a wedge between the two, taking Esternay at the point of the bayonet, throwing into disorder everything in his advance, and on the 8th entered Montmirail over German dead.

On the morning of the 9th, his aviation service signalled that Kluck and Bülow were retreating. From that time all he had to do was to push forward. He had been the first to make a real breach in the German wall. D'Esperey now received command of army groups, which meant that he occupied the same rank as Foch, Castelnau, and Fayolle. His name thenceforth for three years was associated with operations on the Somme, in the Champagne, and on the Aisne, until June, 1918, when he received command of the Allied armies in the Balkans. Eight weeks afterward he landed in Saloniki, from which, as his base, he advanced to become the victor of the Vardar, and the first Allied general to gain a notable success in the Balkans, where so much blood had been shed and where it almost seemed as if some evil genius had refused to allow the Allies even one success.

So much good fortune was not the result of chance. D'Esperey won his victories because he deserved them. He had learned the secret of making the gods of war smile on him. He was a tremendous worker, and knew how to make others work. The Vardar campaign was fought on the hardest, most difficult sector in the war. It was a front where there were practically no roads, no depots of equipment, and no heavy artillery. The position was said by the Bulgarians to be impregnable so much so that they maintained only a handful of troops there. In eight weeks d'Esperey built roads, installed depots, caused heavy artillery to be placed in position, and organized a system of communications. On September 14 he threw Senegalese and Colonial battalions against the Bulgars, just as he had thrown regiments against the Germans at Montmirail, and again he made a breach. Through that breach he led Allied forces that for three years had been marking time on that front.

D'Esperey not only knew how to deal with terrain and cannon, he knew how to deal with men. He could make soldiers do anything, because he knew how to talk to them. He had the ready word that wins the heart of a trooper, and it is with the heart, as much as with muscle, that battles are won. For a long time before the war d'Esperey was a commanding officer in Algeria, that corner of Africa which gave glorious names to the French army in this war-Gouraud, Mangin, Degoutte-and which had been the cradle of the Foreign Legion."

Stephane Lauzanne, editor of Le Matin (Paris), in an article contributed to The Times (New York).

GENERAL ARMANDO DIAZ, COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE ITALIAN ARMY

General Diaz was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Italian armies, November 8, 1917, when General Cadorna was made Italian Military Representative at the Supreme War Council of the Allies. He was a Neapolitan by birth, and was fifty-six years old at the time of his appointment. He served with distinction as a colonel in the Libyan War.

Altho comparatively unknown outside of military circles when appointed, General Diaz had had a distinguished career. Educated at the Military College at Naples and at the Military Academy at Turin, he gained in reputation during the Abyssinian campaign, and added to it in the Libyan War, for the plan of campaign of which he was largely responsible.

After brilliant successes achieved on the Isonzo under his leadership as division commander (Twenty-third Army Corps operating on the Carso), Diaz received that promotion which ultimately led to his being made Commander-in-Chief. He was especially talented as an organizer and was a man of volcanic energy. His military experience embraced practically all branches of the service. He was secretary to three chiefs of the staff in succession, and for a time was in charge of a staff appointment where he achieved the reputation of being stern but impartial in his dealings. His character as a soldier was that of an inflexible disciplinarian who applied to himself the same rules as he enforced on others. In the daily routine of military life, evenly poised, and in the face of danger characteristically calm, General Diaz, tho southern born, had proved that self-control and calmness were not characteristics restricted to northern Italy as is commonly believed. Physically General Diaz was medium build, of dark complexion, with hair turning gray. He had a slight caste in the eye which among his fellow countrymen was held as a sign of good luck.8

GENERAL ERIC VON FALKENHAYN, CHIEF OF STAFF OF THE GERMAN ARMIES

In the early part of the war, when the Kaiser's plan for entering Paris in September, 1914, and reaching London from Paris by the end of October, had been frustrated, and the German armies forced to retreat, the Kaiser accepted the resignation of Moltke, Chief of the General Staff, who thus appeared as the scape8 Compiled from The Times (New York).

goat in the German miscalculations, and appointed in his stead General Eric von Falkenhayn, one of the cleverest of Berlin courtier-soldiers. Cold, calculating, suave, and an intriguer, the scion of one of the oldest German houses, Falkenhayn had begun his career by winning the good will of the Kaiser's sons through a brother Eugene, who had been their tutor, mentor, and military governor in their boyhood. This, together with an intimate association afterward with Field-marshal Count von Waldersee, on whose staff he served in the allied march upon Pekin in 1900, and from knowing the American-born Countess von Waldersee, a favorite aunt of the Kaiserin, brought Falkenhayn into contact with the Kaiserin, and it was not long before he won favor. He had a gift for repartee, was mentally alert and resourceful. Various accomplishments and a readiness of speech finally commended him to the Emperor as particularly well qualified to take charge of the Department of War, and especially to champion the cause of the army in the Reichstag, after the public uproar created by the sabering at Zabern of a lame and unarmed cobbler by a young infantry officer.

As Chief of Staff, Falkenhayn reigned supreme at the Kaiser's headquarters, and acquired an extraordinary ascendency over his sovereign. On the profest ground of military exigencies he was disposed to keep at a distance from Imperial Headquarters not only the Chancellor, cabinet ministers, and various statesmen and foreign diplomats, but even the rulers of some of the sovereign States comprised in the German Empire. Owing much as he did to the Crown Prince, Falkenhayn, in 1916, yielding to solicitations such as had failed Hindenburg in the East, when he wanted reinforcements to take Riga, sent all his available troops to the heir apparent, and his mentor Count von Haeseler, in order that they might attempt the capture of Verdun, a scheme to which, however, he had become himself committed, believing it would be possible thus to open up a road to Paris. The Kaiser was afterward disposed to saddle Falkenhayn with blame, both for the successful renewal of the Russian offensive and for the Crown Prince's failure before Verdun, so that Falkenhayn might sooner have shared the fate of Moltke, had he not possest influence at Court. Verdun and Riga, however, had opened the Kaiser's eyes to the fact that Germany was confronted with ultimate defeat, owing to the greater resources of her foes in man-power, munitions, and money. The best Germany could now hope for was a draw. Owing to the extraordinary growth about this time of Hindenburg in popular favor, the Kaiser removed Falkenhayn, and put Hindenburg in his place as Chief of the General Staff.

Falkenhayn did not wholly disappear from public view, however, serving as he did afterward in Roumania and Asiatic Turkey.

Falkenhayn was in sharp contrast to Moltke. As age went among commanding German officers, he was young, while Moltke was over sixty-six. Temperament Moltke had not, but Falkenhayn did have it, being alive and energetic, a bundle of nerves, sometimes agreeable and sometimes irascible, intuitional and venturesome, while Moltke was placid and methodical, democratic, liberalminded and cautious. The two were about as far apart as two Germans could be. Moltke, until the Marne battle, had never got into a real embarrassment in his life, while Falkenhayn, in peace times, had repeatedly been in situations from which only a genius, or a favorite of fortune, could have been extricated. Physically he bore a resemblance to the Japanese Chief of Staff, Kodana. He had the same alert eye, and winning smile, the same habit of asking interminable questions, and the robustness of youthful middle age. He was of middle height, and extremely slender, which was quite unusual for a German officer past fifty. He had been little with troops, but enough to conform to the regulations which required that no one designed for staff duty could entirely escape service in the field. He was a graduate of the War Academy, and before succeeding Moltke had been twice a Chief of Staff, altho never before a chief of the entire army. During 1909-10 he was Chief of Staff to the Sixteenth Army Corps, with headquarters at Metz, and previous to his appointment as Minister of War, was Chief of Staff to the Fourth Army Corps, with headquarters at Magdeburg.

Falkenhayn was an adequate representative, of the German military caste. He embodied its ideals and traditions. The renascence of the German army after the failure of 1914 was commonly ascribed to Falkenhayn. He was a man whose ambitions were limited only by his power to achieve them. It was he who planned, and Mackensen who acted, in the great drive against the Russians in the summer of 1915. He was the strategist and Mackensen the tactician. For a Chief of Staff, he was dangerously temperamental, rushing as he did from extremes of pessimism to heights of optimism. In moments of anger he would raise his voice a good powerful voice. When pleased, his whole countenance would seem to participate in the expression. While often ungracious he had in him much real good nature. When living

at Metz he often seemed stiff and autocratic in public, but those who called at his modest home found him willing to grant favors and quite eager to make friends.9

Compiled from an article in Current Opinion, by Alexander Harvey, and one in The Times (New York), by F. Cunliffe Owen.

FERDINAND FOCH, MARSHAL OF FRANCE AND ALLIED
GENERALISSIMO

Some one given to aphorisms said that Joffre was made Chief of Staff "because he seldom or never rode horseback," a remark not so senseless as it might sound when one considered the temperament of the French, and the fact that some man, given to the spectacular, with elements of a conqueror in his nature, had often exerted a tremendous influence over them, provided that, combined with ability, he had a commanding personality, such as Joffre did not have. Joffre did not ride on horseback

THE ECOLE DE GUERRE IN PARIS

Here Marshal Foch was long the director of the school. Under him were trained many French officers prominent or active in the war

or at least seldom did-and was not an impressive figure even on the ground, so short and stout was his build; but there was another general in France of such superb ability that Joffre himself had termed him "the greatest strategist in Europe"-a man who had real personal magnetism, and was a masterful rider of horses, in fact "a man on horseback" of the type whom the French have often honored-Ferdinand Foch. Foch was a soldier of equal experience, of about the same age, and from the same part of France as Joffre, and with Joffre had won the British Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. Before the war Foch's services