Clara E. Laughlin

“ 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. ”

“ Mary Alice couldn't really believe that all they did was to fix over her blue "jumper dress" and invest twenty-five cents in pink beads. But it seemed that when you were with a person like Godmother, what you actually did was magnified a thousandfold by the enchanting way you did it. Mary Alice was beginning to see that a fairy wand which can turn a pumpkin into a gold coach is not exceeded in possibilities by a fairy mind which can turn any ordinary, commonplace, matter-of-fact thing into a delightful "experience." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Father was at the station to meet her; and at home, by the soft-coal fire burning beneath the white marble mantel in the sitting-room, Mother was sewing and waiting for her.
Mary Alice was thinking, as she and Father neared the house, of that miserable evening in the fall when she had stolen past her mother and gone up to her room and wept passionately, in the dark, because life had no enchantment for her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ IV BEING KIND TO A TIRED MAN
One day when Mary Alice had been in New York nearly two weeks—and had found several fairies—Godmother was obliged to go out, in the afternoon, to some sort of a committee meeting which would have been quite uninteresting to an outsider. But Mary Alice had some sewing to do—something like taking the ugly, ruffly sleeves of cheap white lace out of her blue taffeta dress and substituting plain dark ones of net dyed to match the silk; and she was glad to stay at home. ”

“ Mary Alice dined, the first night of the house party, with the Duchess's older children, and then went back to her room to sit at the window and look down on the terraces where, after a while, some of the men guests came to smoke.
It was late, but the twilight still lingered. Mary Alice could not tell who many of the men were, but she could see the King and she watched him interestedly as he paced up and down. She had been told how no one must speak to a king until the king has first spoken to him; and she felt that at best it must be a dreary business—being a king. ”

“ 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." ”

“ As a scholar, Foch is brilliant besides being profound. As a man, he is simple—and France admires simplicity; he is elegant—and France loves the elegance that is the expression of fine thinking, fine feeling; he is modest of his own attainments, and proud of France's glory.
For nearly every great commander, victory in arms has led to power in the state.
Foch is a statesman as preëminently as he is a warrior. His counsel was as weighty in the peace settlement as his strategy was in winning the war. ”

“ Your godmother has been abroad so long, she can't have many acquaintances in this country now. But you'll see New York—the crowds and the shops and the great hotels and the places of historic interest. And even if you don't meet many people, you'll probably have a very interesting time."
"I don't care about people, anyway," returned Mary Alice.
Her mother looked distressed. "I wouldn't say that, if I were you," she advised. "Because you want to care about people—you must! Sights are beguiling, but they're never satisfying. We all have to depend on people for our happiness—for love." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even in the matter of a godmother, it seemed, it was Mary Alice's luck to have one without any of the fairy powers. For although Mary Alice's mother had dearly loved, in her girlhood, that friend for whom she had called her first baby, she had always to admit, to Mary Alice's eager questioning, that the friend was neither beautiful nor rich nor gifted. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Anybody can find them all; and nobody who has found them all needs to feel very bad if she can't find some of the others who have her christening gifts."
Mary Alice began looking for the others, right away. But even one fairy had transformed her, outside, from an ordinary-looking girl into a young woman with a look of remarkable distinction; just as Godmother had transformed her, within, from a girl with a dreary outlook on life, to one who found that
"The world is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings." ”

“ 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. ”

“ One particularly charming experience came to Mary Alice through the Captain's appreciation of her eagerness. Godmother had taught her to love the stars. As well as they could, in New York where, to most people, only scraps of sky are visible at a time, they had been wont to watch with keen interest for the nightly appearance of stars they could see from their windows or from the streets as they went to and fro. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ Godmother squeezed Mary Alice's hand sympathetically; and then, because that was not enough, she dropped a brief kiss on Mary Alice's anxious young forehead. "I know how you feel, dear," she whispered. "All of us, I guess, have fairy charms that we're afraid to use. Others have used them, we know, and found them miraculous. But somehow, we're afraid. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Godmother was full of human stories of the struggles of the painters and their faithfulness to ideals; and she could stand in front of a canvas by almost any master, and talk to Mary Alice about the painter and the conditions of his life and love and longing when he painted this picture, in a way that made Mary Alice feel as if she'd like to shake the people who walked by with only an uninterested glance ”

“ Mary Alice began; and then stopped to put two and two together. It was all very astounding, but there was no reason why what he had told her and what Godmother said might not both be true.
"If I had known!" she said, sinking down, weak in the knees, into the nearest chair.
"That was what gave him his happy hour," said Godmother. "You didn't know! It is so hard for him to get away from people who know—to find people who are able to forget. That's why he likes to come here; I try to help him forget, for an hour, once in a while, at 'candle-lightin' time.'"
"I see," murmured Mary Alice. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Then, suddenly, I realized that you were gone—not merely from New York, but from the dream. And I was surprised into rudeness. That's all. But please forgive me!"
"I told you I understood," said Mary Alice, "and in a way I did—not that the—the dream as you call it meant so much to you, but that you were disappointed to find Cinderella come out of her chimney corner and talking to the King. I know that when we have a person definitely placed in our minds, we don't like to have him bob up suddenly in quite another quarter and in what seems like quite another character." ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Everybody's Lonesome
I DISAPPOINTED IN LIFE
Mary Alice came home quietly from the party. Most of the doors in the house were closed, because it was cold, and the halls were hard to heat. Mary Alice knew exactly what she should see and hear if she opened that door at her right as she entered the house, and went into the sitting-room. There was a soft-coal fire in the small, old-fashioned grate under the old, old-fashioned white marble mantel. Dozing—always dozing—on the hearth-rug, at a comfortable distance from the fire, was Herod, the big yellow cat. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mary Alice had never met a man she enjoyed so much. He liked to "play" as much as Godmother did, and they talked most confidentially about their likes and dislikes, many of which seemed to be mutual. Mary Alice admitted to him how she disliked to meet strangers, and he admitted to her that he felt the very same way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So the Duchess—secretly sympathetic—left orders with her French maid that Mary Alice was to be made ready to see the King.
Mary Alice chose the simplest thing that rigorous French maid would allow and kept as close as possible to her own individual and unpretending style. But even then, she was a pretty resplendent young person as she stole timidly down to find the Duchess and be presented to the King.
The guests were assembled in the great drawing-room, and Mary Alice was frightened almost to death when she saw the splendour of the scene and realized what part she had to play in it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But every province has its distinctive human qualities. And between the Norman and the Gascon, the Breton and the Provençal, the man of Picardy and the man of Languedoc, there are greater temperamental differences than one can find anywhere else on earth in an equal number of square miles—except in some of our American cities.
To the commander of General Foch's type (and as we begin to study his principles we shall, I believe, see that they apply to command in civil no less than in military life) knowledge of different men's minds and the way they work is absolutely fundamental to success. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But to sacrifice others never becomes easy to a man who respects the rights of others. And we shall never begin to comprehend men like Joffre and Foch until we shake ourselves free from any notion we may have that military expediency makes it easy for them to order great mental and physical suffering.
General Foch detached himself, on August 29, from his beloved Twentieth corps and betook himself to the little village of Machault, about twenty miles northeast of Châlons-sur-Marne, where he found assembled for his command an army made up of units from other armies. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Love of racing is almost a universal trait in France; and in Tarbes it was a feature of the town life in which business went hand-in-hand with pleasure.
In an old French book published before Ferdinand Foch was born, I have found the following description of the crowds which flocked into Tarbes on the days of the horse markets and races:
"On these days all the streets and public squares are flooded with streams of curious people come from all corners of the Pyrénées and exhibiting in their infinite variety of type and costume all the races of the southern provinces and the mountains. ”

“ 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." ”