command, but it appeared that he was engaged on "important duties," but during M. Painlevé's tenure of the War Office on May 15, 1917, Foch returned to service as Chief of the General Staff. The public had heard little of Foch in the year which preceded his appointment. The fact was he had met with a motor-car accident in June, 1916, or a short time before the opening of the battle of the Somme, for which he had been preparing from his headquarters near Amiens. He was, however, kept on the active list, altho about to reach the age limit of sixty MARSHAL FOCH AND GENERAL MANGIN (AT THE LEFT) Inspecting fortifications on the Rhine during the Allied occupation five, but by special decree, owing to his services in Lorraine in August, 1914, in the Battle of the Marne in September, and in command of the armies of the north from Compiègne to the sea after October 4, 1914. Foch in 1916 was dealing with various problems relating to inter-Allied action, but carried out the work in comparative obscurity, first at Senlis, then in eastern France where he had "important duties," which were the organization of defenses in the Jura in anticipation of a turning movement by the Germans through Switzerland and the framing of plans for Italy in case of an emergency arising from an Austrian offensive. The formula of an Allied commander-in-chief had been mooted for a long time when Lloyd George, speaking in Paris in November, 1917, on his return from Italy, where Foch was helping to hold the Austro-Germans on the Piave, made public confession of his conversion to the idea, but national and personal susceptibilities were awakened by the suggestion in London and this compelled Lloyd George to defer action. President Wilson, at the Allied conference which followed shortly thereafter, at which he was represented by Colonel House, threw the weight of American prestige into the scale in favor of unity of command. Then came the supreme argument in its favor out of the mouths of German cannon thundering past Bapaume and Noyon toward Arras and Amiens. To that argument there was no answer, and especially after Pershing had placed all the American resources in France under French direction in his "all we have" message that will never be forgotten in France. Foch was soon proclaimed Allied Commander-in-Chief by agreement between Great Britain, France, and the United States. Great democracies, free partners in an enterprise of self-preservation and liberation, thus made one man their collective agent, to use supreme authority to the best of his ability, all their war resources being at his disposal against the German onslaught. By a happy coincidence, Foch was the man whose indomitable spirit and infinite resourcefulness years before had appealed so forcibly to Clemenceau during a previous premiership that he had appointed him head of the War College, a post for which Foch was not a candidate. Much of the brilliant work done by the French Army in this war was directly traceable to the spirit which Foch had instilled into it at the War College, and later on the field at the Marne, Ypres, and elsewhere. Two great military figures, Joffre and Foch, reached almost simultaneously the topmost height of fame; Joffre the massive, the reflective, in whose speech one detected more readily than in that of Foch the accent of the mountaineer from the Spanish border, Foch being an embodiment of lightning thought in action. Master as he was of the theory in war, Foch was never fettered by it. His keen perception readily discerned the exception to the rule under right conditions. He did not play safe by avoiding risks, but determined which was the lesser risk and boldly took it. When asked to take command of the French offensive at the Somme in 1916-a command he did not take, owing to the accident already referred to-he inquired as to the number of guns that would be at his disposal, and when told exprest himself somewhat thus: "We will be able to make an advance upon a limited front and thus shall bend the German line, but can not expect to break it." His report in writing was in the hands of the Government before the attack began, and was confirmed to the letter by subsequent events. Foch knew what could be done and what could not be done. Just before the battle of MonsCharleroi, when Sir John French felt doubtful of the advisability of accepting battle, the relations between the French and British were largely undefined, and it became necessary that French should be induced to fit the British into Joffre's plan, making his little army a virtual part of France's army. Foch went to see him. Never was tact in manner more perfectly combined with firmness in purpose. He won French over completely, and then hastened back to take his own command at the French center, where a few days later he was to fight and win, at La Fère Champenoise, the decisive phase of the Marne. Foch's words were so few that he often made his meaning unmistakable without resort to speech by using a mere gesture, or by the way in which he bit the cigar he was forever smoking. At Foch's headquarters no fuss and feathers were seen. No orderlies galloped up on smoking steeds. No mud-splashed dispatch-riders arrived on snorting motorcycles. A single sentry stood at the gate. A graveled drive led to a plain oaken door in an unornamented red brick wall. At one of his headquarters there was an oak-paneled reception-hall about twenty feet square, in the center a billiard-table covered with brown linen, at one side an unpainted yellow-pine table, on which lay Kipling's "Jungle Book" in French. Across the hall were two doors, on one of which was pinned a piece of cardboard with the words "Le Bureau du Général." During a battle Foch would be found in a big room before a large scale map, pencil in hand and a telephone receiver at his ear, his staff in a semicircle behind him. There was perfect silence, the only movement his pencil on the map as he followed the battle and pondered details of the district where the fighting was in progress. One thought of Thomas at Chickamauga, of Grant in the Wilderness. There was something in Foch that was stedfast and something more that was relentless. Foch was not tall, only five feet six inches in height. What you saw first were his eyes, his large, well-shaped head, his rather thin iron-gray hair, his broad, high forehead. Gray eyes, set wide apart, bored through you and smiled on you all at the same time. His nose was large, his mouth wide and straight, his chin massive. At his headquarters in November, 1918, there was а ceremony. General Pershing had come to present to him a decoration for Distinguished Service as conferred by the United States Government, a medal afterward presented also to Haig, Joffre, and Pétain. A small company, composed of Staff Officers, had assembled on the garden side of the château. As the two leaders came round the corner, the contrast between them was interesting. Both had marked personal distinction, but were entirely different. Foch swung along with a sort of amble, what military men call "cavalryman's walk," with little to mark him as a military man. Save for his uniform he might have been taken for a lawyer or a doctor. As the two soldiers walked to a center between men of the staff and the guard of honor, a bugler sounded the salute known as the "Marshal's Flourish." Then Pershing, in French, spoke with soldierly force and dignity, his French, by diligent study and practise in France, having been built up on a foundation of West Point teaching and showing hardly a trace of accent. The Marshal in his response spoke longer than he had been known to speak before, his remarks extemporaneous, full of fire, driving points home with that emphasis on words and phrases which the French know so well how to bestow. After Pershing had pinned the medal on Foch's breast, they stood with their hands clasped as a trumpet sounded once more. In accepting the decoration Foch said: "I will wear this medal with pleasure and pride. In days of triumph, as well as in the dark and critical hours, I shall never forget the tragical day last March when General Pershing put at my disposal without restriction all the resources of the American Army. The success won in the hard fighting by the American Army is the consequence of the excellent conception, command and organization of the American General Staff, and the irreducible will to win of the American troops. The name 'Meuse' may be inscribed proudly upon the American flag. I want to say to you that I shall never forget that tragic day when, stirred by a generous impulse, you came and placed at my disposition the entire resources of your army. To-day we have gained the greatest battle in history and saved the most sacred cause the liberty of the world. An important part is due to the action undertaken and well carried through by the American Army upon the two banks of the Meuse. For the last two months the American Army has fought in a most difficult region a fierce and ceaseless battle. The complete success of this struggle is due to the fine qualities displayed by all. I do not forget the breadth and clearness of conception on the part of the generals, the method and ability on the part of the staffs, and the ceaseless energy and indomitable courage of the men; nor do I forget that, at the moment when this vital battle was being fought by your principal forces, American divisions were reinforcing the armies of their Allies on other fighting fronts where their conduct evoked the ardent admiration of us all. General, I thank you with all my heart for the aid you have brought us. all time the words 'la Meuse' may be borne with merited pride upon the standards of the American Army. I will keep in my heart the For recollection of those great hours, often very difficult, but now crowned with glory, during 'which we fought together for liberty, justice and civilization.'' 10 SIR JOHN (NOW VISCOUNT) FRENCH, BRITISH FIELD- There were two outstanding British figures in active service at the beginning of the war, Lord Kitchener and Sir John French, their reputations high, but very dissimilar in character. That of Kitchener was as an organizer of war, that of French as a brilliant commander in the field. Kitchener's successes had come from the slow and patient labor of the engineer, such as a new railway driven through an Egyptian desert, or a system of block-houses constructed on the veldt; French's from fine daring exploits such as those by which he relieved Kimberley and helped to cut off Cronje's retreat at Koodoosrand Drift, east of Paardeberg, or the more definitely strategic skill with which for three months he held a much superior force in check at Colesberg. From the point of view of experience in actual war it might have been assumed that the British started with an advantage in generalship. Only two countries had had large and recent acquaintance with war-Great Britain and Russia, but Russia's experience had served only to disclose the incapacity of her generals. No Russian reputations had survived the Russo-Japanese War. The only general engaged in that war who was given a considerable command in August, 1914, was Rennenkampf, but he disappeared after the first year of the war. The case was otherwise with the British, many of whose officers had seen fighting in various fields, and had achieved victory in most of them. But it might also have been doubted whether their experience of war had not been a loss rather than a gain, since it had tended to make them shape their methods in a great European conflict according to the teaching of their experience in colonial war, to assume that a continental war was different only in scale from the colonial wars in which they had learned their lessons; but it was not a difference in scale only, or even chiefly; it was a difference in character. Here on a colossal scale was a war that had no points of similarity with the rounding up of dervishes in a North African desert, or of Boer farmers on a South African veldt. 10 Principal Sources: Maurice Leon in The American Review of Reviews, Clara E. Laughlin's "Foch the Man"; The Literary Digest, The World, The Tribune, New York; The World (London), The Tribuna (Rome), The Saturday Review (London); The Temps, Figaro and Journal des Débats, Paris; Associated Press dispatch. |