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diff --git a/17511.txt b/17511.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c301daf --- /dev/null +++ b/17511.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4221 @@ +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." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOCH THE MAN*** + + +******* This file should be named 17511.txt or 17511.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/5/1/17511 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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