Foch the Man Part 13

"In the hall, the gendarme on guard duty gets up, quickly, from the chair wherein he is dozing.

"The general salutes him with a brisk gesture, but with it he seems to say: 'Sleep on, my good fellow; I'm sorry to have disturbed you.'

"At the foot of the grand staircase, the sentry presents arms; and one of the staff officers joins the commander, to accompany him to the house of the notary who is extending him hospitality.

"A few hours later, very early in the morning, the general is back again at his office."

Thus he was at Ca.s.sel, as he directed those operations on the Yser by which he checked the German attempt to reach Calais and Dunkirk, and revealed to the military world a new strategist of the first order.

By November 15 (six weeks after arriving in the north) Foch had the high command of the German army as completely thwarted in its design as it had been at the Marne. It had fallen to Foch to defeat the German plan on the east (Lorraine), in the center (Marne) and on the west (Ypres). And the consequences of this frustration that he dealt them in Flanders were calculated to be "at least equal to the victory of the Marne." Colonel Requin calls that Battle of the Yser "like a preface to the great victory of 1918."

In the spring of 1915 Foch left Ca.s.sel and took up headquarters at Frevent, between Amiens and Doullens, whence he directed those engagements in Artois which demonstrated that though trench warfare was not the warfare he had studied and prepared for, and nearly all its problems were new, he was master of it not less than he would have been of a cavalry warfare.

In the autumn of 1915, Foch moved nearer to Amiens--to the village of Dury in the immediate outskirts of the ancient capital of Picardy. For the next chapter in his history was to be the campaign of the Somme including the first great offensive of France in the war, which, together with the Verdun defense, forced the Germans not only again to re-make their calculations, but to withdraw to the Hindenburg line.

On September 30, 1916 (just before his sixty-fifth birthday, on which his retirement from active service was due), he was "retained without age limit" in the first section of the general staff of the French army.

Honors were beginning to crowd upon him as the debt of France and of her allies to his genius began to be realized. Responsibility vested in him became heavier and heavier as he demonstrated his ability to bear it. But always, say those who were nearest him, "a great, religious serenity pervaded and illumined his soul."

This is a serenity not of physical calm. Foch is intensely nervous, almost ceaselessly active. His body is frail, racked with suffering, worn down by the enormous strains imposed upon it. But the self-mastery _within_ is always apparent; and it inspires confidence, and renewed effort, in all who come in contact with him.

XVI

THE SUPREME COMMANDER OF THE ALLIED ARMIES

After his position in the first section of the General Staff had been made independent of age limits, General Foch was relieved (for the autumn and winter at least, during which time no operations of importance were expected) of active command of a group of armies; and at once began the organization of a bureau devoted to the study of great military questions affecting not the French lines alone but those of France's allies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: General Petain--Marshal Haig--General Foch--General Pers.h.i.+ng]

At first the headquarters of this bureau were at Senlis, near Paris.

Then they were moved close to France's eastern border where Foch and his a.s.sociates studied ways and means of meeting a possible attack through Switzerland--if Germany resolved to add that crime to her category--or across northern Italy.

So clearly had Foch foreseen what would happen in the Venetian plain, that he had his plan of French reinforcement perfected long in advance, even to the schedule for dispatching troop trains to the Piave front.

In January, 1917, Marshal Joffre reached the age of retirement (65).

He was venerated and loved throughout France as few men have ever been.

Grat.i.tude for his great gifts and great character filled every heart to overflowing. His country had no honor great enough to express its sense of his service to France. Yet it was felt that for the operations of the future, the interests of France and of her allies would be best furthered with another strategist in command of the armies in the field. Joffre's retirement was therefore effected.

Joffre is an engineer, a master-builder of fortifications, a great defense soldier. But defense would not end the war. France must look to her greatest offensive strategist.

There could be no question who that strategist was. No one knew it quite so well as Marshal Joffre. And one of the most splendid things about that mighty and n.o.ble man is the spirit in which he concurred in (if, indeed, he did not suggest) the change which meant that another should lead the armies of France to victory.

The appointment of General Foch as head of the General Staff was made on May 15, 1917, while Marshal Joffre was in the United States to confer with our officials regarding our part in the war. On the same date General Philippe Petain, the heroic defender of Verdun, who had been Chief of Staff for a month, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of all French armies operating on the French front.

General Foch installed himself at the Invalides, and addressed himself to the study of all the allies' fronts, the a.s.sembling American army, and to another task for which he was signally fitted: that of coordinating the plans and purposes of the Generalissimo and the government.

Wherever General Foch goes, one finds him creating harmony and, through harmony, doubling everyone's strength.

He "gets on" with everybody, but not in the way that sort of thing is too generally done--not by methods which have come to be called diplomatic and which involve a great deal of surface affability, of wordy beating about the bush and concealing one's real purposes from persons who see his hand and wonder if they are bluffing him about theirs.

Foch has no stomach for this sort of thing. His whole bent is toward discovering the right thing to do and then making it so plain to others that it is the right thing that they adopt it gladly and cooperate in it with ardor.

In council he is still the great teacher striving always not merely to make his principles remembered, but to have them shared.

The eminent French painter, Lucien Jonas, who has served in Artois, at Verdun, on the Somme and in Italy, and has been appointed painter of the Army Museum at Des Invalides, was commissioned to make a picture of General Foch holding an allies' council of war at Versailles.

It was, of course, impossible for Jonas to be actually present at a council meeting. But it was arranged that he should sit outside a gla.s.s door through which he could see all, but hear nothing.

"General Foch," he tells us, "held his auditors in a sort of fascination. One felt that in his explanations there was not a flaw, not a hesitancy. All seemed clear, plain, irresistible."

This power was his in great degree in the years before the war. But now men who listen to him know that his perceptions are not merely logical--they are workable. His performances prove the worth of his theories.

On March 21, 1918, Ludendorff launched his great offensive against the British army. The line bent; it cracked. Amiens seemed doomed; the British in France were threatened with severance from their allies--with envelopment!

After four days of onrus.h.i.+ng disaster a conference was called to meet at Doullens--a conference of representatives of the allied governments.

Something must be done to coordinate the various "fronts," to put them under a supreme command.

Foch was hastily empowered to order whatever he deemed advisable to prevent the separation of the English and French armies. It is apparent that the wide powers thus hurriedly given to him were bestowed with the approval of every member of the conference. In October, 1918, however, in responding to a note of greeting from Lloyd-George on the occasion of his sixty-seventh birthday, Foch recognized the weight of the British Prime Minister's influence at the conference:

"I am greatly touched," he replied, "by your congratulations and thank you sincerely.

"I do not forget that it was to your insistence that I owe the position which I occupy to-day."

Foch's new responsibilities were laid upon him on March 26. By evening of the 28th he had the situation so well in hand that he was able to hold in check the German onslaught without even employing all the troops he had brought up for that purpose. He had averted what threatened to be the worst disaster of the war, and he had reserves in readiness against a new and augmented attack. This in two days!

On the 30th an official announcement told all the world that the destinies of the allied armies were by common consent confided to the general direction of Ferdinand Foch.

On that same day there was made public, by the French war authorities, something which had taken place and had contributed in a degree we are not yet able to state, to the investment of Foch with supreme power.

This was a visit made by General Pers.h.i.+ng to Foch. In the presence of Foch, Petain, Clemenceau and Loucheur (Minister of Munitions) Pers.h.i.+ng made the following declaration:

"I come to tell you that the American people would hold it a great honor if our troops were engaged in the present battle. I ask you this in my name and in theirs. At this moment there is nothing to be thought of but combat. Infantry, artillery, aviation--all that we have is yours. Use them as you will. There are more to come--as many more as shall be needed. I am here solely to say to you that the American people will be proud to be engaged in the greatest and most glorious battle in history."

[Ill.u.s.tration: General Foch--General Pers.h.i.+ng]

On April 5, a week after his appointment to the supreme command was announced, Foch granted an interview to a group of war correspondents.

Their various accounts differ very slightly. Instead of quoting any one I will make a digest of them.

They found the general installed in a provincial mansion, place not named. The room he occupied was nearly bare; an old table, an armchair, a telephone, a huge war map, no profusion of papers, no "air of importance."

Foch was writing in a notebook. He rose, when he had finished his entry among those epoch-making memoranda, and received his visitors.

He had but a few minutes to give, yet he realized the importance of the occasion and treated it accordingly. These men were to send to millions of people in the great democracies of France, Britain and America their pen pictures of the man just invested with the greatest military responsibility any man in the world's history has ever borne.

Battles must be fought, but also those people had a right to such a sense of partic.i.p.ation as only their press could give them; it was their issue; their att.i.tude toward it was the foundation of their nation's morale. Foch has neither time nor taste for talk about himself, but he is no war autocrat; he is, as he constantly reiterates, a son of France, defending human liberties. He might not have much time to give journalists, but it is not in him to minimize their place in a world where the will of the majority prevails and the press does much to shape that will.

His manner on that occasion was calm, unhurried, but very direct, to the point.

"Well, gentlemen," said he, "our affairs are not going badly; are they?