J. Walker McSpadden

“ The Government needed a man upon whom it could absolutely rely to be Commander-in-chief of the Expeditionary Forces. Would General Pershing hold himself in readiness for this supreme task?
The veteran of thirty years of constant campaigning stiffened to attention. The eager look of battle—battle for the right—shone in his eye. Every line of his upstanding figure denoted confidence—a confidence that was to inspire all America, and then the world itself, in this choice of leader. ”

“ On the first echoes of Revolution which reached Corsica, Napoleon was on the alert. He thought he saw a golden opportunity to throw off the shackles of the conqueror. But one of the first acts of the National Assembly was to recognize the full rights of the island as a part of the State of France; and Napoleon, who had already made an attempt to organize a sort of Home Guard, felt himself disarmed.
"France has opened her bosom to us," he said. "Henceforth we have the same interests and the same solicitudes. It is the sea alone which separates us." ”

“ He remained in the Military Academy four years, having been put back six months by way of discipline, and left it without any regrets. At this time, indeed, he had a positive distaste for the army. It was all drill and monotony. One day was too much like another. What was the good of it all? Why did men have to learn to kill each other anyhow? Were we not put on earth for a higher mission?
Thus reasoned the young man, who, all his life, was subject to moods of introspection and intense religious thought—surely strange material out of which to build a soldier! ”

“ Days of conflict and turmoil were yet to follow for Napoleon, but never days of uncertainty. He had found himself. In six short years the brooding misanthrope, the gawky young man who shunned his fellows, became the self-possessed leader of men, wielding a power of personal magnetism that was almost uncanny.
At twenty-six his larger career may be said to have begun. This slight boyish figure takes command of the Army of Italy and leads that memorable campaign to the conquest of Italy before he was thirty. ”

“ Such an idyllic setting, away out on the most sheltered spot of France—far removed from the tramp of an invader, or the other changes which came to the central provinces of France—while pleasant in the extreme was hardly the fitting environment to produce a soldier, a real fighting man. It might produce a fine preacher, or artist, or poet, or farmer—but not likely a famous general. ”

“ At their head stands one who is yet to fight his first great battle—yet I advise you not to arouse him!"
The world knows the rest of the story of that mighty invasion—how the black, invading line curved onward and inward until it threw its shadow upon Paris. Then when the final blow was about to be struck—the coup-de-grace as the Germans firmly believed—up from the South came the army of Joffre. ”

“ Marshal Haig, struck the keynote of his career. From early boyhood
Douglas Haig was going to be a soldier; and he stuck to his guns in a
quiet, systematic way until he won out.
The story of Haig's life until the time of the Great War, was the opposite of spectacular, and even in it, his personal prowess was kept studiously in the background. With him it has always been: "My men did thus and so." Yet in his quiet way he has always made his presence felt with telling effect. He has been the man behind the man behind the gun. ”

“ Down the road came riding a gaunt-looking man, with the familiar stoop-shoulders, and mud-bespattered trousers and boots. It was the general-in-chief on his way to greet his beaten foe!
The two men looked each other in the eye, then clasped hands like old friends. Grant recalled the days of the Mexican campaign, and was surprised that Lee knew so much about him in those days. He wanted to talk old times, and Lee himself brought up the subject of surrender. ”

“ When it is over the wires splutter and the fierce life of the coming night—the Army does not begin to fight until most people go to sleep—is ordained.
"This finished, the brief period of respite begins. Rain or shine, his favorite horse is brought up to the door, and he goes for a ride, usually accompanied by one or two young staff-officers. I have seen Sir Douglas Haig galloping along those smooth French roads, head up, eyes ahead—a memorable figure of grace and motion. He rides like those latter-day centaurs—the Australian ranger and the American cowboy. He seems part of his horse." ”

“ They have over-praised him, with the result that many readers of today have come to regard him as scarcely human—a sort of demi-god. But one or two more recent biographers have had the courage and conviction to tear aside the mask, and we can, if we will, see Washington the man—quick-tempered at times, perhaps profane in the heat of battle, fond of display and good living in his hours of ease—but also a man to be trusted in every crisis, cool, courageous, resourceful—a strategist who made the ablest generals that England could send over against him, suffer by comparison. ”

“ When he entered the service, as a second lieutenant of the Engineers, at the age of nineteen, there was little to attract one in the army life. The long peace of Europe, which had followed the defeat of Napoleon, seemed likely to last forever. Except for a relatively small outbreak in France, in 1848, all Europe was quiet. Consequently, the army held little attraction to an active young man. It was all drill and the petty details of garrison life. But underneath the placid surface, the political pot of Europe was really boiling furiously—only waiting a chance to bubble over. ”

“ How this moody and unpopular schoolboy grew from childhood without intimate friends—without being understood—into a masterful leader of men is one of the strange puzzles of history. It totally upsets that other paradox, "The child is father of the man," for there was little to indicate in the child Bonaparte, the man Napoleon.
He was not even born on the land with which his name is forever associated, France. He first saw the light of day upon the isle of Corsica, a rocky point in the blue waters of the Mediterranean, some fifty miles west of Italy. ”

“ Now his sovereign asked him to buckle on his sword again, and go to retrieve the fallen British fortunes in South Africa.
"You do not think that you are too old for this arduous task?" asked the
Queen. "You are not afraid of your health breaking down?"
"I have kept myself fit," replied the old soldier, "for the past twenty years, in the hope that I might command in such a campaign as this."
The remark, "I have kept myself fit," is a keynote of his life. The puny boy of the long ago was to survive this campaign with flying colors, and to lend his counsel in the Great War of our own time. ”

“ George Washington was a typical example of the born leader. He had received no set military training save that which the stern necessity of frontier life forced upon him. Yet at nineteen we find him no less courageous and active when facing the enemy. He had been reared as a farmer boy, with no other intention at first than the successful management of his father's estates in Virginia. But boys in those days had to learn to handle the rifle as readily as the plow, and Washington was no exception to this rule. ”

“ This slender, undersized officer, in spite of his physique, seemed indefatigable. He had several narrow escapes from death, in hand-to-hand encounters with sepoys. Once, a mutineer fired point-blank at him at twelve yards away, but for some providential reason Roberts' horse reared just at the moment of firing and received the bullet in his own head.
At another time, a fanatic danced out in front of his horse waving a turban to frighten it, and at the same time whirling a wicked looking scimitar around his head. Roberts drew his pistol but the weapon missed fire. ”

“ We need men of your stamp to train up officers in our army."
Foch held this responsible position for several years just preceding the Great War. Whether he saw it or not, lowering upon the horizon, he bent every effort to making the command of the French army fit, ready for any emergency. He had never forgotten the dreadful invasion of his boyhood days. With him the teaching of preparedness was almost as sacred as religion.
And when the Great War at last descended, Foch was like a shining sword in its path, one that had never been allowed to rust in its scabbard. ”

“ Kitchener was always a hard worker, a gentleman with a long head who thought much but said little. It is, of course, easy enough to prophesy when you know, but honestly, to my mind, he looked a man who would go far if he only had his chance."
As an immediate result of this work, Kitchener was given the rank of Major, and sent with Lord Wolseley's expedition into Egypt—then in the throes of civil war. One reason for his promotion was his ability to speak Arabic. His several years in the East had not only taught him the languages, but valuable insight into manners and customs. ”

“ The last thing one would expect from such a boy, was to become a soldier. A divinity student, yes,—perhaps a college professor—but a soldier, never! Yet it was to soldiering that this quiet boy turned. ”

“ But today 'G. H. Q.'—as headquarters are familiarly known—are totally different. Although army units have risen from thousands to millions of men, and fields of operations stretch from sea to sea, and more ammunition is expended in a single engagement than was employed in entire wars of other days, absolute serenity prevails. It is only when your imagination conjures up the picture of flame and fury that lies beyond the horizon line that you get a thrill. ”

“ An occasional motorcar driven by a soldier-chauffeur chugs up the gravel road to the chateau and from it emerge earnest-faced officers whose visits are usually brief. Neither time nor words are wasted when myriad lives hang in the balance and an empire is at stake. Inside and out there is an atmosphere of quiet confidence, born of unobtrusive efficiency. ”

“ Yet this was the man who in five short years was to become the most famous military leader of his day.
The life story of Ulysses Simpson Grant abounds in strange paradoxes.
If ever a man was made the plaything of fate, it was he. His career
has even persuaded some writers into the belief that he was "the Man of
Mystery."
His father, Jesse Grant, was a self-taught man, who is said to have received but six months actual schooling in his life. He was all the more determined that his son, Ulysses, should have the education that he lacked. ”

“ The alert poise of the man showed a nature constantly on guard against surprise—the typical soldier in action.
Such was General Pershing when he set foot on foreign shore at the head of an American army—the first time in history that our soldiers had ever served on European soil. America was at last repaying to France her debt of gratitude, for aid received nearly a century and a half earlier. ”

“ They had learned what it was to shift for themselves; to defend themselves against prowling beasts in an untrodden wilderness; to swim swollen currents; to be wet and cold and hungry; to come suddenly upon a war party of Indians, who would not have scrupled to kill them, had the savages known that these two youths were plotting and dividing up the hunting grounds which they claimed as their own. ”

“ Then came the British cavalry at a gallop—the Camerons in front, and columns of Warwicks, Seaforths, and Lincolns behind. Bugles, bagpipes, and the instruments of the native regiments made strange music as the army pressed forward intent on reaching the river bank.
The native stockades were reinforced with thorn bushes, but these were torn away by the men, with their bare hands, in their eagerness to advance. Haig's regiment was one of the first to penetrate, but once past the stockade they encountered many of the defenders who put up a fierce fight. ”

“ Kitchener was then a cavalry officer of thirty-five, and did not seem destined to get much higher in army circles. Yet he had never lost faith in himself. After this first expedition to Egypt, when he was still only a major, he remarked drolly to a fellow officer:
"Never mind, my dear fellow, a few years hence you and I will be generals, and these people who annoy us now (meaning the red-tape departmental clerks) will be looking out of their club windows, with all their teeth falling out of their heads!" ”

“ Metz! How much history does the name suggest in the light of the Great War! If the young artillery student could have foreseen the backward and forward swing of the pendulum, as exemplified in that ancient city, how his blood would have quickened!
The summer of 1870 arrived. Ferdinand Foch, a well-grown lad of nineteen, went home to St. Étienne on his first vacation. It had been his first year away from home, and there must have been a joyful reunion. But over the vacation season hung a war cloud. In the middle of July, France was persuaded to declare war. ”

“ Well, there have been some big men in stature who have been big soldiers—such as Washington—but it is interesting to note that many of our great generals have been undersized. Such were Grant, Wellington, and Napoleon. Such was Lord Roberts who became Earl and Marshal, and was one of the best-loved leaders that England has produced. He was associated with two great campaigns to extend the British Empire—in India and South Africa—and passed away in the midst of the great World War, within a few months of Kitchener. ”