Clara E. Laughlin

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is said that there was probably never before in history a battle fought in which every man was a general—so to speak—as at the battle of Château Thierry, in July, 1918. That is to say, there was probably never before a battle in which so many men comprehended as clearly as if they had been generals what it was all about, and acted as if they had been generals to attain their objectives. ”

“ It was 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. ”

“ There are the men of the Béarnais, mostly from towns of size and circumstance—educated men, of self-command, tempering the southern warmth which burns in their eyes by the calm intelligence born of experience in life and also by a natural languor like that of their Spanish neighbors. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”