Foch the Man Part 9

"With whole nations," he said, "engaged in a mortal combat, disaster is certain for those who in time of peace failed to prepare for war." And "To be ready means, to-day, to have mustered in advance all the resources of the country, all the intelligence of its citizens, all their moral energy, for the purpose of attaining this one aim--victory.

Getting ready is a duty that devolves not only upon the army, but upon all public officials, upon all organizations, upon all societies, upon all families, upon all citizens."

This complete readiness was beyond his power to effect. But in his province--the army--he achieved marvels that were almost miracles.

It was France's good fortune (and that of her allies) that in all he undertook for the purification and strengthening of the army Joffre had, from January, 1912, the complete co-operation of the Minister of War, M. Millerand. Together, these two men, brilliantly supported by some of Joffre's colleagues in the Superior Council--notably Pau and Castelnau--achieved results that have been p.r.o.nounced "unparalleled in the history of the Third Republic." They freed the army from the worst effects of political influence, made it once more a popular inst.i.tution, and organized it into an effectiveness which needs, now, no comment.

When Foch was put in command of the Twentieth army corps at Nancy it was in the expectation that Nancy would sustain the first shock of the German invasion when it came. The opinion prevailed that Nancy could not be held. Whether Joffre was of this opinion or not, I do not know.

If he was, he probably felt that Foch would give it up only after harder fighting than any other general. But Foch believed that Nancy could be defended, and so did his immediate superior, the gallant General Castelnau, in command of the Second Army of Lorraine.

For nearly a year following upon his appointment to Nancy, Foch labored mightily to strengthen Nancy against the attack which was impending.

He seems never to have doubted that Germany would make her first aggression there, only seventeen miles from her own border, and with Metz and Stra.s.sburg to back the invading army.

But that there were other opinions, even at Nancy, I happen to know.

For, one day while the war was still new, I chanced in rooting in an old bookstall in Paris, to find a book which was written by an officer of the Twentieth Corps, in 1911.[1]

The officer was, if I mistake not, of the artillery, and he wrote this "forecast" to entertain the members of his mess or battery.

He predicted with amazing accuracy the successive events which happened nearly three years later, only he "guessed" the order for mobilization in France to fall on August 14, instead of August 1; and all his subsequent dates were just about two weeks later than the actualities.

But he "foresaw" the invasion of Belgium, the resistance at Liege and Namur, the fall of Brussels, the invasion of France by her northeastern portals. Almost--at the time I read this book--it might have served as history instead of prophecy. I would that I had it now! But I clearly remember that it located the final battle of the war in Westphalia, describing the location exactly. And that it said the Emperor would perish in that downfall of his empire. And it cited two prophecies current in Germany--the long-standing one to the effect that Germany's greatest disaster would come to her under an Emperor with a withered arm, and one made in Stra.s.sburg in 1870, declaring that the new empire would dissolve under its third Emperor.

The book was published in January, 1912, if I remember rightly, and was almost immediately translated into German. And I was told that one hundred thousand copies were sold in Germany in a very short time, and it was made the subject of editorials in nearly every prominent German paper.

Probably Foch read it. He may even have discussed it with the author.

But he held to the belief that when the attack came it would come through Nancy.

He was not, however, expecting it when it came.

[1] The reason I cannot give his name, nor quote directly from his book, is that a fellow-traveler borrowed the book from me and I have never seen it since.

XII

ON THE EVE OF WAR

In the first days of July, 1914, divisional maneuvers were held as usual in Lorraine. Castelnau and Foch reviewed the troops, known throughout the army as "the division of iron."

A young captain, recently a.s.signed from the School of War to a regiment of Hussars forming part of the Twentieth army corps, wrote to his parents on July 5 an account of the maneuvers in which he had just taken part. He said that "the presence of these two eminent men gave a great interest" to the events he described. And the impression made upon him by Foch is so remarkable that his letter is likely to become one of the small cla.s.sics of the war--endlessly reproduced whenever the story of Foch is told.

"General Foch," he reminds his parents, "is a former commander of the School of War, where he played, on account of his great fitness, a very remarkable role.

"He is a man still young [he was almost 63!], slender and supple, and rather frail; his powerful head seems like a flower too heavy for a stem too slight.

"What first strikes one about him is his clear gaze, penetrating, intellectual, but above all and in spite of his tremendous energy, luminous. This light in his eyes spiritualizes a countenance which otherwise would be brutal, with its big mustache bristling above a very prominent, dominant jaw.

"When he speaks, pointing lessons from the maneuver, he becomes animated to the extent of impa.s.sionedness, but never expressing himself otherwise than with simplicity and purity.

"His speech is sober, direct; he affirms principles, condemns faults, appeals to our energies in a brief but comprehensive style.

"He is a priest, who judges, condemns, and instructs in the name of the faith which illumines him and to which he has consecrated all the powers of his mind and his heart. General Foch is a prophet whom his G.o.d transports."

The young officer who wrote thus to his parents was Captain Andre Dubarle; and he later laid down his life for his country on the field of honor commanded by General Foch.

The letter seems to me as treasurable for what it conveys to us of the sort of young man Foch found among his officers and soldiers (there were many such!) as for what it tells us of the impression Foch created even in those days before men's souls were set on fire with fervor for France.

On July 18 General Foch asked and obtained a leave of absence for fifteen days, so that he might join the family group gathered at his home near Morlaix in Brittany. His two sons-in-law, Captain Fournier and Captain Becourt, also obtained leave. The former was attached to the general army staff at Paris, and was granted seventeen days. The latter was in command of a company of the Twenty-sixth battalion of Foot Cha.s.seurs at Pont-a-Mousson. He was given twenty-five days'

leave. The wives and children of both were at Morlaix with Madame Foch.

So little expectation of immediate war had France on July 18 that she granted a fortnight's absence to the commander of those troops which were expected to bear the first shock of German aggression when it came.

But I happen to know of a French family reunion held at Nancy on July 14 and the days following, which was incomplete. One of the women of this family was married to a German official at Metz whose job it was to be caretaker for three thousand locomotives belonging to the imperial government and kept at Metz for "emergencies." On July 12 (as it afterwards transpired) he was ordered to have fires lighted and steam got up in those three thousand engines, and to keep them, night and day, ready for use at a moment's notice.

Those smoking iron horses in Metz are a small sample of what was going on all over Germany while France's frontier-defenders were being given permission to visit Brittany.

But for that matter German war-preparations were going on much nearer to Nancy than in Metz, while Foch was playing with his grandchildren at Morlaix.

Beginning about July 21 and ending about the 25th, twelve thousand Germans left Nancy for "points east," and six thousand others left the remainder of French Lorraine.

The pretexts they gave were various--vacations, urgent business matters, "cures" at German watering places. They all knew, when they left, that Germany was mobilizing for attack upon France. They had known it for some time before they left.

Since the beginning of July they had been working in Nancy to aid the German attack. They had visited the princ.i.p.al buildings, public and private, and especially the highest ones, with plans for the installation of wireless at the modest price of $34. "It is so interesting," they said, "to get the exact time, every day, from the Eiffel Tower!"

They had also some amazingly inexpensive contrivances for heating houses, or regulating the heating already installed, or for home refrigeration--things which took them into cellars in Nancy--and before they left to join their regiments they were exceedingly busy demonstrating those things.

They were all gone when General Foch was recalled, on July 26.

On July 30 German under-officers crossed the frontier.

On August 3 Uhlans and infantrymen on motorcycles were shooting and pillaging on the French side of the border, although it was not until 6:45 P.M. that day that Germany declared war on France.

That which France had been unable to suppose even Germany capable of, happened: The treaty with Belgium became a sc.r.a.p of paper and the main attack upon France was made by way of the north.

But the expectation that Nancy would be one of the first objectives of the Hun-rampant was not without fulfillment. For the hordes advanced in five armies; and the fifth, the German left wing under Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, was ordered to swarm into France south of that of the Imperial Crown Prince, spread itself across country behind the French armies facing northward, join with Von Kluck's right wing somewhere west of Paris, and "bag" the French--armies, capital and all--"on or about" September 1.

It was all perfectly practicable--on paper. The only difficulty was that there were so many things the German staff had omitted from its careful calculations--omitted, perforce, because it had never guessed their existence. And that spoiled their reckoning.

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. One plan goes awry. Very well! we'll find a better.

But Foch had not trained the German general staff. They made war otherwise. And well he knew it! Well he knew what happened to them when their "blue prints" would not fit unexpected conditions.

He knew that they expected to take Nancy easily, that they were looking for some effort to defend it, but not for a French attack.

They did not know his maxim: "The best means of defense is to attack."

He attacked. His Twentieth corps fought its way through the center of the Bavarian army, into German Lorraine. Then something happened.

Just what it was is not clear--but doubtless will be some day. The offensive had to be abandoned and the French troops had to withdraw from German soil to defend their own.