped to vivify that history which was Ferdinand's passion.
+
+There Ferdinand continued his studies, as also at Saint-Etienne, near
+Lyons, whither the family moved in 1867 when the father was appointed
+tax collector there.
+
+And in 1869 he was sent to Metz, to the Jesuit College of Saint
+Clement, to which students flocked from all parts of Europe.
+
+He had been there a year and had been given, by unanimous vote of his
+fellow students, the grand prize for scholarly qualities, when the
+Franco-Prussian war began.
+
+Immediately Ferdinand Foch enlisted for the duration of the war.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+A YOUNG SOLDIER OF A LOST CAUSE
+
+There is nothing to record of Ferdinand Foch's first soldiering except
+that from the depot of the Fourth Regiment of Infantry, in his home
+city of Saint-Etienne, he was sent to Chalon-sur-Saone, and there was
+discharged in January, 1871, after the capitulation of Paris.
+
+He did not distinguish himself in any way.  He was just one of a
+multitude of youths who rushed to the colors when France called, and
+did what they could in a time of sad confusion, when a weak government
+had paralyzed the effectiveness of the army--of the nation!
+
+Whatever blows Ferdinand Foch struck in 1870 were without weight in
+helping to avert France's catastrophe.  But he was like hundreds of
+thousands of other young Frenchmen similarly powerless in this: In the
+anguish he suffered because of what he could not do to save France from
+humiliation were laid the foundations of all that he has contributed to
+the glory of new France.
+
+At the time when his Fall term should have been beginning at Saint
+Clement's College, Metz was under siege by the German army, and its
+garrison and inhabitants were suffering horribly from hunger and
+disease; Paris was surrounded; the German headquarters were at
+Versailles; and the imperial standards so dear to young Foch because of
+the great Napoleon were forever lowered when the white flag was hoisted
+at Sedan and an Emperor with a whole army passed into captivity.
+
+How much the young soldier-student of the Saone comprehended then of
+the needlessness of the shame and surrender of those inglorious days we
+do not know.  He cannot have been sufficiently versed in military
+understanding to realize how much of the defeat France suffered was due
+to her failure to fight on, at this juncture and that, when a stiffer
+resistance would have turned the course of events.
+
+But if he did not know then, he certainly knew later.  And as soon as
+he got where he could impress his convictions upon other soldiers of
+the new France he began training them in his great maxim: "A battle is
+lost when you admit defeat."
+
+What his devotion to Saint Clement's College was we may know from the
+fact of his return there to resume his interrupted studies under the
+same teachers, but in sadly different circumstances.
+
+He found German troops quartered in parts of the college, and as he
+went to and from his classes the young man who had just laid off the
+uniform of a French soldier was obliged to pass and repass men of the
+victorious army of occupation.
+
+The memory of his shame and suffering on those occasions has never
+faded.  How much France and her allies owe to it we shall never be able
+to estimate.
+
+For the effect on Foch was one of the first acid tests in which were
+revealed the quality of his mind and soul.  Instead of offering himself
+a prey to sullen anger and resentment, or of flaring into fury when one
+time for fury was past and another had not yet come, he used his sorrow
+as a goad to study, and bent his energies to the discovery of why
+France had failed and why Prussia had won.  His analysis of those
+reasons, and his application of what that analysis taught him, is what
+has put him where he is to-day--and _us_ where _we_ are!
+
+From Metz, Foch went to Nancy to take his examination for the
+Polytechnic at Paris.
+
+Just why this should have been deemed necessary I have not seen
+explained.  But it was, like a good many other things of apparent
+inconsequence in this young man's life, destined to leave in him an
+impress which had much to do with what he was to perform.
+
+I have seldom, if ever, studied a life in which events "link up" so
+marvelously and the present is so remarkably an extension of the past.
+
+Nancy had been chosen by General Manteuffel, commander of the First
+German Army Corps, as headquarters, pending the withdrawal of the
+victors on the payment of the last sou in the billion-dollar indemnity
+they exacted of France along with the ceding of Alsace-Lorraine.  (For
+three years France had to endure the insolent victors upon her soil.)
+
+And with the fine feeling and magnanimity in which the German was then
+as now peculiarly gifted General Manteuffel delighted in ordering his
+military bands to play the "Retreat"--to taunt the sad inhabitants with
+this reminder of their army's shame.
+
+Ferdinand Foch listened and thought and wrote his examinations for the
+school of war.
+
+Forty-two years later--in August, 1913--a new commandant came to Nancy
+to take control of the Twentieth Army Corps, whose position there,
+guarding France's Eastern frontier, was considered one of the most
+important--if not _the_ most important--to the safety of the nation.
+
+The first order he gave was one that brought out the full band strength
+of six regiments quartered in the town.  They were to play the "March
+Lorraine" and the "Sambre and Meuse."  They were to fill Nancy with
+these stirring sounds.  The clarion notes carrying these martial airs
+were to reach every cranny of the old town.  It was a veritable tidal
+wave of triumphant sound that he wanted--for it had much to efface.
+
+Nancy will never forget that night!  It was Saturday, the 23d of
+August, 1913.  And the new commandant's name was Ferdinand Foch!
+
+Less than a year later he was fighting to save Nancy, and what lay
+beyond, from the Germans.
+
+And _this_ time there was to be a different story!  Ferdinand Foch was
+foremost of those who assured it.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+PARIS AFTER THE GERMANS LEFT
+
+Ferdinand Foch entered the Polytechnic School at Paris on the 1st of
+November, 1871, just after he had completed his twentieth year.
+
+This school, founded in 1794, is for the technical education of
+military and naval engineers, artillery officers, civil engineers in
+government employ, and telegraphists--not mere operators, of course,
+but telegraph engineers and other specialists in electric
+communication.  It is conducted by a general, on military principles,
+and its students are soldiers on their way to becoming officers.
+
+Its buildings cover a considerable space in the heart of the great
+school quarter of Parts.  The Sorbonne, with its traditions harking
+back to St. Louis (more than six centuries) and its swarming thousands
+of students, is hard by the Polytechnic.  So is the College de France,
+founded by Francis I.  And, indeed, whichever way one turns, there are
+schools, schools, schools--of fine arts and applied arts; of medicine
+in all its branches; of mining and engineering; of war; of theology; of
+languages; of commerce in its higher developments; of pedagogy; and
+what-not.
+
+Nowhere else in the world is there possible to the young student, come
+to advance himself in his chosen field of knowledge, quite such a
+thrill as that which must be his when he matriculates at one of the
+scores of educational institutions in that quarter of Paris to which
+the ardent, aspiring youth of all the western world have been directing
+their eager feet from time immemorial.
+
+Cloistral, scholastic atmosphere, with its grave beauty, as at Oxford
+and Cambridge, he will not find in the Paris Latin Quarter.
+
+Paris does not segregate her students.  Conceiving them to be studying
+for life, she aids them to do it in the midst of life marvelously
+abundant.  They do not go out of the world--so to speak--to learn to
+live and work in the world.  They go, rather, into a life of
+extraordinary variety and fullness, out of which--it is expected--they
+will discover how to choose whatever is most needful to their success
+and well-being.
+
+There is no feeling of being shut in to a term of study.  There is,
+rather, the feeling of being "turned loose" in a place of vast
+opportunity of which one may make as much use as he is able.
+
+To a young man of Ferdinand Foch's naturally serious mind, deeply
+impressed by his country's tragedy, the Latin Quarter of Paris in those
+Fall days of 1871 was a sober place indeed.
+
+Beautiful Paris, that Napoleon III had done so much to make splendid,
+was scarred and seared on every hand by the German bombardment and the
+fury of the communards, who had destroyed nearly two hundred and fifty
+public and other buildings.  The government of France had deserted the
+capital and moved to Versailles--just evacuated by the Germans.
+
+The blight of defeat lay on everything.
+
+In May, preceding Foch's advent, the communards--led by a miserable
+little shoemaker who talked about shooting all the world--took
+possession of the buildings belonging to the Polytechnic, and were
+dislodged only after severe fighting by Marshal MacMahon's Versailles
+troops.
+
+The cannon of the communards, set on the heights of Pere-Lachaise (the
+great city of the dead where the slumber of so many of earth's most
+illustrious imposed no respect upon the "Bolsheviki" of that cataclysm)
+aimed at the Pantheon, shot short and struck the Polytechnic.  One
+shell burst in the midst of an improvised hospital there, gravely
+wounding a nurse.
+
+At last, on May 24, the Polytechnic was taken from the revolutionists
+by assault, and many of the communards were seized.
+
+In the days following, the great recreation court of the school was the
+scene of innumerable executions, as the wretched revolutionists paid
+the penalty of their crimes before the firing squad.  And the students'
+billiard room was turned into a temporary morgue, filled with bodies of
+those who had sought to destroy Paris from within.
+
+The number of Parisians slain in those days after the second siege of
+Paris has been variously estimated at from twenty thousand to
+thirty-six thousand.  And all the while, encamped upon the heights
+round about Paris, were victorious German troops squatting like Semitic
+creditors in Russia, refusing to budge till their account was settled
+to the last farthing of extortion.
+
+The most sacred spot in Paris to young Foch, in all the depression he
+found there, was undoubtedly the great Dome des Invalides, where,
+bathed in an unearthly radiance and surrounded by faded battle flags,
+lies the great porphyry sarcophagus of Napoleon I.
+
+With what bitter reflections must the young man who had been nurtured
+in the adoration of Bonaparte have returned from that majestic tomb to
+the Polytechnic School for Warriors--to which, on the day after his
+coronation as Emperor, Napoleon had given the following motto:
+
+"Science and glory--all for country."
+
+But, also, what must have been the young southerner's thought as he
+lifted his gaze on entering the Polytechnic and read there that
+self-same wish which was inscribed over the door of his first school in
+Tarbes:
+
+"May this house remain standing until the ant has drunk all the waves
+of the sea and the tortoise has crawled round the world."
+
+The edifice in which part of the Polytechnic was housed was the ancient
+College of Navarre, and a Navarrias poet of lang syne had given to the
+Paris school for his countrymen this quaint wish, repeated from the
+inscription he knew at Tarbes.
+
+France had had twelve different governments in fourscore years when
+Ferdinand Foch came to study in that old building which had once been
+the college of Navarre.  Houses of cards rather than houses of
+permanence seemed to characterize her.
+
+Yet she has always had her quota--a larger one, too, than that of any
+other country--of those who look toward far to-morrows and seek to
+build substantially and beautifully for them.
+
+That forward-looking prayer of old Navarre, and recollection of the
+centuries during which it had prevailed against destroying forces, was
+undoubtedly an aid and comfort to the heavy-hearted youth who then and
+there set himself to the study of that art of war wherewith he was to
+serve France.
+
+Among the two hundred and odd fellow-students of Foch at the
+Polytechnic was another young man from the south--almost a neighbor of
+his and his junior by just three months--Jacques Joseph Cesaire Joffre,
+who had entered the school in 1869, interrupted his studies to go to
+war, and resumed them shortly before Ferdinand Foch entered the
+Polytechnic.
+
+Joffre graduated from the Polytechnic on September 21, 1872, and went
+thence to the School of Applied Artillery at Fontainebleau.
+
+Foch left the Polytechnic about six months later, and also went to
+Fontainebleau for the same special training that Joffre was taking.
+
+Both young men were hard students and tremendously in earnest.  Both
+were heavy-hearted for France.  Both hoped the day would come when they
+might serve her and help to restore to her that of which she had been
+despoiled.
+
+But if any one, indulging in the fantastic extravagancies of youth, had
+ventured to forecast, then, even a tithe of what they have been called
+to do for France, he would have been set down as madder than March
+hares know how to be.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+LEARNING TO BE A ROUGH RIDER
+
+When Ferdinand Foch graduated, third in his class, from the artillery
+school at Fontainebleau, instead of seeking to use what influence he
+might have commanded to get an appointment in some garrison where the
+town life or social life was gay for young officers, he asked to be
+sent back to Tarbes.
+
+No one, to my knowledge, has advanced an explanation for this move.
+
+To so earnest and ambitious a student of military art (Foch will not
+permit us to speak of it as "military science") sentimental reasons
+alone would never have been allowed to control so important a choice.
+
+That he always ardently loved the Pyrenean country, we know.  But to a
+young officer of such indomitable purpose as his was, even then, it
+would have been inconceivable that he should elect to spend his first
+years out of school in any other place than that one where he saw the
+maximum opportunity for development.
+
+"Development," mind you--not just "advancement."  For Foch is, and ever
+has been, the kind of man who would most abhor being advanced faster
+than he developed.
+
+He would infinitely rather be prepared for a promotion and fail to get
+it than get a promotion for which he was not thoroughly prepared.
+
+Nor is he the sort of individual who can comfortably deceive himself
+about his fitness.  He sustains himself by no illusions of the variety:
+"If I had so-and-so to do, I'd probably get through as well as
+nine-tenths of commanders would."
+
+He is much more concerned to satisfy himself that his thoroughness is
+as complete as he could possibly have made it, than he is to "get by"
+and satisfy the powers that be!
+
+So we know that it wasn't any mere longing for the scenes of his happy
+childhood which directed his choice of Tarbes garrison when he left the
+enchanting region of Fontainebleau, with its fairy forest, its
+delightful old town, and its many memories of Napoleon.
+
+His mind seems to have been fixed upon a course involving more cavalry
+skill than was his on graduating.  And after two years at Tarbes, with
+much riding of the fine horses of Arabian breed which are the specialty
+of that region, he went to the Cavalry School at Saumur, on the Loire.
+
+King Rene of Anjou, whose chronic poverty does not seem to have
+interfered with his taste for having innumerable castles, had one at
+Saumur, and it still dominates the town and lends it an air of
+medievalism.
+
+Toward the end of the sixteenth century Saumur was one of the chief
+strongholds of Protestantism in France and the seat of a Protestant
+university.
+
+But the revocation of the Edict of Nantes granting tolerance to the
+Huguenots, brought great reverses upon Saumur, whose inhabitants were
+driven into exile.  And thereupon (1685) the town fell into a decline
+which was not arrested until Louis XV, in the latter part of his reign,
+caused this cavalry school to be established there.
+
+It is a large school, with about four hundred soldiers always in
+training as cavalry officers and army riding masters.  And the riding
+exhibitions which used to be given there in the latter part of August
+were brilliant affairs, worth going many miles to see.
+
+There Ferdinand Foch studied cavalry tactics, practiced "rough riding"
+and--by no means least important--learned to know another type of
+Frenchman, the men of old Anjou.
+
+In our own country of magnificent distances and myriad racial strains
+we are apt to think of French people as a single race: "French is
+French."
+
+This is very wide of the truth.  French they all are, in sooth, with an
+intense national unity surpassed nowhere on earth if, indeed, it is
+anywhere equaled.  But almost every one of them is intensely a
+provincial, too, and very "set" in the ways of his own section of
+country--which, usually, has been that of his forbears from time
+immemorial.
+
+In the description I quoted in the second chapter, showing some of the
+types from the vicinity of Tarbes which frequent its horse market, one
+may get some idea of the extraordinary differences in the men of a
+single small region which is bordered by many little "pockets" wherein
+people go on and on, age after age, perpetuating their special traits
+without much admixture of other strains.
+
+Not every part of France has so much variety in such small compass.
+But every province has its distinctive human qualities.  And between
+the Norman and the Gascon, the Breton and the Provencal, the man of
+Picardy and the man of Languedoc, there are greater temperamental
+differences than one can find anywhere else on earth in an equal number
+of square miles--except in some of our American cities.
+
+To the commander of General Foch's type (and as we begin to study his
+principles we shall, I believe, see that they apply to command in civil
+no less than in military life) knowledge of different men's minds and
+the way they work is absolutely fundamental to success.
+
+And his preparation for this mastery was remarkably thorough.
+
+At Saumur he learned not only to direct cavalry operations, but to know
+the Angevin characteristics.
+
+In each school he attended, beginning with Metz, he had close class
+association with men from many provinces, men of many types.  And this
+was valuable to him in preparing him to command under-officers in whom
+a rigorous uniformity of training could not obliterate bred-in-the-bone
+differences.
+
+Many another young officer bent on "getting on" in the army would have
+felt that what he learned among his fellow officers of the provincial
+characteristics was enough.
+
+But not so Ferdinand Foch.
+
+Almost his entire comprehension of war is based upon men and the way
+they act under certain stress--not the way they might be expected to
+act, but the way they actually do act, and the way they can be led to
+act under certain stimulus _of soul_.
+
+For Ferdinand Foch wins victories with men's souls--not just with their
+flesh and blood, nor even with their brains.
+
+And to command men's souls it is necessary to understand them.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+FIRST YEARS IN BRITTANY
+
+Upon leaving the cavalry school at Saumur, in 1878, Ferdinand Foch went,
+with the rank of captain of the Tenth Regiment of Artillery, to Rennes,
+the ancient capital of Brittany and the headquarters of France's tenth
+army corps.
+
+He stayed at Rennes, as an artillery captain, for seven years.
+
+It is not a particularly interesting city from some points of view, but
+it is a very "livable" one, and for a student like Foch it had many
+advantages.  The library is one of the best in provincial France and has
+many valuable manuscripts.  There is also an archaeological museum of
+antiquities found in that vicinity, many of them relating to prehistoric
+warfare.  Some good scientific collections are also treasured there.
+
+What is now known as the University of Rennes was styled merely the
+"college" in the days of Foch's residence there.  But it did
+substantially the same work then as now, and among its faculty Foch
+undoubtedly found many who could give him able aid in his perpetual study
+of the past.
+
+Rennes especially cherishes the memory of Bertrand du Guesclin, the great
+constable of France under King Charles V and the victorious adversary of
+Edward III.  This brilliant warrior, who drove the English, with their
+claims on French sovereignty, out of France, was a native of that
+vicinity.  And we may be sure that whatever special opportunity Rennes
+afforded of studying documents relating to his campaigns was fully
+improved by Captain Foch.
+
+In that time, also, Foch had ample occasion to know the Bretons, who are,
+in some respects, the least French of all French provincials--being much
+more Celtic still than Gallic, although it is a matter of some fifteen
+hundred years since their ancestors, driven out of Britain by the
+Teutonic invasions, came over and settled "Little Britain," or Brittany.
+
+The Bretons maintained their independence of France for a thousand years,
+and only became united with it through the marriage of their last
+sovereign, Duchess Anne, with Charles VIII, in 1491 and--after his
+death--with his successor, Louis XII.
+
+And even to-day, after more than four centuries of political union, the
+people of Brittany are French in name and in spirit rather than in
+speech, customs, or temperament.  Many of them do not speak or understand
+the French language.  Few of them, outside of the cities, have conformed
+appreciably to French customs.  Quaint, sturdy, picturesque folk they
+are--simple, for the most part, superstitious, tenacious of the old,
+suspicious of the new, and governable only by those who understand them.
+
+Foch must have learned, in those seven years, not only to know the
+Bretons, but to like them and their rugged country very well.  For he has
+had, these many years past, his summer home near Morlaix on the north
+coast of Brittany.  It was from there that he was summoned into the great
+war on July 26, 1914.
+
+In 1885 Captain Foch was called to Paris and entered the Superior School
+of War.
+
+This institution, wherein he was destined to play in after years a part
+that profoundly affected the world's destiny, was founded only in 1878 as
+a training school for officers, connected with the military school which
+Louis XV established in 1751 to "educate five hundred young gentlemen in
+all the sciences necessary and useful to an officer."
+
+One of the "young gentlemen" who profited by this instruction was the
+little Corsican whom Ferdinand Foch so ardently venerated.
+
+The building covers an area of twenty-six acres and faces the vast
+Champ-de-Mars, which was laid out about 1770 for the military school's
+use as a field for maneuvers.
+
+This field is eleven hundred yards long and just half that wide.  It
+occupies all the ground between the school buildings and the river.
+
+Across the river is the height called the Trocadero, on which Napoleon
+hoped to build a great palace for the little King of Rome; but whereon,
+many years after he and his son had ceased to need mansions made by
+hands, the French republic built a magnificent palace for the French
+people.  This vast building, with its majestic gardens, was the principal
+feature of the French national exhibition of 1878, which, like its
+predecessor of 1867 and its successors of 1889 and 1900, was held on the
+Champ-de-Mars.
+
+Facing the Trocadero Palace, on the Champ-de-Mars, is the Eiffel Tower
+(nearly a thousand feet high) which was erected for the exposition of
+1889, and has served, since, then-unimaginable purposes during the stress
+and strain of war as a wireless station.  The "Ferris" wheel put up for
+the exposition of 1900 is close by.  And a stone's throw from the
+military school are the Hotel des Invalides, Napoleon's tomb, and the
+magnificent Esplanade des Invalides down which one looks straightway to
+the glinting Seine and over the superb Alexander III bridge toward the
+tree-embowered palaces of arts on the Champs-Elysees.
+
+On the other side of the Hotel des Invalides from that occupied by the
+military school and Champ-de-Mars is the principal diplomatic and
+departmental district of Paris, with many embassies (not ours, however,
+nor the British--which are across the river) and many administrative
+offices of the French nation.
+
+Soldiers and government officials and foreign diplomats dominate the
+quarter--and homes of the old French aristocracy.
+
+The Hotel des Invalides, founded by Louis XIV and designed to
+accommodate, as an old soldiers' home, some seven thousand veterans of
+his unending wars, has latterly served as headquarters for the military
+governor of Paris, and also--principally--as a war museum.
+
+Here are housed collections of priceless worth and transcendent interest.
+The museum of artillery contains ten thousand specimens of weapons and
+armor of all kinds, ancient and modern.  The historical museum, across
+the court of honor, was--in the years when I spent many fascinating hours
+there--extraordinarily rich in personal souvenirs of scores of
+illustrious personages.
+
+What it must be now, after the tragic years of a world war, and what it
+will become as a treasure house for the years to come, is beyond my
+imagination.
+
+It was into this enormously rich atmosphere, pregnant with everything
+that conserves France's most glorious military traditions, that Captain
+Ferdinand Foch was called in 1885 for two years of intensive training and
+study.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+JOFFRE AND FOCH
+
+After quitting the School of War in 1887 (he graduated fourth in his
+class, as he had at Saumur; he was third at Fontainebleau), Ferdinand
+Foch was sent to Montpellier as a probationer for the position of staff
+officer.
+
+He remained at Montpellier for four years--first as a probationer and
+later as a staff officer in the Sixteenth Army Corps, whose headquarters
+are there.
+
+[Illustration: Marshall Joffre, General Foch]
+
+It is a coincidence--without special significance, but interesting--that
+Captain Joseph Joffre had spent several years at the School of
+Engineering in Montpellier; he left there in 1884, after the death of his
+young wife, to bury himself and his grief in Indo-China; so the two men
+did not meet in the southern city.[1]
+
+Joffre returned from Indo-China in 1888, while Foch was at Montpellier,
+and after some time in the military railway service, and a promotion in
+rank (he was captain for thirteen years), received an appointment as
+professor of fortifications at Fontainebleau.
+
+Some persons who claim to have known Joffre at Montpellier have
+manifested surprise at the greatness to which he attained thirty years
+later; he did not impress them as a man of destiny.  That is quite as
+likely to be their fault as his.  And also it is possible that Captain
+Joseph Joffre had not then begun to develop in himself those qualities
+which made him ready for greatness when the opportunity came.
+
+If, however, any one has ever expressed surprise at Ferdinand Foch's
+attainment, I have not heard of it.  He seems always to have impressed
+people with whom he came in contact as a man of tremendous energy,
+application, and thoroughness.
+
+The opportunities for study at Montpellier are excellent, and the region
+is one of extraordinary richness for the lover of history.  The splendor
+of the cities of Transalpine Gaul in this vicinity is attested by remains
+more numerous and in better preservation than Italy affords save in a
+very few places.  And awe-inspiring evidences of medievalism's power
+flank one at every step and turn.  Without doubt, Foch made the most of
+them.
+
+Needless to remark, the commander-in-chief of the allied armies has not
+confided to me what were his favorite excursions during these four years
+at Montpellier.  But I am quite sure that Aigues-Mortes was one of them.
+And I like to think of him, as we know he looked then, pacing those
+battlements and pondering the warfare of those militant ages when this
+vast fortress in the wide salt marshes was one of the most formidable in
+the world.  What fullness of detail there must have been in the mental
+pictures he was able to conjure of St. Louis embarking here on his two
+crusades?  What particularity in his appreciation of those defenses!
+
+The place is, to-day, the very epitome of desolation--much more so than
+if the fortifications were not so perfectly preserved.  For they look as
+if yesterday they might have been bristling with men-at-arms--whereas not
+in centuries has their melancholy majesty served any other purpose than
+that of raising reflections in those to whom the past speaks through her
+monuments.
+
+From Montpellier, Ferdinand Foch returned to Paris, in February, 1891, as
+major on the general army staff.
+
+He and Joffre had now the same rank.  Joffre became lieutenant colonel in
+1894 and colonel in 1897; similar promotions came to Foch in 1896 and
+1903.  He was six years later than Joffre in attaining a colonelcy, and
+exactly that much later in becoming a general.
+
+Neither man had a quick rise but Foch's was (as measurable in grades and
+pay) specially slow.
+
+About the time that Major Joffre went to the Soudan, to superintend the
+building of a railway in the Sahara desert, Major Foch went to Vincennes
+as commander of the mounted group of the Thirteenth Artillery.
+
+Vincennes is on the southeastern skirts of Paris, close by the confluence
+of the Seine and the Marne; about four miles or so from the Bastille,
+which was the city's southeastern gate for three hundred years or
+thereabouts, until the fortified inclosure on that side of the city was
+enlarged under Louis XIV.
+
+The fort of Vincennes was founded in the twelfth century to guard the
+approach to Paris from the Marne valley.  And on account of its pleasant
+situation--close to good hunting and also to their capital--the castle of
+Vincennes was a favorite residence of many early French kings.
+
+It was there that St. Louis is said to have held his famous open-air
+court of justice, which he established so that his subjects might come
+direct to him with their troubles and he, besides settling them, might
+learn at first hand what reforms were needed.
+
+Five Kings of France died there (among them Charles VI, the mad king, and
+Charles IX, haunted by the horrors of the massacre on St. Bartholomew's
+eve), and one King of England, Harry Hotspur.  King Charles V was born
+there.
+
+From the days of Louis XI the castle has been used as a state prison.
+Henry of Navarre was once a prisoner there, and so was the Grand Conde,
+and Diderot, and Mirabeau, and it was there that the young Duc d'Enghien
+was shot by Napoleon's orders and to Napoleon's everlasting regret.
+
+The castle is now (and has been for many years) an arsenal and school of
+musketry, artillery, and other military services.  Before its firing
+squad perish many traitors to France, whose last glimpse of the country
+they have betrayed is in the courtyard of this ancient castle.
+
+The vicinity is very lovely.  The Bois de Vincennes, on the edge of which
+the castle stands, is scarcely inferior to the Bois de Boulogne in charm.
+We used to go out there, not infrequently, for luncheon, which we ate in
+a rustic summerhouse close to the edge of the lake, with many sociable
+ducks and swans bearing us company and clamoring for bits of bread.
+
+It would be hard to imagine anything more idyllic, more sylvan, on the
+edge of a great city--anything more peaceful, restful, anywhere.
+
+Yet the whole locality was, even then, a veritable camp of Mars--forts,
+barracks, fields for maneuvers and for artillery practice, infantry
+butts, rifle ranges, school of explosives; and what not.
+
+France knew her need of protection--and none of us can ever be
+sufficiently grateful that she did!
+
+But she did not obtrude her defensive measures.  She seldom made one
+conscious of her military affairs.
+
+In Germany, for many years before this war, remembrance of the army and
+reverence to the army was exacted of everyone almost at every breath.
+Forever and forever and forever you were being made to bow down before
+the God of War.
+
+In France, on the contrary, it was difficult to think about war--even in
+the very midst of a place like Vincennes--unless you were actually
+engaged in organizing and preparing the country's defenses.
+
+After three years at Vincennes, Ferdinand Foch was recalled to the army
+staff in Paris.  And on the 31st of October, 1895, he was made associate
+professor of military history, strategy, and applied tactics, at the
+Superior School of War.
+
+He had then just entered upon his forty-fifth year; and the thoroughness
+of his training was beginning to make itself felt at military
+headquarters.
+
+
+[1] I have found it interesting to compare the careers of Joffre and Foch
+from the time they were at school together, and I daresay that others
+will like to know what steps forward he was taking who is not the subject
+of these chapters but inseparably bound up with him in many events and
+forever linked with him in glory.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+THE SUPERIOR SCHOOL OF WAR
+
+After a year's service as associate professor of military history,
+strategy, and applied tactics at the Superior School of War in Paris,
+Ferdinand Foch was advanced to head professorship in those branches and
+at the same time he was made lieutenant-colonel.  This was in 1896.  He
+was forty-five years old and had been for exactly a quarter of a century
+a student of the art of warfare.
+
+His old schoolfellow, Joseph Joffre, was then building fortifications in
+northern Madagascar; and his army rank was the same as that of Foch.
+
+It was just twenty years after Foch entered upon his full-fledged
+professorship at the Superior School of War that Marshal Joffre, speaking
+at a dinner assembling the principal leaders of the government and of the
+army, declared that without the Superior School of War the victory of the
+Marne would have been impossible.
+
+All the world knows this now, almost as well as Marshal Joffre knew it
+then.  And all the world knows now as not even Marshal Joffre could have
+known then, how enormous far, far beyond the check of barbarism at the
+first battle of the Marne--is our debt and that of all posterity to the
+Superior School of War and, chiefly, to Ferdinand Foch.
+
+It cannot have been prescience that called him there.  It was just
+Providence, nothing less!
+
+For that was a time when men like Ferdinand Foch (whose whole heart was
+in the army, making it such that nothing like the downfall of 1870 could
+ever again happen to France), were laboring under extreme difficulties.
+The army was unpopular in France.
+
+This was due, partly to the disclosures of the Dreyfus case; partly to a
+wave of internationalism and pacifism; partly to jealousy of the army
+among civil officials.
+
+An unwarranted sense of security was also to blame.  France had worked so
+hard to recoup her fortunes after the disaster of 1870 that her
+people--delighted with their ability as money makers, blinded by the
+glitter of great prosperity--grudged the expanse of keeping up a large
+army, grudged the time that compulsory military training took out of a
+young man's life.  And this preoccupation with success and the arts and
+pleasures of prosperous peace made them incline their ears to the
+apostles of "Brotherhood" and "Federation" and "Arbitration instead of
+Armament."
+
+Little by little legislation went against the army.  The period of
+compulsory service was reduced from three years to two; that cut down the
+size of the army by one-third.  The supreme command of the army was
+vested not in a general, but in a politician--the Minister of War.  The
+generals in the highest commands not only had to yield precedence to the
+prefects of the provinces (like our governors of states), but were
+subject to removal if the prefects did not like their politics and the
+Minister of War wished the support of the prefects.
+
+Even the superior war council of the nation might be politically made up,
+to pay the War Minister's scores rather than to protect the country.
+
+All this can happen to a people lulled by a false sense of security--even
+to a people which has had to defend itself against the savage rapacity of
+its neighbors across the Rhine for two thousand years!
+
+It was against these currents of popular opinion and of government
+opposition that Ferdinand Foch took up his work in the Superior School of
+War--that work which was to make possible the first victory of the Marne,
+to save England from invasion by holding Calais, and to do various other
+things vital to civilization, including the prodigious achievements of
+the days that have since followed.
+
+Foch foresaw that these things would have to be done and, with absolute
+consecration to his task, he set himself not only to train officers for
+France when she should need them, but to inspire them with a unity of
+action which has saved the world.
+
+I have various word-pictures of him as he then appeared to, and
+impressed, his students.
+
+One is by a military writer who uses the pseudonym of "Miles."
+
+"The officers who succeeded one another at the school of war between 1896
+and 1901," he says, referring to the first term of Foch as instructor
+there, "will never forget the impressions made upon them by their
+professor of strategy and of general tactics.  It was this course that
+was looked forward to with the keenest curiosity as the foundational
+instruction given by the school.  It enjoyed the prestige given it by the
+eminent authorities who had held it; and the eighty officers who came to
+the school at each promotion, intensely desirous of developing their
+skill and judgment, were always impatient to see and hear the man who was
+to instruct them in these branches.
+
+"Lieutenant-Colonel Foch did not disappoint their expectations.  Thin,
+elegant, of distinguished bearing, he at once struck the beholder with
+his expression--full of energy, of calm, of rectitude.
+
+"His forehead was high, his nose straight and prominent, his gray-blue
+eyes looked one full in the face.  He spoke without gestures, with an air
+of authority and conviction; his voice serious, harsh, a little
+monotonous; amplifying his phrases to press home in every possible way a
+rigorous reasoning; provoking discussion; always appealing to the logic
+of his hearers; sometimes difficult to follow, because his discourse was
+so rich in ideas; but always holding attention by the penetration of his
+surveys as well as by his tone of sincerity.
+
+"The most profound and the most original of the professors at the school
+of war, which at that time counted in its teaching corps many very
+distinguished minds and brilliant lecturers: such Lieutenant-Colonel Foch
+seemed to his students, all eager from the first to give themselves up to
+the enjoyment of his lessons and the acceptance of his inspiration."
+
+Colonel E. Requin of the French general staff, who has fought under Foch
+in some of the latter's greatest engagements, says:
+
+"Foch has been for forty years the incarnation of the French military
+spirit."  For forty years!  That means ever since he left the cavalry
+school at Saumur and went, as captain of the Tenth regiment of artillery,
+to Rennes.  "Through his teachings and his example," Colonel Requin goes
+on to say, in a 1918 number of the _World's Work_, "he was the moral
+director of the French general staff before becoming the supreme chief of
+the allied armies.  Upon each one of us he has imprinted his strong mark.
+We owe to him in time of peace that unity of doctrine which was our
+strength.  Since the war we owe to him the highest lessons of
+intellectual discipline and moral energy.
+
+"As a professor he applied the method which consists in taking as the
+base of all strategical and tactical instruction the study of history
+completed by the study of military history--that is to say, field
+operations, orders given, actions, results, and criticisms to be made and
+the instructions to be drawn from them.  He also used concrete
+cases--that is to say, problems laid by the director on the map or on the
+actual ground.
+
+"By this intellectual training he accustomed the officers to solving all
+problems, not by giving them ready-made solutions, but by making them
+find the logical solution to each individual case.
+
+"His mind was trained through so many years of study that no war
+situation could disturb him.  In the most difficult ones, he quickly
+pointed out the goal to be reached and the means to employ, and each one
+of us felt that it must be right."
+
+But best of all the things said about Foch in that period of his life, I
+like this, by Charles Dawbarn, in the _Fortnightly Review_:
+
+"Such was"--in spite of many disappointments--"_his fine confidence in
+life, that he communicated to others not his grievances, but his secret
+satisfactions_."
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+THE GREAT TEACHER
+
+Foch made the men who sat under him love their work for the work's sake
+and not for its rewards.  He fired them with an ardor for military art
+which made them feel that in all the world there is nothing so
+fascinating, so worth while, as knowing how to defend one's country
+when she needs defense.
+
+He was able, in peace times when the military spirit was little
+applauded and much decried, to give his students an enthusiasm for
+"preparedness" which flamed as high and burned as pure as that which
+ordinarily is lighted only by a great national rush to arms to save the
+country from ravage.
+
+It was tremendously, incalculably important for France and for all of
+us that Ferdinand Foch was eager and able to impart this enthusiasm for
+military skill.
+
+But also it is immensely important, to-day, when the war is won, and in
+all days and all walks of life, that there be those who can kindle and
+keep alight the enthusiasm of their fellows; who can overlook the
+failure of their own ardor and faithfulness to win its fair reward, and
+convey to others only the alluring glow of their "secret satisfactions."
+
+In the five years, 1895-1901 (his work at the school was interrupted by
+politics in 1901), "many hundreds of officers," as Rene Puaux says,
+"the very elite of the general staffs of our army, followed his
+teaching and were imbued with it; and as they practically all, at the
+beginning of the war, occupied high positions of command, one may
+estimate as he can the profound and far reaching influence of this one
+grand spirit."
+
+Let us try to get some idea of the sort of thing that Foch taught those
+hundreds of French army officers, not only about war but about life.
+
+From all his study, he repeatedly declared, one dominant conviction has
+evolved: Force that is not dominated by spirit is vain force.
+
+Victory, in his belief, goes to those who merit it by the greatest
+strength of will and intelligence.
+
+It was his endeavor, always, to develop in the hundreds of officers who
+were his students, that dual strength in which it seemed to him that
+victory could only lie: moral and intellectual ability to perceive what
+ought to be done, and intellectual and moral ability to do it.
+
+In his mind, it is impossible to be intelligent with the brain alone.
+The Germans do not comprehend this, and therein, to Ferdinand Foch,
+lies the key to all their failures.
+
+He believes that each of us must think with our soul's aid--that is to
+say, with our imagination, our emotions, our aspiration--and employ our
+intelligence to direct our feeling.
+
+And he asks this combination not from higher officers alone, but from
+all their men down to the humblest in the ranks.
+
+He believes in the invincibility of men fighting for a principle dearer
+to them than life--but he knows that ardor without leadership means a
+lost cause; that men must know how to fight for their ideals, their
+principles; but that their officers are charged with the sacred
+responsibility of making the men's ardor and valor count.
+
+At the beginning of his celebrated course of lectures on tactics he
+always admonished his students thus:
+
+"You will be called on later to be the brain of an army.  So I say to
+you to-day: Learn to think."
+
+By this he was far from meaning that officers were to confine thinking
+to themselves, but that they were to teach themselves to think so that
+they might the better hand on intelligence and stimulate their men to
+obey not blindly but comprehendingly.
+
+It was a maxim of Napoleon's, of which Foch is very fond, that "as a
+general rule, the commander-in-chief ought only to indicate the
+direction, determine the ends to be attained; the means of getting
+there ought to be left to the free choice of the mediums of execution,
+without whom success is impossible."
+
+This leaves a great responsibility to officers, but it is the secret of
+that flexibility which makes the French army so effective.
+
+For Foch carries his belief in individual judgment far beyond the
+officers commanding units; he carries it to the privates in the ranks.
+
+An able officer, in Foch's opinion, is one who can take a general
+command to get his men such-and-such a place and accomplish
+such-and-such a thing, and so interpret that command to his men that
+each and every one of them will, while acting in strict obedience to
+orders, use the largest possible amount of personal intelligence in
+accomplishing the thing he was told to do.
+
+It is said that there was probably never before in history a battle
+fought in which every man was a general--so to speak--as at the battle
+of Chateau Thierry, in July, 1918.  That is to say, there was probably
+never before a battle in which so many men comprehended as clearly as
+if they had been generals what it was all about, and acted as if they
+had been generals to attain their objectives.
+
+It was an intelligent democracy, acting under superb leadership that
+vanquished the forces of autocracy.
+
+Foch has worked with a free hand to test the worth of his lifelong
+principles.  And the hundreds of men he trained in those principles
+were ready to carry them out for him.
+
+No wonder his first injunction was: Learn to think!
+
+To him, the leadership of units is not a simple question of
+organization, of careful plans, of strategic and tactical intelligence,
+but a problem involving enormous adaptability.
+
+Battles are not won at headquarters, he contends; they are won in the
+field; and the conditions that may arise in the field cannot be
+foreseen or forestalled--they must be met when they present themselves.
+In large part they are made by the behavior of men in unexpected
+circumstances; therefore, the more a commander knows about human nature
+and its spiritual depressions and exaltations, the better able he is to
+change his plans as new conditions arise.
+
+German power in war, Foch taught his students, lay in the great masses
+of their effective troops and their perfect organization for moving men
+and supplies.  German weakness was in the absolute autocracy of great
+headquarters, building its plans as an architect builds a house and
+unable to modify them if something happens to make a change necessary.
+
+This he deduced from his study of their methods in previous wars,
+especially in that of 1870.
+
+And with this in mind he labored so that when Germany made her next
+assault upon France, France might be equipped with hundreds of officers
+cognizant of Germany's weakness and prepared to turn it to her defeat.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+A COLONEL AT FIFTY
+
+"It was not," Napoleon wrote, "the Roman legions which conquered Gaul,
+but Caesar.  It was not the Carthaginian soldiers who made Rome
+tremble, but Hannibal.  It was not the Macedonian phalanx which
+penetrated India, but Alexander.  It was not the French army which
+reached the Weser and the Inn, but Turenne.  It was not the Prussian
+soldiers who defended their country for seven years against the three
+most formidable powers in Europe; it was Frederick the Great."
+
+And already it has been suggested that historians will write of this
+war: "It was not the allied armies, struggling hopelessly for four
+years, that finally drove the Germans across the Rhine, but Ferdinand
+Foch."
+
+But I am sure that Foch would not wish this said of him in the same
+sense that Napoleon said it of earlier generals.
+
+For Foch has a greater vision of generalship than was possible to any
+commander of long ago.
+
+His strategy is based upon a close study of theirs; for he says that
+though the forms of making war evolve, the directing principles do not
+change, and there is need for every officer to make analyses of
+Xenophon and Caesar and Hannibal as close as those he makes of
+Frederick and Napoleon.
+
+But his conception of military leadership is permeated with the ideals
+of democracy and justice for which he fights.
+
+One of his great lectures to student-officers was that in which he made
+them realize what, besides the route of the Prussians, happened at
+Valmy in September, 1792.
+
+On his big military map of that region (it is on the western edge of
+the Argonne) Foch would show his students how the Prussians, Hessians
+and some Austrian troops; under the Duke of Brunswick, crossed the
+French frontier on August 19 and came swaggering toward Paris,
+braggartly announcing their intentions of "celebrating" in Paris in
+September.
+
+Brunswick and his fellow generals were to banquet with the King of
+Prussia at the Tuileries.  And the soldiers were bent upon the cafes of
+the Palais Royal.
+
+Foch showed his classes how Dumouriez, who had been training his raw
+troops of disorganized France at Valenciennes, dashed with them into
+the Argonne to intercept Brunswick; how this and that happened which I
+will not repeat here because it is merely technical; and then how the
+soldiers of the republic, rallied by the cry, "The country is in
+danger," and thrilled by "The Marseillaise" (written only five months
+before, but already it had changed the beat of nearly every heart in
+France), made such a stand that it not only halted Prussia and her
+allies, but so completely broke their conquering spirit that without
+firing another shot they took themselves off beyond the Rhine.
+
+"We," Foch used to tell his students, "are the successors of the
+revolution and the empire, the inheritors of the art, new-born upon the
+field of Valmy to astonish the old Europe, to surprise in particular
+the Duke of Brunswick, the pupil of Frederick the Great, and to tear
+from Goethe, before the immensity of a fresh horizon, this profound
+cry: 'I tell you, from this place and this day comes a new era in the
+history of the world!'"
+
+It is that new era which Foch typifies--that new era which his
+adversaries, deaf to Goethe's cry and blind to Goethe's vision, have
+not yet realized.
+
+It was "the old Europe" against which Foch fought--the old Europe which
+learned nothing at Valmy and had learned nothing since; the old Europe
+that fought as Frederick the Great fought and that had not yet seen the
+dawn of that new day which our nation and the French nation greeted
+with glad hails much more than a century ago.
+
+In 1792 Prussia measured her military skill and her masses of trained
+men against France's  disorganization--and  overlooked "The
+Marseillaise."
+
+In 1914 she weighed her might against what she knew of the might of
+France--and omitted to weigh certain spiritual differences which she
+could not comprehend, but which she felt at the first battle of the
+Marne, has been feeling ever since, and before which she had to retire,
+beaten but still blind.
+
+In 1918 she estimated the probable force of those "raw recruits" whom
+we were sending overseas--and laughed.  She based her calculations on
+our lack of military tradition, our hastily trained officers, our
+"soft," ease-loving men uneducated in those ideals of blood and iron
+wherein she has reared her youth always.  She overlooked that spiritual
+force which the "new era" develops and which made our men so responsive
+to the command of Foch at Chateau Thierry and later.
+
+"The immensity of a fresh horizon" whereon Goethe saw the new era
+dawning, is still veiled from the vision of his countrymen.  But across
+its roseate reaches unending columns of marching men passed, under the
+leadership of Ferdinand Foch, to liberate the captives the blind brute
+has made and to strike down the strongholds of "old Europe" forever.
+
+For nearly six years Foch taught such principles as these and others
+which I shall recall in connection with great events which they made
+possible later on.
+
+Then came the anti-clerical wave in French politics, and on its crest a
+new commandant to the School of War--a man elevated by the
+anti-clericals and eager to keep his elevation by pleasing those who
+put him there.
+
+Foch adheres devoutly to the religious practices in which he was
+reared, and one of his brothers belongs to the Jesuit order.
+
+These conditions made his continuance at the school under its new head
+impossible.  Whether he resigned because he realized this, or was
+superseded, I do not know.  But he left his post and went as
+lieutenant-colonel to the Twenty-ninth artillery, at Laon.
+
+He was there two years and undoubtedly made a thorough study of the
+country round Laon--which was for more than four years to be the key to
+the German tenure in that part of France.
+
+Ferdinand Foch, with his brilliant knowledge and high ideals of
+soldiering, was now past fifty and not yet a colonel.
+
+Strong though his spirit was, sustained by faith in God and rewarded by
+those "secret satisfactions" which come to the man who loves his work
+and is conscious of having given it his best, he must have had hours,
+days, when he drank deep of the cup of bitterness.  There are, though,
+bitters that shrivel and bitters that tone and invigorate.  Or perhaps
+they are the same and the difference is in us.
+
+At any rate, Foch was not poisoned at the cup of disappointment.
+
+And when the armies under his command encircled the great rock whereon
+Laon is perched high above the surrounding plains I hope Foch was with
+them--in memory of the days when he was "dumped" there, so to speak,
+far away from his sphere of influence at the School of War.
+
+In 1903 he was made colonel and sent to the Thirty-fifth artillery at
+Vannes, in Brittany.
+
+Only two years later he was called to Orleans as chief of staff of the
+Fifth army corps.
+
+On June 20, 1907, he was made Brigadier General and passed to the
+general staff of the French army at Paris.  Soon afterwards, Georges
+Clemenceau became Minister of War, and was seeking a new head for the
+Staff College.  Everyone whose advice he sought said: Foch.  So the
+redoubtable old radical and anti-clerical summoned General Foch.
+
+"I offer you command of the School of War."
+
+"I thank you," Foch replied, "but you are doubtless unaware that one of
+my brothers is a Jesuit."
+
+"I know it very well," was Clemenceau's answer.  "But you make good
+officers, and that is the only thing which counts."
+
+Thus was foreshadowed, in these two great men, that spirit of "all for
+France" which, under the civil leadership of one and the military
+leadership of the other, was to save the country and the world.
+
+In 1911 Foch, at 60, was given command of the Thirteenth division at
+Chaumont, just above the source of the Marne.  On December 17, 1912, he
+was placed at the head of the Eighth Army Corps, at Bourges.  And on
+August 23, 1913, he took command of the Twentieth corps at Nancy.
+
+"When," says Marcel Knecht, "we in Nancy heard that Foch had been
+chosen to command the best troops in France, the Twentieth Army Corps,
+pride of our capital, everybody went wild with enthusiasm."
+
+It is M. Knecht who tells us about the visit to General Foch at Nancy,
+in the spring of 1914, of three British generals whose presence there
+Foch utilized for two purposes:  He showed them what he was doing to
+strengthen Nancy's defensibility, and thereby urged upon them France's
+conviction that an attack by Germany was imminent and unavoidable; and
+he utilized the occasion to show the Lorrainers his warm friendliness
+for England--which Lorraine was inclined still to blame for the death
+of Joan of Arc.  Foch knew that German propagandists were continually
+fanning this resentment against England.  And he made it part of his
+business to overcome that prejudice by showing the honor in which he
+held Great Britain's eminent soldiers.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+FORTIFYING FRANCE WITH GREAT PRINCIPLES
+
+So much has been said about France's unreadiness for the war that it is
+easy for those who do not know what the real situation was to suppose
+that the French were something akin to fools.  For twenty centuries the
+Germans had been swarming over the Rhine in preying, ravaging hordes,
+and France had been beating them back to save her national life.  That
+they would swarm again, more insolent and more rapacious than ever
+after their triumph of 1870, was not to be doubted.  Everyone in France
+who had the slightest knowledge of the spirit that has animated the
+Hohenzollern empire knew its envy of France, its cupidity of France's
+wealth, its hatred of France's attractions for all the world.  Everyone
+who came in contact with the Germans felt the bullet-headed
+belligerence of their attitude which they were never at any pains to
+conceal.
+
+The military men of France knew that Germany had for years been
+preparing for aggression on a large scale.  They knew that she would
+strike when she felt that she was readiest and her opponents of the
+Triple Entente were least ready.
+
+The state of mind of the civilians--busy, prosperous, peace-loving,
+concerned with conversational warfare about a multitude of petty
+internal affairs--is difficult to describe.  But I think it may not be
+impertinent to say of it that it was something like the state of mind
+of a congregation, well fed, comfortable, conscious of many pleasant
+virtues and few corroding sins, before whom a preacher holds up the
+last judgment.  None of them hopes to escape it, none of them can tell
+at what moment he may be called to his account, none of them would wish
+to go in just his present state, and yet none of them does anything
+when he leaves church to put himself more definitely in readiness for
+that great decision which is to determine where he shall spend eternity.
+
+In 1911 it seemed for a brief while that the irruption from the east
+was at hand.  But Germany did not feel quite ready; she "dickered"; and
+things went on seemingly as before.
+
+France seemed to forget.  But she was not so completely abandoned to
+hopefulness as was England--England, who turned her deafest ear to Lord
+Roberts' impassioned pleas for preparedness.
+
+France has an institution called the Superior War Council.  It is the
+supreme organ of military authority and the center of national defense;
+it consists of eleven members supposed to be the ablest commanding
+generals in the nation.  The president of this council is the Minister
+of War; the vice president is known as the generalissimo of the French
+army.
+
+In 1910 General Joseph Joffre became a member of the Superior War
+Council, and in 1911 he became generalissimo.
+
+It was because the Council felt the imminence of war with Germany that
+General Pau--to whom the vice presidency should have gone by right of
+his priority and also of his eminent fitness--patriotically waived the
+honor, because in two years he would be sixty-five and would have to
+retire; he felt that the defense of the country needed a younger man
+who could remain more years in service.  So Joffre was chosen and
+almost immediately he began to justify the choice.
+
+Joffre and his associates of the council not only foresaw the war, but
+they quite clearly previsioned its extent and something of its
+character.  In 1912 Joffre declared "the fighting front will extend
+from four hundred to five hundred miles."  He talked little, but he
+worked prodigiously; and always his insistence was: "We must be
+prepared!"
+
+"With whole nations," he said, "engaged in a mortal combat, disaster is
+certain for those who in time of peace failed to prepare for war."  And
+"To be ready means, to-day, to have mustered in advance all the
+resources of the country, all the intelligence of its citizens, all
+their moral energy, for the purpose of attaining this one aim--victory.
+Getting ready is a duty that devolves not only upon the army, but upon
+all public officials, upon all organizations, upon all societies, upon
+all families, upon all citizens."
+
+This complete readiness was beyond his power to effect.  But in his
+province--the army--he achieved marvels that were almost miracles.
+
+It was France's good fortune (and that of her allies) that in all he
+undertook for the purification and strengthening of the army Joffre
+had, from January, 1912, the complete co-operation of the Minister of
+War, M. Millerand.  Together, these two men, brilliantly supported by
+some of Joffre's colleagues in the Superior Council--notably Pau and
+Castelnau--achieved results that have been pronounced "unparalleled in
+the history of the Third Republic."  They freed the army from the worst
+effects of political influence, made it once more a popular
+institution, and organized it into an effectiveness which needs, now,
+no comment.
+
+When Foch was put in command of the Twentieth army corps at Nancy it
+was in the expectation that Nancy would sustain the first shock of the
+German invasion when it came.  The opinion prevailed that Nancy could
+not be held.  Whether Joffre was of this opinion or not, I do not know.
+If he was, he probably felt that Foch would give it up only after
+harder fighting than any other general.  But Foch believed that Nancy
+could be defended, and so did his immediate superior, the gallant
+General Castelnau, in command of the Second Army of Lorraine.
+
+For nearly a year following upon his appointment to Nancy, Foch labored
+mightily to strengthen Nancy against the attack which was impending.
+He seems never to have doubted that Germany would make her first
+aggression there, only seventeen miles from her own border, and with
+Metz and Strassburg to back the invading army.
+
+But that there were other opinions, even at Nancy, I happen to know.
+For, one day while the war was still new, I chanced in rooting in an
+old bookstall in Paris, to find a book which was written by an officer
+of the Twentieth Corps, in 1911.[1]
+
+The officer was, if I mistake not, of the artillery, and he wrote this
+"forecast" to entertain the members of his mess or battery.
+
+He predicted with amazing accuracy the successive events which happened
+nearly three years later, only he "guessed" the order for mobilization
+in France to fall on August 14, instead of August 1; and all his
+subsequent dates were just about two weeks later than the actualities.
+But he "foresaw" the invasion of Belgium, the resistance at Liege and
+Namur, the fall of Brussels, the invasion of France by her northeastern
+portals.  Almost--at the time I read this book--it might have served as
+history instead of prophecy.  I would that I had it now!  But I clearly
+remember that it located the final battle of the war in Westphalia,
+describing the location exactly.  And that it said the Emperor would
+perish in that downfall of his empire.  And it cited two prophecies
+current in Germany--the long-standing one to the effect that Germany's
+greatest disaster would come to her under an Emperor with a withered
+arm, and one made in Strassburg in 1870, declaring that the new empire
+would dissolve under its third Emperor.
+
+The book was published in January, 1912, if I remember rightly, and was
+almost immediately translated into German.  And I was told that one
+hundred thousand copies were sold in Germany in a very short time, and
+it was made the subject of editorials in nearly every prominent German
+paper.
+
+Probably Foch read it.  He may even have discussed it with the author.
+But he held to the belief that when the attack came it would come
+through Nancy.
+
+He was not, however, expecting it when it came.
+
+
+[1] The reason I cannot give his name, nor quote directly from his
+book, is that a fellow-traveler borrowed the book from me and I have
+never seen it since.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+ON THE EVE OF WAR
+
+In the first days of July, 1914, divisional maneuvers were held as
+usual in Lorraine.  Castelnau and Foch reviewed the troops, known
+throughout the army as "the division of iron."
+
+A young captain, recently assigned from the School of War to a regiment
+of Hussars forming part of the Twentieth army corps, wrote to his
+parents on July 5 an account of the maneuvers in which he had just
+taken part.  He said that "the presence of these two eminent men gave a
+great interest" to the events he described.  And the impression made
+upon him by Foch is so remarkable that his letter is likely to become
+one of the small classics of the war--endlessly reproduced whenever the
+story of Foch is told.
+
+"General Foch," he reminds his parents, "is a former commander of the
+School of War, where he played, on account of his great fitness, a very
+remarkable role.
+
+"He is a man still young [he was almost 63!], slender and supple, and
+rather frail; his powerful head seems like a flower too heavy for a
+stem too slight.
+
+"What first strikes one about him is his clear gaze, penetrating,
+intellectual, but above all and in spite of his tremendous energy,
+luminous.  This light in his eyes spiritualizes a countenance which
+otherwise would be brutal, with its big mustache bristling above a very
+prominent, dominant jaw.
+
+"When he speaks, pointing lessons from the maneuver, he becomes
+animated to the extent of impassionedness, but never expressing himself
+otherwise than with simplicity and purity.
+
+"His speech is sober, direct; he affirms principles, condemns faults,
+appeals to our energies in a brief but comprehensive style.
+
+"He is a priest, who judges, condemns, and instructs in the name of the
+faith which illumines him and to which he has consecrated all the
+powers of his mind and his heart.  General Foch is a prophet whom his
+God transports."
+
+The young officer who wrote thus to his parents was Captain Andre
+Dubarle; and he later laid down his life for his country on the field
+of honor commanded by General Foch.
+
+The letter seems to me as treasurable for what it conveys to us of the
+sort of young man Foch found among his officers and soldiers (there
+were many such!) as for what it tells us of the impression Foch created
+even in those days before men's souls were set on fire with fervor for
+France.
+
+On July 18 General Foch asked and obtained a leave of absence for
+fifteen days, so that he might join the family group gathered at his
+home near Morlaix in Brittany.  His two sons-in-law, Captain Fournier
+and Captain Becourt, also obtained leave.  The former was attached to
+the general army staff at Paris, and was granted seventeen days.  The
+latter was in command of a company of the Twenty-sixth battalion of
+Foot Chasseurs at Pont-a-Mousson.  He was given twenty-five days'
+leave.  The wives and children of both were at Morlaix with Madame Foch.
+
+So little expectation of immediate war had France on July 18 that she
+granted a fortnight's absence to the commander of those troops which
+were expected to bear the first shock of German aggression when it came.
+
+But I happen to know of a French family reunion held at Nancy on July
+14 and the days following, which was incomplete.  One of the women of
+this family was married to a German official at Metz whose job it was
+to be caretaker for three thousand locomotives belonging to the
+imperial government and kept at Metz for "emergencies."  On July 12 (as
+it afterwards transpired) he was ordered to have fires lighted and
+steam got up in those three thousand engines, and to keep them, night
+and day, ready for use at a moment's notice.
+
+Those smoking iron horses in Metz are a small sample of what was going
+on all over Germany while France's frontier-defenders were being given
+permission to visit Brittany.
+
+But for that matter German war-preparations were going on much nearer
+to Nancy than in Metz, while Foch was playing with his grandchildren at
+Morlaix.
+
+Beginning about July 21 and ending about the 25th, twelve thousand
+Germans left Nancy for "points east," and six thousand others left the
+remainder of French Lorraine.
+
+The pretexts they gave were various--vacations, urgent business
+matters, "cures" at German watering places.  They all knew, when they
+left, that Germany was mobilizing for attack upon France.  They had
+known it for some time before they left.
+
+Since the beginning of July they had been working in Nancy to aid the
+German attack.  They had visited the principal buildings, public and
+private, and especially the highest ones, with plans for the
+installation of wireless at the modest price of $34.  "It is so
+interesting," they said, "to get the exact time, every day, from the
+Eiffel Tower!"
+
+They had also some amazingly inexpensive contrivances for heating
+houses, or regulating the heating already installed, or for home
+refrigeration--things which took them into cellars in Nancy--and before
+they left to join their regiments they were exceedingly busy
+demonstrating those things.
+
+They were all gone when General Foch was recalled, on July 26.
+
+On July 30 German under-officers crossed the frontier.
+
+On August 3 Uhlans and infantrymen on motorcycles were shooting and
+pillaging on the French side of the border, although it was not until
+6:45 P.M. that day that Germany declared war on France.
+
+That which France had been unable to suppose even Germany capable of,
+happened: The treaty with Belgium became a scrap of paper and the main
+attack upon France was made by way of the north.
+
+But the expectation that Nancy would be one of the first objectives of
+the Hun-rampant was not without fulfillment.  For the hordes advanced
+in five armies; and the fifth, the German left wing under Crown Prince
+Rupprecht of Bavaria, was ordered to swarm into France south of that of
+the Imperial Crown Prince, spread itself across country behind the
+French armies facing northward, join with Von Kluck's right wing
+somewhere west of Paris, and "bag" the French--armies, capital and
+all--"on or about" September 1.
+
+It was all perfectly practicable--on paper.  The only difficulty was
+that there were so many things the German staff had omitted from its
+careful calculations--omitted, perforce, because it had never guessed
+their existence.  And that spoiled their reckoning.
+
+Foch had, for years, been teaching that fighting demands supreme
+flexibility, adaptability; that war is full of surprises which must be
+met as they arise; that morale, the spiritual force of an army, is
+subject to fluctuations caused by dozens of conditions which cannot be
+foreseen and must be overcome.  The phrase oftenest on his lips was:
+"What have we to do here?"  For, as he conceived warfare, officers and
+even privates must constantly be asking themselves that.  One plan goes
+awry.  Very well! we'll find a better.
+
+But Foch had not trained the German general staff.  They made war
+otherwise.  And well he knew it!  Well he knew what happened to them
+when their "blue prints" would not fit unexpected conditions.
+
+He knew that they expected to take Nancy easily, that they were looking
+for some effort to defend it, but not for a French attack.
+
+They did not know his maxim: "The best means of defense is to attack."
+
+He attacked.  His Twentieth corps fought its way through the center of
+the Bavarian army, into German Lorraine.  Then something happened.
+Just what it was is not clear--but doubtless will be some day.  The
+offensive had to be abandoned and the French troops had to withdraw
+from German soil to defend their own.
+
+How bitter was the disappointment to Foch we may guess but shall never
+know.  But remaking plans in his genius.
+
+"What have we to do here?" he asked himself.
+
+Then, "in the twinkling of an eye," says one military historian,
+"General Foch found the solution to the defense problem wherewith he
+was so suddenly confronted when his offensive failed of support."
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+THE BATTLE OF LORRAINE
+
+What is known as the battle of Lorraine began at the declaration of war
+and lasted till August 26--though the major part of it was fought in
+the last six of those days.
+
+I shall not go into details about it here, except to recall that it was
+in this fighting that General Castelnau lost his oldest son, stricken
+almost at the father's side.
+
+A German military telegram intercepted on August 27 said:
+
+"On no account make known to our armies of the west [that is to say,
+the right wing, in Belgium] the checks sustained by our armies of the
+east [the left wing, in Lorraine]."
+
+So much depended on those plans which Castelnau and Dubail and
+Foch--and very particularly Foch!--had frustrated.
+
+Joffre realized what had been achieved.  And on August 27 he issued the
+following "order of the day":
+
+"The First and Second armies are at this moment giving an example of
+tenacity and of courage which the commander-in-chief is happy to bring
+to the knowledge of the troops under his orders.
+
+"These two armies undertook a general offensive and met with brilliant
+success, until they hurled themselves at a barrier fortified and
+defended by very superior forces.
+
+"After a retreat in perfect order, the two armies resumed the offensive
+and, combining their efforts, retook a great part of the territory they
+had given up.
+
+"The enemy bent before them and his recoil enabled us to establish
+undeniably the very serious losses he had suffered.
+
+"These armies have fought for fourteen days without a moment's respite,
+and with an unshakable confidence in victory as the reward of their
+tenacity.
+
+"The general-in-chief knows that the other armies will be moved to
+follow the example of the First and Second armies."
+
+Now, where were those other armies?  And what were they doing?
+
+France had then eight armies in the field, and was soon to have a
+ninth--commanded by General Foch.
+
+There was the First army, under General Dubail; the Second, under
+General Castelnau; the Third, under General Sarrail; the Fourth, under
+General Langle de Cary; the Fifth, under General Franchet d'Esperey;
+the Sixth, under General Manoury; the Seventh and Eighth armies are not
+mentioned in the Battle of the Marne, and I have not been able to find
+out where they were in service.
+
+The First and Second armies, fighting in Lorraine, we know about.  They
+developed, in that battle, more than one great commander of whose
+abilities Joffre hastened to avail himself.  On the day he issued that
+order commending the First and Second armies, the generalissimo called
+Manoury from the Lorraine front, where he had shown conspicuous
+leadership, and put him in command of the newly-created Sixth army,
+which was to play the leading part in routing Von Kluck.  And on the
+next day (August 28) Joffre called Foch from Lorraine to head the new
+Ninth army, which was to hold the center at the Battle of the Marne and
+deal the smashing, decisive blow.
+
+In two days, while his troops were retreating before an apparently
+irresistible force, Joffre created two new armies, put at the head of
+each a man of magnificent leadership, and intrusted to those two armies
+and their leaders the most vital positions in the great battle he was
+planning.
+
+The German soldiers facing Joffre were acting on general orders printed
+for them eight years before, and under specific orders which had been
+worked out by their high command with the particularity of machine
+specifications.  And all their presumptions were based on the French
+doing what Teutons would do in the same circumstances.  Their
+extra-suspender-button efficiency and preparedness were pitted against
+the flexible genius of a man who could assemble his two "shock" armies
+in two days and put them under the command of men picked not from the
+top of his list of available commanders, but practically from the
+bottom.
+
+The Third, Fourth and Fifth armies of Joffre were those which had
+sustained the terrific onslaught in the north and had been fighting in
+retreat, practically since the beginning.
+
+On August 25 Joffre declared; "We have escaped envelopment"--thanks
+largely to the action in Lorraine, holding back the Bavarians--and,
+clearly seeing that he could not hope for favorable results from a
+great battle fought in the north, he gave the order for retreat which
+meant the abandonment of north-eastern France to the Hunnish hordes.
+
+What anguish that order caused him we shall never know.  He realized to
+the full what the people of that great, prosperous part of France would
+have to suffer.  He was aware what the loss of those resources would
+mean to the French, and also what their gain would mean to the Germans.
+He understood the effect of retreat upon the morale of his men.  And he
+must have been aware of the panic his order would create throughout the
+yet-uninvaded parts of France where no one could know at what point the
+invasion would be checked.  He knew that the nation's faith in him
+would be severely shaken, and that even his army's faith in him would
+be put to a supreme test.
+
+But when a man trains himself to be a commander of men, he trains
+himself to go through, heroically and at any cost, what he believes
+must be done.  To sacrifice one's self comes comparatively easy--given
+compelling circumstances and an obedient soul.  But to sacrifice others
+never becomes easy to a man who respects the rights of others.  And we
+shall never begin to comprehend men like Joffre and Foch until we shake
+ourselves free from any notion we may have that military expediency
+makes it easy for them to order great mental and physical suffering.
+
+General Foch detached himself, on August 29, from his beloved Twentieth
+corps and betook himself to the little village of Machault, about
+twenty miles northeast of Chalons-sur-Marne, where he found assembled
+for his command an army made up of units from other armies.  They were
+all more or less strange to one another and to him.
+
+There was the Ninth army corps, from Tours, made up of Angevins (men
+such as Foch had learned to know when he was at Saumur) and Vendeans
+(the Bretons' south neighbors).  Some of these men had been fighting
+without respite for nine days as they fell back, with the Fourth army,
+from the Belgian border.  With them, since August 22, had been the
+remarkable Moroccan division under General Humbert.
+
+Then there was the Eleventh corps of Bretons and Vendeans, which had
+been through the same terrible retreat.
+
+And--not to enumerate too far--there was that Forty-second division of
+infantry which was destined to play one of the most dramatic,
+thrilling, forever-memorable parts in all warfare.  It had been in the
+Ardennes, and had fallen back, fighting fiercely as it came.
+
+To help him command these weary men whose hearts were heavy with
+forebodings for France, Foch had, as he himself has said, "a general
+staff of five or six officers, gathered in haste to start with, little
+or no working material, our note books and a few maps."
+
+"Those who lived through these tragic hours near him," says Rene Puaux,
+"recall the chief questioning the liaison officers who did not know
+exactly where the different units were, punctuating his questions with:
+'You don't know?  Very well, then go and find out!'; putting together
+in his head the mosaic of which there were still so many pieces
+missing; gradually visioning a plan for bringing them together;
+calculating his effectives; estimating approximately his reserves of
+ammunition; discovering his bases of food supply."
+
+And through all this stress he had the personal anguish of being unable
+to get word of his only son, Germain Foch, or of his son-in-law,
+Captain Becourt, both of whom had been fighting on the Belgian front.
+
+"It was not, however," M. Puaux says, "the time for personal emotions.
+The father effaced himself before the soldier.  There was nothing to be
+thought of save the country."
+
+Thus we see Ferdinand Foch, on the eve of the first Battle of the Marne.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+THE FIRST VICTORY AT THE MARNE
+
+It was Saturday, August 29, 1914, when General Foch went to Machault to
+take command of the various units he was to weld into the Ninth army.
+
+On the Tuesday following (September 1) Joffre was quartered with his
+general staff at the little old town of Bar-sur-Aube, fifty miles south
+of Chalons, and he had then determined the limits to which he would
+permit the retreat of his armies.
+
+If a stand could be taken and an offensive launched further north than
+the Aube River, it should be done; but in no event would the withdrawal
+go beyond the Seine, the Aube and the region north of Bar-le-Duc.
+
+He then placed his armies in the field in the relation in which he
+deemed they would be most effective: the First army, under General
+Dubail, was in the Vosges, and the Second army, under General
+Castelnau, was round about Nancy; the Third army, under General
+Sarrail, east and south of the Argonne in a kind of "elbow," joining
+the Fourth army, under General de Langle de Cary; then the Ninth army,
+under General Foch; then the Fifth army, under General Franchet
+d'Esperey; then the little British army of three corps, under General
+Sir John French; and then the new Sixth army, under General Manoury.
+
+So Foch, on the third day of organizing his new command, received
+orders--at once terrible and immensely flattering--that he was to
+occupy the center of Joffre's battle line and to sustain the onslaught
+of Von Buelow and the famous Prussian Guards.
+
+In the morning of Saturday, September 5, all commanders received from
+Joffre the now historic message:
+
+"The moment has come for the army to advance at all costs and allow
+itself to be slain where it stands rather than give way."
+
+The men to whom this order was relayed by their commanders had,
+five-sixths of them, been ceaselessly engaged, without one single day's
+rest of any kind and much of the time without night rest either, for
+fourteen days, fighting as they fell back, and falling back as they
+fought; the skin was all worn from the soles of their feet, and what
+shoes they had left were stuck to their feet with blood.
+
+"They had marched under a torrid sky," says Louis Madelin, "on
+scorching roads, parched and suffocated with dust.  In reality they
+moved with their hearts rather than with their legs.  According to
+Pierre Lasserre's happy expression, 'Our bodies had beaten a retreat,
+but not our hearts,' . . .  But when, worn out with fatigue, faces
+black with powder, blinded by the chalk of Champagne, almost dying,
+they learned Joffre's order announcing the offensive, then the faces of
+our troops from Paris to Verdun beamed with joy.  They fought with
+tired limbs, and yet no army ever showed such strength, for their
+hearts were filled with faith and hope."
+
+At daybreak on Sunday, the 6th, Foch pitched his headquarters in a
+modern chateau near the little village of Pleurs, which you probably
+will not find on any map except a military one, but it is some six
+miles southeast of Sezanne.  And the front assigned to Foch ran from
+Sezanne to the Camp de Mailly, twenty-five miles east by a little
+south.  The Marne was twenty-five miles to north of him.  Between him
+and its south bank were many towns and villages; the clay pocket (ten
+miles long) called the Marshes of St. Gond, but far from marshy in that
+parching heat; and north of that the forest of Epernay.  His vanguards
+were north of the marshes.  But as that Sunday wore on, the Prussian
+Guards drove Foch's Angevins and Vendeans of the Ninth Corps back and
+occupied the marshes.  The Bretons on the east of Foch's line were
+obliged to dislodge, and the Moroccans and Forty-second Division had to
+yield on Foch's left.
+
+Thus, at nightfall of the first day's fighting, Foch's new army had
+given ground practically everywhere.
+
+The next day the German attack became fiercer, and it seemed that more
+ground must be yielded.
+
+That was the day when Foch made his memorable deduction: "They are
+trying to throw us back with such fury I am sure that means things are
+going badly for them elsewhere and they are seeking compensation."
+
+He was right!  Von Kluck was retiring in a northeasterly direction
+under Manoury's blows; and even Von Buelow (whom Foch faced) was
+withdrawing parts of his troops from the line at Foch's left.
+
+But the attempt to break through the center Foch held, waxed fiercer as
+the Germans realized the strength opposing them on their right.
+
+And on Tuesday, the 8th, Foch was unable to hold--save at certain
+points--and had to move his headquarters eleven miles south, to Plancy.
+
+He had now reached the Aube, beyond which Joffre had decreed that he
+must not retire.  On its north bank his gallant army must, if it could
+not do otherwise, "allow itself to be slain where it stands rather than
+give way."
+
+On that evening he sent Major Requin to the Forty-second Division with
+orders for the morrow.  The most incredible orders!
+
+The enemy had found his point of least resistance--on his right wing.
+He ought to strengthen that wing, but he could not.  All the reserves
+were engaged--and the enemy knew it as well as he did.  And it is a
+fixed principle of war not to withdraw active troops from one part of
+the line to strengthen another.
+
+Only one part of his army had had any success that day: Toward evening
+the Forty-second Division and the Moroccans had made an irresistible
+lunge forward and driven the enemy to the north edge of the marshes.
+
+They were weary--those splendid troops--but they were exalted; they had
+advanced!
+
+Foch believes in the power of the spirit.  He appealed to the
+Forty-second to do an extraordinary thing--to march, weary as it was,
+from left to right of his long line and brace the weak spot.  And to
+cover up the gap their withdrawal would make he asked General Franchet
+d'Esperey to stretch out the front covered by his right wing and
+adjoining Foch's left.
+
+In a letter to me, Lieutenant-Colonel (then Major) Requin gives some
+graphic bits descriptive of that historic errand.  He was a sort of
+liaison officer between General Grossetti, commanding the Forty-second
+Division, and the latter's chief, General Foch, his special duty being
+to carry General Foch's orders to General Grossetti and to keep the
+army chief informed, each evening, how his commands were being carried
+out.
+
+"It was 10 P.M.," he writes, "when I roused General Grossetti from his
+sleep in the straw, in the miserable little shell-riddled farm of
+Chapton.
+
+"The order astonished him; but like a disciplined leader, he started to
+execute it with all the energy of which this legendary soldier was
+capable."
+
+The Forty-second came!  While they were marching to the rescue the
+Prussian Guard in a colossal effort smashed through Foch's right.  They
+were wild with joy.  The French line was pierced.  They at once began
+celebrating, at La Fere-Champenoise.
+
+When this was announced to Foch he telegraphed to general headquarters:
+
+"My center gives way, my right recedes; the situation is excellent.  I
+shall attack."
+
+For this, we must remember, is the man who says: "A battle won is a
+battle in which one is not able to believe one's self vanquished."
+
+He gave the order to attack.  Everything that he cared about in this
+world was at stake.  This desperate maneuver would save it all--or it
+would not.  He gave the order to attack--and then he went for a walk on
+the outskirts of the little village of Plancy.  His companion was one
+of his staff officers, Lieutenant Ferasson of the artillery; and as
+they walked they discussed metallurgy and economics.
+
+There could be nothing more typically French or more diametrically
+opposed to the conceptions of French character which prevailed in other
+countries before this war.  And I hope that if Lieutenant Ferasson
+survives, he will accurately designate (if he can) exactly where Foch
+walked on that Wednesday afternoon, September 9, when, his center
+having given way, his right wing receded, he pronounced the "situation
+excellent," gave the order for attack, and went out to discuss
+metallurgy.
+
+Toward six o'clock on that evening the Germans, celebrating their
+certain victory, saw themselves confronted by a "new" French army
+pouring into the gap they had thought their road to Paris.
+
+The Forty-second Division (more than half dead of fatigue, but their
+eyes blazing with such immensity and intensity of purpose it has been
+said the Germans fled, as before spirits, when they saw these men) had
+not only blocked the roundabout road to Paris; they had broken the
+morale of Von Buelow's crack troops.  Without this brilliant maneuver
+and superb execution the successes of all the other armies must have
+gone for naught.
+
+"To be victorious," said Napoleon, "it is necessary only to be stronger
+than your enemy at a given point and at a given moment."
+
+Foch's preferred way to take advantage of that given point and moment
+is with reserves, which he called the reservoirs of force.  "The art of
+war consists in having them when the enemy has none."
+
+But as there were no reserves available at that first Battle of the
+Marne, he exemplified his other principle that conditions must be met
+as they arise.
+
+"I still seem," says Rene Puaux, "to hear General Foch telling us, one
+evening after dinner at Cassel several months later, about that
+maneuver of September 9.
+
+"He had put matches on the tablecloth"--some red matches which Colonel
+Requin treasures as a souvenir--"and he illustrated with them the
+disposition of the troops engaged.  For the Forty-second Division he
+had only half a match, which he moved here and there with his quick,
+deft fingers as he talked.
+
+"The match representing the Twelfth German Corps (which with the
+Prussian Guard was cutting the gap in Foch's weak spot) was about to
+make a half-turn which would bring it in the rear of the French armies.
+
+"The general, laying down the half-match that was the Forty-second
+Division, made an eloquent gesture with his hand, indicating the move
+that the Forty-second made.
+
+"'It might succeed,' he said, laconically, 'or it might fail.  It
+succeeded.  Those men were exhausted; they won, nevertheless.'"
+
+At nine o'clock the next morning (September 10) the Forty-second
+entered La Fere-Champenoise, where they found officers of the Prussian
+Guard lying, dead drunk, on the floors in the cantonments, surrounded
+by innumerable bottles of stolen champagne wherewith they had been
+celebrating their victory.
+
+Two days later Foch was at Chalons, to direct in person the crossing of
+the Marne by his army in pursuit of the fleeing enemy.
+
+"The cavalry, the artillery, the unending lines of supply wagons," says
+Colonel Requin, "the infantry in two columns on either side of the
+road; all this in close formation descending like a torrent to resume
+its place of battle above the passage on the other side of the river;
+was an unforgettable sight and one that gave all who witnessed it an
+impression of the tremendous energy General Foch has for the command of
+enormous material difficulties."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+SENT NORTH TO SAVE THE CHANNEL PORTS
+
+Germany's plan to enter France by the east gate, in Lorraine, was
+frustrated with the aid of Foch.
+
+Her plan to smash through the center of the armies on the Marne was
+frustrated, with the very special aid of Foch.
+
+Blocked in both these moves, there was just one other for Germany to
+make, then, on the western front.
+
+And on September 14, Joffre, instead of celebrating the victory on the
+Marne, was deep in plans to forestall an advance upon the Channel
+ports, and began issuing orders for the transfer of his main fighting
+bodies to the north.
+
+All this, of course, had to be done so as to leave no vulnerable spot
+in all that long battle line from Belfort to Calais.
+
+Joffre had clearly foreseen the length of that line.  He predicted it,
+as we have seen, in 1912.  Doubtless he had foreseen also that it would
+be too long a line to direct from one viewpoint, from one general
+headquarters.  What he was too wise to try to foresee before the war
+began was, which one of France's trained fighting men he would call to
+his aid as his second in command.  He waited, and watched, before
+deciding that.
+
+And late in the afternoon of October 4 he telegraphed to General Foch
+at Chalons, telling him that he was appointed first in command under
+the generalissimo, and asking him to leave at once for the north, there
+to coordinate the French, English and Belgian forces that were opposing
+the German march to the sea.
+
+Five weeks previously Foch had been called to the vicinity of Chalons
+to assemble an army just coming into existence.  Now he was called to
+leave Chalons and that army he had come to know--that army of which he
+must have been so very, very proud--and go far away to another task of
+unknown factors.
+
+But in a few hours he had his affairs in order and was ready to leave.
+
+It was ten o'clock that Sunday night when he got into his automobile to
+be whirled from the Marne to the Somme.
+
+At four in the morning he was at Breteuil, where General Castelnau had
+the headquarters of his new army, created on September 20 and
+designated to service on Manoury's left.  General Castelnau had not yet
+heard of the generalissimo's new order.  He was sound asleep when the
+big gray car came to a stop at the door of his headquarters after its
+one-hundred-and-fifty-mile dash through silent towns and dark,
+war-invested country.
+
+Six weeks ago Foch had been his subordinate.  Then they became equals
+in command.  Now the magnificent hero of Lorraine who, before the war,
+had done so much on the Superior War Council to aid Joffre in
+reorganizing the army, rose from his bed in the chill of a fall morning
+not yet dawned, to greet his superior officer.
+
+Some black coffee was heated for them, and for two hours they discussed
+the problems of this new front--Castelnau as eager to serve under Foch,
+for France, as, eight weeks ago, Foch had been to serve under
+Castelnau.  If the sublime unselfishness of such men could have
+communicated itself to some of the minor figures of this war, how much
+more inspiring might be the stories of these civilian commanders!
+
+At six o'clock Foch was under way again--to Amiens, Doullens, St. Pol,
+and then, at nine, to Aubigny, where General Maud'huy had the
+headquarters of his army, holding the line north of Castelnau's.
+
+The difficulties of Foch's new undertaking were not military alone, but
+diplomatic.  He had to take account of the English and Belgian armies,
+each under independent command, and each small.  It was the fitness of
+Foch for the diplomacy needed here, as well as his fitness for the
+great military task of barring the enemy from the Channel ports, that
+determined Joffre in nominating him to the place.
+
+In 1912 General Foch had been the head of the French military
+commission sent to witness the British army maneuvers at Cambridge.
+
+He speaks no English; and not many British generals at that time spoke
+much French.  Yet he somehow managed to get on, with the aid of
+interpreters, so that his relations with the British officers were not
+only cordial, in a superficial social way, but important in their
+results of deepened understanding on his part and of respect on theirs.
+
+His study of what seemed to him the military strength and weakness of
+France's great neighbor and ally was minute and comprehensive.
+
+In his opinion, the soldiers of Britain were excellent; but he was
+fearful that their commanders lacked seasoned skill to direct them
+effectively.  This lack he laid to that apparent inability to believe
+in the imminence of war, which was even more prevalent in Britain, with
+her centuries of inviolate security, than in France.
+
+Two years before the long-suspended sword fell, Foch foresaw clearly
+what would be the difficulties in the way of England when she should
+gird herself for land conflict.  Doubtless he had resolved in his mind
+plans for helping her to meet and to overcome them.
+
+Now he was placed where he could render aid--where he _must_ render aid.
+
+After the Battle of the Marne Sir John French wanted his army moved up
+north, nearer to its channel communications--that is to say, to its
+source of supplies.  And on October 1 Joffre began to facilitate this
+movement.  It was just well under way when Foch arrived in the north.
+
+And on October 9 the gallant Belgian army withdrew from Antwerp and
+made its way to the Yser under cover of French and British troops.
+
+Foch soon saw that an allied offensive would not be possible then; that
+the most they could hope to do was to hold back the invading forces.
+
+Until October 24 he remained at Doullens, twenty miles north of Amiens.
+Then he removed his headquarters to the ancient town of Cassel, about
+eighteen miles west and a little south of Ypres.
+
+From there he was able to reach in a few hours' time any strategic part
+of the north front and from this actual watch-tower (Cassel is on an
+isolated hill more than 500 feet high, and commands views of portions
+of France, Belgium, and even--on a clear day--of the chalky cliffs of
+England; St. Omer, Dunkirk, Ypres, and Ostend are all visible from its
+heights), he was to direct movements affecting the destinies of all
+three nations.
+
+The Belgians, whose sublime stand had thwarted Germany's murderous plan
+against an unready world, were a sad little army when they reached the
+Yser about mid October.  It was not what they had endured that
+contributed most to break their spirit; but what they had been unable
+to prevent.
+
+To those heroic men who had left their beautiful country to the
+arch-fiends of destruction, their parents and wives and children to
+savages who befoul the name of beasts; who no longer had any
+possessions, nor munitions wherewith to make another stand on Belgian
+soil; to them Foch took fresh inspiration with his calm and tremendous
+personality; to them he sent his splendid Forty-second Division to
+swell their ranks so frightfully depleted in Honor's cause; to them he
+gave the suggestion of opening their sluices and drowning out of their
+last little corner of Belgium the enemy they could not otherwise
+dislodge.
+
+This done, the next problem of Foch was to establish relations with Sir
+John French whereby the most cordial and complete cooperation might be
+insured between the British Field Marshal and the French commander of
+the armies in the north.
+
+There are several graphic accounts of interviews which took place
+between these generals.
+
+It was on October 28 that Foch saw the success of the opened sluices
+and the consequent salvation to the heroic Belgians of a corner of
+their own earth whereon to maintain their sovereignty.
+
+On the 30th the English suffered severe reverses in spite of the aid
+lent them by eight battalions of French soldiers and artillery
+reinforcements.  In consequence, they had had to cede considerable
+ground, their line was pierced, and the flank of General Dubois' army,
+adjoining theirs, was menaced.
+
+When word of this disaster reached Foch that night he at once set out
+from Cassel for French's headquarters at Saint Omer.
+
+It was 1 A.M. when he arrived.  Marshal French was asleep.  He was
+waked to receive his visitor.
+
+"Marshal," said Foch, "your line is cracked?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Have you any resources?"
+
+"I have none."
+
+"Then I give you mine; the gap must be stopped at once; if we allow our
+lines to be pierced at a single point we are lost, because of the
+masses our enemy has to pour through it.  I have eight battalions of
+the Thirty-second Division that General Joffre has sent me.  Take them
+and go forward!"
+
+The offer was most gratefully received.  At two o'clock the orders were
+given; the gap was stopped.
+
+Nevertheless, the British despaired of their ability to hold.  Marshal
+French had no reserves, and decided to fall back.
+
+A liaison officer hastened to notify General Dubois that the British
+were about to retire, and General Dubois betook himself in all speed to
+Vlamertinghe, the Belgian headquarters, to notify their commanding
+general.  Foch happened to be with the Belgian general.  And while
+these three were conferring, the liaison officer (Jamet) saw the
+automobile of Marshal French pass by.
+
+Realizing the importance of the British commander's presence at that
+interview, Jamet ventured to stop him and suggest his attendance.
+
+Foch implored French to prevent retreat.  French declared there was
+nothing else for him to do--his men were exhausted, he had no reserves.
+Foch pointed out to him the incalculable consequences of yielding.
+
+"It is necessary to hold in spite of everything!" he cried; "to hold
+until death.  What you propose would mean a catastrophe.  Hold on!
+I'll help you."
+
+And as he talked he wrote his suggestions on a piece of paper he found
+on the table before him, and passed it to the British commander.
+
+Marshal French read what was written, at once added to it, "execute the
+order of General Foch," signed it, and gave it to one of his staff
+officers.
+
+And the Channel ports were saved.
+
+But a greater thing even than that was foreshadowed: Foch had begun to
+demonstrate what was in him before which not only the men of his
+command must bow but the generals of other nations also.
+
+One of the staff officers of General Foch who was closely associated
+with him there in the north in that time of great anxiety, has given us
+a pen-picture of the chief as his aides often saw him then.  Doubtless
+it is a good picture also, except for differences in trifling details,
+of the great commander as he has been on many and many a night since,
+while the destinies of millions hung in the balance of his decisions.
+
+"All is silence.  The little town of Cassel is early asleep.  On the
+rough pavement of the Grande Place, occasional footsteps break the
+stillness.  Now they are those of a staff officer on his way to his
+billet.  Now it is the sentry moving about to warm himself up a bit.
+Then silence again.
+
+"In a little office of the Hotel de Ville, a man is seated at a table.
+His elbows are on a big military map.  A telephone is at his hand.  He
+waits--to hear the results of orders he has given.  And while he waits
+he chews an unlighted cigar and divides his attention between the map
+and the clock--an old Louis XVI timepiece with marble columns, which
+ticks off the minutes almost soundlessly.  How slowly its hands go
+round!  How interminable seems the wait for news!
+
+"Someone knocks, and Colonel Weygand, chief of staff, enters; he has a
+paper in his hand: 'Telephoned from the Ninth army at 1.15 A.M.' . . .
+
+"The general has raised his head; his eyes are shining.
+
+"'Good! good!'
+
+"His plans are working out successfully; the reinforcements he sent for
+have arrived in time.  There is nothing more he can do now; so he will
+go to bed.
+
+"A last look at the map.  Then his eye-glasses, at the end of their
+string, are tucked away in the upper pocket of his coat.  The general
+puts on his black topcoat and his cap.
+
+"In the hall, the gendarme on guard duty gets up, quickly, from the
+chair wherein he is dozing.
+
+"The general salutes him with a brisk gesture, but with it he seems to
+say: 'Sleep on, my good fellow; I'm sorry to have disturbed you.'
+
+"At the foot of the grand staircase, the sentry presents arms; and one
+of the staff officers joins the commander, to accompany him to the
+house of the notary who is extending him hospitality.
+
+"A few hours later, very early in the morning, the general is back
+again at his office."
+
+Thus he was at Cassel, as he directed those operations on the Yser by
+which he checked the German attempt to reach Calais and Dunkirk, and
+revealed to the military world a new strategist of the first order.
+
+By November 15 (six weeks after arriving in the north) Foch had the
+high command of the German army as completely thwarted in its design as
+it had been at the Marne.  It had fallen to Foch to defeat the German
+plan on the east (Lorraine), in the center (Marne) and on the west
+(Ypres).  And the consequences of this frustration that he dealt them
+in Flanders were calculated to be "at least equal to the victory of the
+Marne."  Colonel Requin calls that Battle of the Yser "like a preface
+to the great victory of 1918."
+
+In the spring of 1915 Foch left Cassel and took up headquarters at
+Frevent, between Amiens and Doullens, whence he directed those
+engagements in Artois which demonstrated that though trench warfare was
+not the warfare he had studied and prepared for, and nearly all its
+problems were new, he was master of it not less than he would have been
+of a cavalry warfare.
+
+In the autumn of 1915, Foch moved nearer to Amiens--to the village of
+Dury in the immediate outskirts of the ancient capital of Picardy.  For
+the next chapter in his history was to be the campaign of the Somme
+including the first great offensive of France in the war, which,
+together with the Verdun defense, forced the Germans not only again to
+re-make their calculations, but to withdraw to the Hindenburg line.
+
+On September 30, 1916 (just before his sixty-fifth birthday, on which
+his retirement from active service was due), he was "retained without
+age limit" in the first section of the general staff of the French army.
+
+Honors were beginning to crowd upon him as the debt of France and of
+her allies to his genius began to be realized.  Responsibility vested
+in him became heavier and heavier as he demonstrated his ability to
+bear it.  But always, say those who were nearest him, "a great,
+religious serenity pervaded and illumined his soul."
+
+This is a serenity not of physical calm.  Foch is intensely nervous,
+almost ceaselessly active.  His body is frail, racked with suffering,
+worn down by the enormous strains imposed upon it.  But the
+self-mastery _within_ is always apparent; and it inspires confidence,
+and renewed effort, in all who come in contact with him.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+THE SUPREME COMMANDER OF THE ALLIED ARMIES
+
+After his position in the first section of the General Staff had been
+made independent of age limits, General Foch was relieved (for the
+autumn and winter at least, during which time no operations of
+importance were expected) of active command of a group of armies; and
+at once began the organization of a bureau devoted to the study of
+great military questions affecting not the French lines alone but those
+of France's allies.
+
+[Illustration: General Petain--Marshal Haig--General Foch--General
+Pershing]
+
+At first the headquarters of this bureau were at Senlis, near Paris.
+Then they were moved close to France's eastern border where Foch and
+his associates studied ways and means of meeting a possible attack
+through Switzerland--if Germany resolved to add that crime to her
+category--or across northern Italy.
+
+So clearly had Foch foreseen what would happen in the Venetian plain,
+that he had his plan of French reinforcement perfected long in advance,
+even to the schedule for dispatching troop trains to the Piave front.
+
+In January, 1917, Marshal Joffre reached the age of retirement (65).
+He was venerated and loved throughout France as few men have ever been.
+Gratitude for his great gifts and great character filled every heart to
+overflowing.  His country had no honor great enough to express its
+sense of his service to France.  Yet it was felt that for the
+operations of the future, the interests of France and of her allies
+would be best furthered with another strategist in command of the
+armies in the field.  Joffre's retirement was therefore effected.
+
+Joffre is an engineer, a master-builder of fortifications, a great
+defense soldier.  But defense would not end the war.  France must look
+to her greatest offensive strategist.
+
+There could be no question who that strategist was.  No one knew it
+quite so well as Marshal Joffre.  And one of the most splendid things
+about that mighty and noble man is the spirit in which he concurred in
+(if, indeed, he did not suggest) the change which meant that another
+should lead the armies of France to victory.
+
+The appointment of General Foch as head of the General Staff was made
+on May 15, 1917, while Marshal Joffre was in the United States to
+confer with our officials regarding our part in the war.  On the same
+date General Philippe Petain, the heroic defender of Verdun, who had
+been Chief of Staff for a month, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of
+all French armies operating on the French front.
+
+General Foch installed himself at the Invalides, and addressed himself
+to the study of all the allies' fronts, the assembling American army,
+and to another task for which he was signally fitted: that of
+coordinating the plans and purposes of the Generalissimo and the
+government.
+
+Wherever General Foch goes, one finds him creating harmony and, through
+harmony, doubling everyone's strength.
+
+He "gets on" with everybody, but not in the way that sort of thing is
+too generally done--not by methods which have come to be called
+diplomatic and which involve a great deal of surface affability, of
+wordy beating about the bush and concealing one's real purposes from
+persons who see his hand and wonder if they are bluffing him about
+theirs.
+
+Foch has no stomach for this sort of thing.  His whole bent is toward
+discovering the right thing to do and then making it so plain to others
+that it is the right thing that they adopt it gladly and cooperate in
+it with ardor.
+
+In council he is still the great teacher striving always not merely to
+make his principles remembered, but to have them shared.
+
+The eminent French painter, Lucien Jonas, who has served in Artois, at
+Verdun, on the Somme and in Italy, and has been appointed painter of
+the Army Museum at Des Invalides, was commissioned to make a picture of
+General Foch holding an allies' council of war at Versailles.
+
+It was, of course, impossible for Jonas to be actually present at a
+council meeting.  But it was arranged that he should sit outside a
+glass door through which he could see all, but hear nothing.
+
+"General Foch," he tells us, "held his auditors in a sort of
+fascination.  One felt that in his explanations there was not a flaw,
+not a hesitancy.  All seemed clear, plain, irresistible."
+
+This power was his in great degree in the years before the war.  But
+now men who listen to him know that his perceptions are not merely
+logical--they are workable.  His performances prove the worth of his
+theories.
+
+On March 21, 1918, Ludendorff launched his great offensive against the
+British army.  The line bent; it cracked.  Amiens seemed doomed; the
+British in France were threatened with severance from their
+allies--with envelopment!
+
+After four days of onrushing disaster a conference was called to meet
+at Doullens--a conference of representatives of the allied governments.
+Something must be done to coordinate the various "fronts," to put them
+under a supreme command.
+
+Foch was hastily empowered to order whatever he deemed advisable to
+prevent the separation of the English and French armies.  It is
+apparent that the wide powers thus hurriedly given to him were bestowed
+with the approval of every member of the conference.  In October, 1918,
+however, in responding to a note of greeting from Lloyd-George on the
+occasion of his sixty-seventh birthday, Foch recognized the weight of
+the British Prime Minister's influence at the conference:
+
+"I am greatly touched," he replied, "by your congratulations and thank
+you sincerely.
+
+"I do not forget that it was to your insistence that I owe the position
+which I occupy to-day."
+
+Foch's new responsibilities were laid upon him on March 26.  By evening
+of the 28th he had the situation so well in hand that he was able to
+hold in check the German onslaught without even employing all the
+troops he had brought up for that purpose.  He had averted what
+threatened to be the worst disaster of the war, and he had reserves in
+readiness against a new and augmented attack.  This in two days!
+
+On the 30th an official announcement told all the world that the
+destinies of the allied armies were by common consent confided to the
+general direction of Ferdinand Foch.
+
+On that same day there was made public, by the French war authorities,
+something which had taken place and had contributed in a degree we are
+not yet able to state, to the investment of Foch with supreme power.
+This was a visit made by General Pershing to Foch.  In the presence of
+Foch, Petain, Clemenceau and Loucheur (Minister of Munitions) Pershing
+made the following declaration:
+
+"I come to tell you that the American people would hold it a great
+honor if our troops were engaged in the present battle.  I ask you this
+in my name and in theirs.  At this moment there is nothing to be
+thought of but combat.  Infantry, artillery, aviation--all that we have
+is yours.  Use them as you will.  There are more to come--as many more
+as shall be needed.  I am here solely to say to you that the American
+people will be proud to be engaged in the greatest and most glorious
+battle in history."
+
+[Illustration: General Foch--General Pershing]
+
+On April 5, a week after his appointment to the supreme command was
+announced, Foch granted an interview to a group of war correspondents.
+Their various accounts differ very slightly.  Instead of quoting any
+one I will make a digest of them.
+
+They found the general installed in a provincial mansion, place not
+named.  The room he occupied was nearly bare; an old table, an
+armchair, a telephone, a huge war map, no profusion of papers, no "air
+of importance."
+
+Foch was writing in a notebook.  He rose, when he had finished his
+entry among those epoch-making memoranda, and received his visitors.
+He had but a few minutes to give, yet he realized the importance of the
+occasion and treated it accordingly.  These men were to send to
+millions of people in the great democracies of France, Britain and
+America their pen pictures of the man just invested with the greatest
+military responsibility any man in the world's history has ever borne.
+Battles must be fought, but also those people had a right to such a
+sense of participation as only their press could give them; it was
+their issue; their attitude toward it was the foundation of their
+nation's morale.  Foch has neither time nor taste for talk about
+himself, but he is no war autocrat; he is, as he constantly reiterates,
+a son of France, defending human liberties.  He might not have much
+time to give journalists, but it is not in him to minimize their place
+in a world where the will of the majority prevails and the press does
+much to shape that will.
+
+His manner on that occasion was calm, unhurried, but very direct, to
+the point.
+
+"Well, gentlemen," said he, "our affairs are not going badly; are they?
+The boche has been halted since March 27.  He has, doubtless,
+encountered some obstacle.  We have stopped him.  Now we shall endeavor
+to do better.  I do not see that there is anything more to say.
+
+"But as to yourselves, keep at your task.  It is a time when everyone
+ought to work steadfastly.  Work with your pens.  We will go on working
+with our arms."
+
+"I regret," wrote Lieutenant d'Entraygues in the Paris _Temps_, "only
+one thing: that all the people of France were not able to see and hear
+this soldier as he spoke to us.  They would know why it is not possible
+to doubt our victory."
+
+It was probably about that time that Major Darnley Stuart-Stephens
+wrote of Foch, for the _English Review_.
+
+"The man who has been consecrated by destiny to the saving from Moloch
+of this globe's civilization, is he who will prove once more that in
+the conflict between the finely tempered sword and the finely tempered
+brain, it is the mental asset that will prevail."
+
+Major Stuart-Stephens had studied the "mental assets" of Ferdinand Foch.
+
+"Now and again at his lectures." he wrote, "I have noticed that
+far-away look of the mystic in his eyes that I remember so well in
+those of that other soldier-saint, Charles Gordon."
+
+It was that spiritual greatness in Foch which everyone felt, on which
+everyone brought into contact with him based his unfaltering faith in
+the outcome.
+
+"We do not know," says an editorial writer in the New York _Evening
+Sun_, "what the judgments of the military critics will be when they
+have carefully studied and sifted the evidence, but to a layman it
+looks as if Foch was not merely a very great general but one of the
+greatest generals of all recorded history . . . as great a general as
+Napoleon or Caesar or Hannibal or Alexander."
+
+But whether they put him, as a military man, on a par with Napoleon, or
+come sapiently to the conclusion that he was no more than a very able
+general fortunate in being in command at the time the Germanic morale
+was breaking, it will never be possible to disprove that he was a
+supreme leader of men in a great war of ideals--an incarnation of all
+those qualities of faith and fervor, of self-mastery and dependence on
+the Divine, of self-realization and with it devotion to the rights and
+progress of others, which are embodied in the Christian democracy for
+whose preservation millions have gladly died.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+BRINGING GERMANY TO ITS KNEES
+
+Faith in the ability of Foch to lead us all to victory was, however, not
+to endure without its grave tests.
+
+The German drive of March 21 was checked by his co-ordination of Allied
+forces.  But checking the enemy just before he reached the key of the
+Channel ports was not defeating him; preventing him from driving a wedge
+between the British and French armies was only diverting him to another
+point of attack.  He was desperate--that enemy!  He knew that he must win
+a decisive victory soon, or see his own maladies destroy him.
+
+He knew the genius of Foch; he knew the immense increase in strength that
+the Allies had achieved in unifying their command.  He may have
+underestimated the worth in battle of our American fighters; but it is
+scarcely probable that he underestimated the worth, behind the lines, of
+our army of railroad builders, harbor constructors, supply handlers, and
+the like.  He knew that whether we could fight or not, we had money and
+men and were pouring both into France to help win the war.
+
+And he also knew that victory after victory which he had won had not only
+failed to increase his might but had, somehow, weakened him; country
+after country had fallen before his sword or before his
+poison-propaganda--or both!--his plunder was vast, his accessions in
+fighting men available for the Western front were formidable--yet
+something in his vitals was wrong, terribly wrong; he must stop, soon,
+and look to his health, or he would be too far-gone for recovery.  But
+not now! not now!  "They" must be crushed now or never!
+
+So he fought like a maddened beast whose usual cunning has given place to
+frenzied desperation.
+
+Again and again and again he lunged--now here, now there.  And the
+defenders of civilization fell back and back, before him.
+
+Where was that calm, quiet man who had said: "Well, gentlemen, our
+affairs are not going badly; are they?"
+
+"The boche," he had said, "has been halted . . . now we shall endeavor to
+do better."
+
+What had happened?  The boche was _not_ halted!  He was, in fact,
+shelling Paris!
+
+It was in those days that the "soldier-saint," as Major Stuart-Stephens
+has called him, must have had need of all his faith and all his fortitude.
+
+We don't know much, yet, except of a very superficial sort, about those
+days.  We know what happened in them insofar as army movements are
+concerned, and the heartbreaking re-occupation of towns and villages
+where French and American restoration squads were working to make
+habitable those places the Huns had laid waste; and the continued
+shelling of Paris by the "mystery gun"; and the great exodus of civilians
+from the capital as the ravaging hordes drew nearer and always nearer.
+
+These things we know; but not what Foch was thinking--except that he was
+not thinking of defeat.
+
+If there was a true heart in France that ever for a moment doubted the
+outcome of the war, or dreamed of abandoning the conflict before it had
+made the future safe, I have never heard of that one.
+
+Certainly the man who was leading them never doubted.  Nor was it on his
+own skill that his faith was founded.  He knew Who would give his cause
+the victory.
+
+
+In the fifth German drive of 1918 the enemy crossed the Marne!  Paris was
+almost in sight--Paris! where millions of French were celebrating the
+fall of the Bastille and the birth of freedom as if the leering, jeering
+enemies of all freemen were not so close to the gates of the Capital that
+the gleam of their tusks might almost have been seen from the city's
+outermost ramparts.  Certainly the drunken fools within--drunk with their
+deep draughts of liberty--could hear the snarling and snapping of the
+approaching wolves, the baying of Big Bertha, the barking of her smaller
+sisters!  But it would be like those crazy French to dance and sing and
+celebrate the overthrow of autocracy, while an autocracy the like of
+which no French King had ever exercised was on the eve of engulfing them.
+
+So the German General Staff said, sneering, as it laid its plans for the
+final drive on Paris.  They would start that drive on the night of July
+14, while the fools were celebrating, when they were least expecting an
+attack.  Probably most of them would be drunk.  Oh, almost certainly!
+Their resistance would be weak, And for all time thereafter it would make
+an impressive tale for schoolbooks throughout the Pan-Germanized world,
+that democracy was dispatched in her last orgy of exultation.
+
+As clearly as if he were not only present in the councils of German
+Headquarters, but present inside the thick round skulls about the council
+table, this boche attitude and intent was comprehended by the small frail
+man at Mormant, where his Headquarters then were.
+
+On that night of July 14 he began the great offensive which never stopped
+until the whining boche was east of the Rhine!
+
+His Intelligence Department told him that the German drive would probably
+begin at ten minutes past midnight.  They might be quite wrong, but that
+was their guess.  Foch was all-but sure they were not wrong; that it was
+not in German nature to reason other than as I have described.
+
+An hour before midnight the Germans were (doubtless) surprised by some
+lively action of French artillery.  Strange!  But it couldn't mean
+anything, of course!  So the boche came on.  The behavior of the French
+was not quite what he had expected; one thing after another happened that
+was not in his calculations.  But that did not argue aught against the
+calculations!  It was the exasperating habit of the French to do
+unexpected things.  Most annoying!  But not able to affect the outcome,
+of course.
+
+On July 18th they got "more unexpected still"--they and sundry "green"
+troops from the flaccid, fatuous U. S. A.!  Some "hounds of the devil"
+were let loose upon the gray-clad armies of righteousness.  It was
+outrageous the way those sons of Satan fought!  They rushed upon the
+legions of the Lord's anointed as if killing Germans were the noblest
+work a man could be about.
+
+So many things happened that were not down on paper--in the plans of the
+German General Headquarters!  It became distressingly evident that these
+Yanks knew as little, and cared as little, what was expected of them as
+the stupid Britishers or the mercurial French or the suicidal Belgians.
+They didn't know how to fight--they couldn't know--they had never done
+any fighting, and whom had they had to teach them warfare?  They were
+absurd.  They didn't know the simplest rules of war--they didn't know
+enough to surrender when they were surrounded, cut off, outnumbered.
+They fought on!  They didn't know how to fight; but Lord! how they could
+kill Germans.  And then they were such fools that their medical corps
+came out onto the battlefield and when they found a German who wasn't
+dead but was suffering, their doctors bound up his wounds and gave him
+water to quench his raging thirst, and left him for his own comrades to
+carry away and nurse--that, instead of gouging his eyes out with a
+bayonet's end or bashing in his skull with the butt of a gun!  Strange
+people!  They never could become good slaves of Kultur; so the wounded
+Germans whose agonies they had assuaged, rose up on their elbows and shot
+them dead.
+
+
+In six hours the Allies, not only reinforced but recreated by this tide
+of new life, new eagerness, re-took twice as much ground on the
+Soissons-Rheims salient as the Germans had won in six days' desperate
+advance.
+
+When the word to fight came to the men of the American army, it was less
+like a command to them than like a release, a long-desired permission.
+Many, if not most, of them had for nearly four years been straining at
+the leash which held them from the place where their sense of honor told
+them they should be.
+
+[Illustration: Marshal Foch, Executive Head of the Allied Forces]
+
+"They were superb," Marshal Foch has said, paying wholehearted tribute to
+them.  "There is no other word.  Our armies were fatigued by years of
+relentless struggle and the mantle of war lay heavily upon them.  We were
+magnificently comforted by the virility of the Americans.  The youth of
+the United States brought a renewal of the hope that hastened victory.
+Not only was this moral factor of the highest importance, but also the
+enormous material aid placed at our disposal.  Nobody among us will ever
+forget what America did."
+
+Let us hope that neither will any among us ever forget for a single
+instant how much was paid for us in blood and anguish by those who held
+the beast at bay from us for long years before we put forth a stroke in
+our own defense or in friendly help or in support of our ideals.
+
+That our aid arrived in time to help turn the tide, that our men were
+magnificent when their opportunity was given them, is cause not for
+vaunting ourselves, but only for gratefulness that our honor remains to
+us--that we have not had to accept life and liberty at other men's hands
+while our hands stayed in our pockets.
+
+Our fighting men redeemed us in our own eyes; they restored our souls'
+dignity; for this we can never be grateful enough to them.  But we can
+never be braggart about it.  It might so easily have come too late!
+
+
+On August 6, Foch was made Marshal of France.
+
+And two days later, the British, on the Somme, launched the first really
+successful offensive of the war--not stopping a drive, but inaugurating
+one.
+
+At last Foch was able to make war as he had for years contended that war
+should be made: The way to make war is to attack.
+
+It was his plan, now that he had the men to make this possible, to keep
+the enemy busy by striking first at one point of the long line running
+from Belgium to the Piave, and then at another.  And by the first of
+September the Allied line on the Western front was back where it ran in
+the deadlock of 1915-16 while the attack on Verdun was raging.
+
+"General Pershing," Foch has said, "wished to have his army concentrated,
+as far as possible, in an American sector.  The Argonne and the heights
+of the Meuse were a sector hard to tackle.  So I said to him: 'All right;
+your men have the devil's own punch.  They will get away with it.  Go to
+it.'"
+
+And they went!  That was the famous St. Mihiel salient.  The American
+infantry started their advance there on September 26.  They went forward
+with a rush.  On their left, the French advanced as rapidly, and on
+October 1 re-took St. Quentin, which the Germans had held since the
+beginning of the war.  October 2 the British, operating on the left of
+the French, reached Cambrai which also had been in German hands for more
+than four years.
+
+October 4 the Hohenzollern King of Bulgaria deserted his doomed allies
+and his throne and began looking for a place of refuge.
+
+And on that day the Hohenzollern government at Berlin had so little
+relish for the situation on all fronts, that it besought the President of
+the United States "to take in hand the restoration of peace, acquaint all
+the belligerent states with this request and invite them to send
+plenipotentiaries for the purpose of opening negotiations. . . .  With a
+view to avoiding further bloodshed, the German Government requests the
+immediate conclusion of an armistice on land and water and in air."
+
+October 10, Austria and Turkey joined Germany in appealing for peace
+terms.  Notes continued to pass between the Germanic capitals and
+Washington, D. C.
+
+But Foch fought on.
+
+The Americans had cleared the last corner of the Argonne of German
+machine-gun nests and gunners, and were widening their offensive on the
+Meuse.  The French had taken Laon, and were pushing on.  The British had
+taken Lens and Cambrai and were advancing on Douai and Lille.
+
+On the 23rd of October the President of the United States referred the
+matter of the armistice to the Allies.  On the 29th, the Allied War
+Council met at Versailles to fix the armistice conditions.
+
+(Foch meanwhile had launched an offensive against the Austrians on the
+Piave.)
+
+Now, an armistice is supposed to be a cessation of hostilities for an
+agreed period, all combatants to remain as they were; if the parley for
+peace is not successful, the struggle is to resume where it paused,
+neither side having gained or lost, except as delay may or may not have
+been favorable to them.
+
+Foch had not the smallest intention of granting the hard-pushed enemy
+that sort of an armistice--time to recuperate, to parley while Winter
+came on and postponed the resumption of his offensive until Spring.  To
+do that meant to prolong the war probably another year, at enormous cost
+in lives, suffering, materials.
+
+What he would grant would be an armistice in which the enemy, so far from
+keeping his positions would abandon them all and retire far behind the
+Rhine; in which the Allies, so far from keeping their positions, would
+follow the retreating enemy into his own country, and police it; in which
+the enemy, so far from resting on his sword, would hand it over--his
+swords, and his cannon, and his machine-guns, and his fleet and his
+submarines and his aircraft and his locomotives; in which he would
+release all Allied prisoners and not ask the release of any of his
+captured men.
+
+The terms were the most ignominious ever imposed upon a prostrate enemy.
+The sole reason for referring to them as "armistice terms" was that peace
+terms are final and absolute, and these were not final--they would be
+made much worse if the Germans failed to satisfy their conquerors on
+every point.
+
+When the Allied War Council had agreed with Foch on the armistice terms,
+he said:
+
+"Within ten days or a fortnight I can break the German army in three,
+envelop a section of it, and take a million prisoners.  Is there any
+condition which, in the opinion of any of you, could be imposed upon the
+enemy then, more conclusive than those of the armistice?"
+
+No one could think of anything that might add a jot to the completeness
+of Germany's subjugation.
+
+"Then, gentlemen," answered the Commander-in-Chief, "we will proceed with
+the armistice.  When all is won that can be won for the safety and honor
+of France and her Allies, I cannot for the sake of prestige or
+gratification or personal glory, order action that would cost the life of
+any parents' young son, any little child's father.  I am a bereaved
+father.  I think of the fathers and mothers whom further fighting must
+bereave.  The enveloping advance which our armies could make in ten to
+fourteen days would cost us thousands of lives, many maimed men.  If
+those things must be to bring the triumph of Right, we can bear them
+again as we have borne them these years past.  But not for any other
+reason!"
+
+"The German high command," he said later, at Treves, "was not ignorant of
+the fact that it faced a colossal disaster.  When it surrendered,
+everything was prepared for an offensive in which it would infallibly
+have succumbed.  The Germans were lost.  They capitulated.  That is the
+whole story."
+
+The German plenipotentiaries arrived at the French front at nine o'clock
+on the evening of November 7, and were escorted to the Chateau Francfort
+to spend the night.  The next morning they were taken to Rethondes in the
+forest of Compiegne.  There Foch (whose headquarters were at Semis,
+twenty-two miles nearer Paris) awaited them in his special train.
+
+I may be quite wrong about his reason for receiving the German envoys in
+a railway carriage.  But my surmise about it is that he did not want any
+fixed place associated with Germany's humiliation until those empowered
+to act for the defunct empire of William I came to the Gallery of Mirrors
+at Versailles and there, where the German empire had been proclaimed,
+witnessed the formal degradation before the representatives of all
+civilization of their nation that was built on the principle that Might
+is Right.
+
+Next to this in poetic justice would have been to summon those
+plenipotentiaries before him at Senlis where their troops had committed
+such insensate horrors in September, 1914.  But for reasons of his own
+(which we may be sure had nothing to do with courtesy) Foch went part way
+to meet them.
+
+They complained, afterwards, that he received them coldly.  If he was
+able to keep his manner cold, it was only because his self-command is so
+great.  For no other man in the world knows so well as he the extent and
+the enormity of the crimes those men and their masters and their minions
+are guilty of.  A primitive man, or any undisciplined modern man, would
+have leaped at their throats.  Instead, Foch treated them as if they were
+human though not humane beings, and read to them slowly and in a loud
+voice, the terms of the armistice for which they had asked.
+
+Mathias Erzberger, their spokesman, requested a cessation of hostilities
+whilst a courier carried the terms to German General Headquarters at Spa.
+
+There the Kaiser, Hindenburg and others awaited particulars.
+
+Foch declined to cease hostilities.  He knew his enemy too well.
+
+As soon as the Kaiser learned what the terms were, he abdicated his
+throne and fled his country.  When the courier had returned, and the
+German plenipotentiaries once more presented themselves before Foch
+(again in his car) the "War Lord" of all the world was cowering in a
+Holland hiding place, his blubbering heir was in another, and a Social
+Republic had been declared in Berlin.
+
+How the Hohenzollerns knew the terms of the armistice full twenty-four
+hours before the courier's return to German Headquarters at Spa, I have
+not seen explained or heard any one conjecture.
+
+From Rethondes to Spa is a matter of some two hundred and fifty miles, by
+road, and nearly forty-eight hours were consumed by the courier in
+covering that distance; he did not reach German Headquarters until ten
+o'clock Sunday morning, November 10.  But the Kaiser abdicated and the
+Crown Prince renounced his claims to the throne, in Spa on Saturday
+morning, and they were both out of the country when the courier was
+received, his papers were read, and he was sent back with word to the
+plenipotentiaries to get amelioration of some conditions, if possible,
+but in any event to sign.
+
+If the press reports are not in error as to the time the courier arrived
+at Spa, then the terms of the armistice must have been made known to the
+Hohenzollerns by telegraph or other quick communication very early on
+Saturday--probably as soon as the courier recrossed his own lines, which
+he could have done not many hours after quitting Compiegne forest.  And
+Berlin seems to have known the terms at least as soon; for it was "the
+receipt of an urgent telegram" from Berlin, which the Kaiser is reported
+to have read with a shiver, that precipitated the abdication and flight.
+
+These details are significant, even in so brief a sketch of Foch's life
+as this is; for in their very confusion and obscurity they tell a great
+story of what was either realized or feared in the German camps and in
+the German capital.
+
+The magnitude of that which Foch was ready (and was by his enemies known
+to be ready) to do could not be better conveyed to us than by the panicky
+haste of those who knew themselves doomed, to make any concessions but at
+all costs to avert Foch's next move.
+
+Shortly after midnight on Sunday, the German delegation (which had by
+Foch's orders been scrupulously served in the matter of their creature
+comforts) again presented itself before him in his railway car.  Four
+hours were spent discussing the possibility of performing some of the
+conditions exacted, and modifications were made which in no degree
+altered the completeness of Germany's subjugation.
+
+Then the papers were signed.
+
+The Germans were punctiliously escorted to their own lines.  I have not
+heard what Foch did; but it would not surprise me to learn that he went
+back to bed, and to sleep.
+
+Perhaps, after giving orders for notifying his Government and her Allies,
+he sent a message to Madame Foch.  But I am quite sure that otherwise he
+did not "celebrate," except that he gave God thanks for the victory.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+DURING THE ARMISTICE AND AFTER
+
+When the French army rode into Metz, Foch was not at its head.  There
+may or there may not be another man who could and would have foregone
+that satisfaction; but certainly there are not many.
+
+It does not seem probable that he avoided the occasion; although it
+would be like him to take advantage of some good excuse for absence if
+he thought there was one of his generals who specially deserved and
+desired the honor of that triumphant entry into reclaimed Metz.
+
+The attitude of Foch toward praise and plaudits and personal glory is,
+it seems to me, one of the supremely great things about him.  I cannot
+imagine him "ducking" shyly away from any place where he knew he ought
+to for fear of salvos of acclaim; it would be as unsoldierly to him to
+dodge cheers as to flee from battle, if that way his duty lay.  And,
+similarly, I cannot imagine him going anywhere to gratify his personal
+feelings and collect the praises due him, if there was an urgent reason
+for his being somewhere else.
+
+[Illustration: Ferdinand Foch.  Showing His Insignia as a Marshal of
+France, Consisting of Seven Stars on Each Sleeve and Four Rows of Oak
+Leaves on His Cap.]
+
+The business, military and executive, of seeing that the armistice
+terms were fulfilled, was tremendous.  Much of it devolved upon him and
+made inconceivably great requisitions on that genius he has "for the
+command of enormous material difficulties"--a genius he first displayed
+in getting the Ninth Army across the Marne in pursuit of the fleeing
+Germans, in September, 1914; and which he further evidenced in every
+succeeding phase, beginning with the reconstitution of all the forces
+fighting on the Yser.
+
+The armistice period was a period of extreme demands on him.  In it
+there was scant opportunity to go here or there with his triumphant
+armies.  His work in the field, as a commanding general, had
+practically ceased with his removal from the Ninth Army after little
+more than a month of such command.  From the time he took up his
+headquarters on the hill at Cassel, he became "a desk man"; it was no
+longer his function to execute orders; thenceforth he had the far more
+trying duty of issuing orders--a truly awful responsibility and one
+which demands much solitude, much soul-searching as well as
+map-pondering and other weighing of the ponderable which is so easily
+off-set by the imponderable, the unguessable.
+
+There are few situations possible in life in which a man could be set
+apart with his soul and have so much demanded of his communings as was
+demanded of Foch from October, 1914, on to October, 1918.  Every
+decision he made involved lives--hundreds and thousands or hundreds of
+thousands of lives--and not one pang of what must be suffered for each
+life laid down was strange to him; his only son was among the first to
+die for France and human liberties; and one of his daughters was
+widowed; the home he "left in the joyousness of a midsummer Sunday" was
+desolate, and it stood forever to him as a symbol of the homes in
+France and latterly, in the lands of all the Allies, with whose
+best-beloved he made this or that move in the war to preserve
+civilization.  Nor were the lives he staked all that were involved;
+there were all that were incidentally menaced if his strategy
+failed--all that must suffer immediately and all that must suffer
+ultimately under the heel of the brute if the brute were not destroyed.
+
+A man who has lived thus for more than four years, sharing the
+awfulness of his burden only with Almighty God, must needs have passed
+to a spiritual plane whereon such self-considerations as still sway the
+rest of us have ceased to obtrude themselves.
+
+The quest of personal glory is as hard to associate with Ferdinand Foch
+as with the little Maid of France.  Both fought for God and for France
+and for a Cause, as their Voices directed them; that he has one of the
+best brains of modern or of all times, and that she did "not know her
+A, B, C," sets them not so far apart as the materialist might imagine;
+for the thing that made both invincible was the power of their faith to
+create an unconquerable ardor in themselves and in their men.  The
+churches in France wherein Foch knelt seeking guidance, beseeching
+strength, are likely to be doubly-consecrate, for ages, no less than
+those wherein Jeanne d'Arc prayed.  She is venerated not as a military
+leader (though she was that) but as the one who awakened the soul of
+mediaeval, much-partitioned France and made possible the
+nationalization of her country.  He will be venerated (by the great
+majority) not as "the first stategist of Europe," but as the supreme
+incarnation of that spirit which makes modern France transcendent among
+nations vowed to democracy.
+
+It is Foch's "likeness" to the myriad soldiers of France that France
+adores--not his difference from the rest.  Her poilu is her beau ideal
+of faith and courage, of patriotism and devotion to the principles of
+human rights, of cheerfulness and hopefulness, of invincibility in that
+his cause is just.  France is too essentially democratic to esteem one
+set of characteristics in the mass of men and another set in the
+leaders of men.  Foch and Joffre will live always in the hearts of
+their countrymen because, like Jeanne d'Arc, they have so much to say
+to everyone--so much that illumines every path in life wherever it is
+laid.
+
+On the 19th of December, 1918, Joffre took his seat among the Immortals
+of the French Academy.  The vacancy to which he had been elected was
+that made by the death of Jules Claretie who, before his admission to
+the Academy and before his absorption in the affairs of La Comedie
+Francaise, had written several books about the leaders of the French
+Revolution.
+
+It was Ernest Renan who delivered the address of welcome to Claretie
+(in February, 1889) and he said that it was still too soon to know
+whether those leaders of whom Claretie had written were supremely
+justified or were not.
+
+"You are young," Renan said to the new Immortal, "and you will see this
+question solved, . . . some years hence it will be known; if in ten or
+twenty years France is prosperous and free, faithful to right, strong
+in the friendship of the free peoples of the world, then the cause of
+the young Revolutionists is won; the world will enjoy the fruits of
+their endeavor without having had to know their unripe bitterness."
+
+Joffre quoted this part of Renan's address, in taking his seat.
+Claretie had not lived quite long enough to see, save with the eye of
+faith, that day Renan foretold; but Claretie's successor in the French
+Academy had seen it!  And it was like him to say:
+
+"I think, gentlemen, that in doing me the honor of receiving me into
+your august body, your desire is to pay homage to that glorious French
+army which has proved that the soul of France is steadfast for the
+rights of man, even unto death that men may be free."
+
+Accepting the honor as paid through him to the men who had proved the
+worth of that Liberty, Equality and Fraternity the Revolution declared
+and decreed, Joffre asked permission to name those to whom, he deemed,
+the gratitude of France and of France's Immortals was due.  And first
+among them he named Foch.
+
+This was gracious; it was generous; but it was more than that.  And
+though Joffre went on to name many leaders, many armies, many moral
+forces incarnate in many men as co-responsible for victory, no one
+could know quite so well as he how completely the France of which Renan
+dreamed as a glorious possibility, is realized and typified in the man
+whose name leads all the rest as having saved not France only but the
+liberties of mankind.
+
+Bonaparte, although he was not French (save technically) and not a
+democrat, captured the hearts of France in spite of all he cost them;
+because he aggrandized France, made her supreme in many things besides
+extent and power.  It is instinctive in every Frenchman (or woman, or
+child!) to revere anyone who does new credit to the name of France or
+brings new glory to it; for the passionate love of country is the
+primary religion of the French--they may or may not have another, but
+unless they are totally renegade they have that faith, that devotion.
+
+In Ferdinand Foch they have a great leader who is in no sense an
+"accident" (as Bonaparte was), a sporadic development in their midst, a
+spectacular growth on an exotic stem.  They have, rather, a
+quintessential Frenchman of to-day, even more widely representative of
+his countrymen than Lincoln was of ours.
+
+"The fame of one man," says Henri Bordeaux, "is nothing unless its
+represents the obscure deeds of the anonymous multitude."
+
+This is a typically modern idea, and typically French.  France of
+to-day would not deny the worth of any development because it was
+singular, isolate; but what she is particularly interested in is the
+possibilities of development along the lines that are followed by the
+many and are open (broadly speaking) to all.  Guynemer, for a shining
+instance, is the idol of every schoolchild in France, not for his
+daring alone, nor for the number of boche birds of prey he brought
+down; but because wealth and influence were unavailing to get him an
+opportunity beyond what the poorest, humblest youngster might have got
+in the same indomitable way; and because frail health and puny strength
+could not debar him from the sublimest exploits of daring for France.
+His circumstance--physical and material--tended to bind him to the soft
+places of earth.  His desire to serve France gave him wings to fly far
+beyond the eagles.  He has no grave.  He rides the empyrean for all
+time, to tell the youth of France how surmountable is everything to one
+who loves his country and the rights of mankind.
+
+Foch is of less legendary sort, but he, too, epitomizes France; and he
+will be increasingly potent as time goes on, irrespective of whether
+the sword is or is not superseded in the affairs of men.
+
+"The obscure deeds of the anonymous multitude" are much like his own
+obscure deeds prior to the great day when France needed him and found
+him ready.
+
+Every black-smocked schoolboy in France loitering along historic
+highways to his gray-stuccoed school, may feel in himself a Foch of
+to-morrow--and quicken his steps so that he may make himself a little
+more ready for his recitation.
+
+Every youth entering upon his military training must find in Foch a
+comrade whose influence is all toward thoroughness, "Learn to think,"
+was Foch's personal admonition for long years before he thus charged
+his students.
+
+Every teacher toiling to impart not knowledge alone but the thirst for
+knowledge, the zeal to use it nobly, has in Foch such a fellow as the
+annals of that great profession do not duplicate.  Other teachers may
+have influenced more pupils; but no human teacher ever saw such a
+demonstration of his principles--to the saving of mankind.
+
+Every good father in France may see himself in Foch--and especially
+every father who gave his son for France and her ideals.
+
+Every man whose work in life calls him to lead other men, in peace or
+in war, has supreme need of Foch; because Foch embodies those
+principles of leadership to which men are now responsive, those ideals
+toward which they are striving.  Particularly as a coordinator is Foch
+great--and potent for the future.  There is, probably, no other kind of
+service so important to the world's welfare, now, as that of bringing
+men together; making them see that fundamentally they are all, if they
+are right-minded, fighting for the same thing; and that in union there
+is strength.
+
+As a scholar, Foch is brilliant besides being profound.  As a man, he
+is simple--and France admires simplicity; he is elegant--and France
+loves the elegance that is the expression of fine thinking, fine
+feeling; he is modest of his own attainments, and proud of France's
+glory.
+
+For nearly every great commander, victory in arms has led to power in
+the state.
+
+Foch is a statesman as preeminently as he is a warrior.  His counsel
+was as weighty in the peace settlement as his strategy was in winning
+the war.
+
+But one cannot conceive him using his prestige, military or diplomatic,
+to increase his personal power.
+
+He has served God and man; he has served his country and his conviction
+of right.  He is content therewith--just as he hopes millions of men
+are content who have done the same according to their best ability.
+
+"I approach the twilight of my life," he wrote not long ago, "with the
+consciousness of a good servant who will rest in the peace of his Lord.
+Faith in eternal life, in a good and merciful God, has sustained me in
+the hardest hours.  Prayer has illumined my soul."
+
+In presenting to Foch the baton of a Marshal of France, President
+Poincare recalled certain definitions he had often heard Foch
+reiterate: "War is the department of moral force; battle, the struggle
+between two wills; victory, the moral superiority of the conqueror, the
+moral depression of the conquered."
+
+"This moral superiority," said the President of the French Republic to
+the new Marshal of France, "you have tended like a sacred flame."
+
+Always, the tone of tribute to Foch is one of veneration for the
+greatness of his soul and his preeminent ability to represent and to
+lead his people.
+
+"You are not," President Poincare went on, "of those who let themselves
+be downcast by danger; neither are you of those whom victory dazzles.
+You do not believe that we are near the end of our efforts and our
+sacrifices.  You guard against optimism as much as against depression."
+
+This he said to Foch, in the field, on August 23, 1918, when the fruits
+of victory though in sight were not yet within grasp.
+
+Had the presentation been three months later, President Poincare would
+(I think) have spoken not differently; better even than before, he
+would have known that Foch is not "of those whom victory dazzles"; and
+not less clearly than before would he have perceived that Foch does not
+"believe that we are near the end of our efforts and our sacrifices."
+
+Foch may well feel that he has done his utmost for his country and for
+mankind, in the crisis for which he prepared himself and which he met
+with such superb faith in the triumph of Right; but he certainly does
+not feel that he has ushered in the millennium; he knows what other
+demands there are and will be upon the souls of men, on their devotion
+to their country, their perception of truth and honor, and their ardor
+and ability to serve humanity.  He knows that not France alone but
+every nation has need to-day and henceforth of leaders who will do just
+what he did: personify the highest ideals of their people and prepare
+themselves to defend those ideals intelligently, unselfishly, devoutly.
+
+He has established a new standard in leadership.  Far from culminating
+an old order, he has inaugurated a new--an order which everyone may
+join who wills to serve.  Its motto is: "Right is Might; believe in the
+power of Right; learn to uphold it; strengthen others, as they come in
+contact with you, to meet the enemies of Right and to vanquish them;
+never forget that the moving power of the world is _soul_, and the laws
+of the soul were made by God."
+
+Too deep a student of history, too keen an analyst of human nature to
+entertain any illusions about the enemy he has conquered but not
+converted, Foch knows that if what he has been privileged to do for
+France and for her allies is to have any lasting value, there must be a
+league of freedom-loving peoples as strong and as united to preserve
+peace as they were to win it; and that this league must be supported by
+a general morale not one whit less devoted to the end in view than was
+the morale which won the war.
+
+Too wise to feel that the victory is his save as he was the leader who
+re-organized millions and showed them how to make their conviction of
+Right prevail, he is also too wise to wish that his were the power to
+create the world anew.  He knows that not only will the to-morrows of
+mankind be as the multitudes of mankind make them, but that they should
+be not otherwise directed; this, of all things, is what the overthrow
+of autocracy means.
+
+He helped us to shake off the Beast who sought to impose his will on
+all the world.  Briefly, at least, that Menace is restrained--thanks to
+the indomitable will of many nations and to the genius of Ferdinand
+Foch.
+
+It is for us--every one of us!--to say what shall come out of the
+security that Foch and his armies have maintained for us at so great a
+price; how long we shall maintain it and how honorably we shall use it.
+
+And to us, with this sacred obligation on us, Foch would say:
+
+"It is not enough to mean well, to desire that righteousness shall
+prevail; it is not enough even to be willing to give all, should it be
+required of you.  You must _know how_ to serve your ideals, your
+principles.  Victory always goes to those who deserve it by possessing
+the greatest power of will and intelligence."
+
+
+
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