[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]
"Find out the weak point of your enemy and deliver your blow there,"
said the Commander of the Twentieth French Army Corps at Nancy at a
staff banquet in 1913.
"But suppose, General," said an artillery officer, "that the enemy has
no weak point?"
"If the enemy has no weak point," returned the commander, with a gleam
of the eye and an aggressive tilt of the chin, "make one."
The commander was Foch--Ferdinand Foch--who has suddenly flashed before
the world as the greatest leader in the French Army after Joffre, and
who in that remark at Nancy gave the index to the basic quality of his
character as a General. General Foch is today in command of the northern
armies of France, besides being the chief Lieutenant and confidant of
Joffre. Joffre conceives; Foch, master tactician, executes. He finds the
weak point; if there is no weak point, he creates or seeks to create
one.
When King George of England was at the front in France recently he
conferred the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath--the highest military
distinction in the form of an order within the gift of the British
Crown--on two Frenchmen. Joffre was one. The other was Foch.
"Foch? Foch? Who is Foch?" asked the British public, perplexed, when the
newspapers printed the news of the granting of this signal honor.
"Foch is the General who was at the head of the French military mission
which followed our army manoeuvres three years ago," replied a few men
who happened to have been intimately acquainted with those manoeuvres.
"But what has that to do with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath?"
asked John Bull. And the manoeuvre experts not being able to reply, the
English newspapers demanded from their correspondents in France an
answer to the query, "Who is Foch? Why the Grand Cross?"
And the main features of the answers to that query were these:
Foch is the "greatest strategist in Europe and the humblest," in the
words of Joffre.
Foch is the hero of the Marne, the man who perceived on Sept. 9 that
there must be a gap between the Prussian Guard and the Saxon Army, and
who gathered enough artillery to crush the guard in the St. Gond marshes
and forced both the Prussians and the Saxons, now separated, to retreat.
Foch is the man of Ypres, the commander who was in general control of
the successful fight made by the French and the British, aided by the
Belgians, to prevent the Germans from breaking through to Calais.
Foch, in short, is one of the military geniuses of the war, so record
observers at the front. He is a General who has something of the
Napoleonic in his composition; the dramatic in war is for him--secrecy
and suddenness, gigantic and daring movements; fiery, yet coldly
calculated attacks; vast strategic conceptions carried out by swift,
unfaltering tactics. Foch has a tendency to the impetuous, but he is
impetuous scientifically. He has, however, taken all in all, much more
of the dash and nervousness and warmth of the Southern Latin than has
Joffre--cool, cautious, taciturn Joffre. Yet both men are from the south
of France. They were born within a few miles of one another, within
three months of one another, Foch being born on Oct. 2, 1851, and Joffre
on Jan. 12, 1852.
Most writers who have dealt with Foch agree on this as one of his
paramount characteristics--the Napoleonic mode of military thought.
When Foch was director of the Ecole de Guerre, where he had much to do
with shaping the military views of many of the men who are now
commanding units of the French Armies, he was considered to be possessed
of almost an obsession on the subject of Napoleon. He studied Napoleon's
campaigns, and restudied them. He went back much further, however, in
his choice of a master, and gave intense application to the campaigns of
Caesar. Napoleon and Caesar--these were the minds from which the mind of
the Marne and Ypres has learned some of its lessons of success.
Here Foch invites comparison with another of the dominant figures of the
war--General French. For French is described by his biographer as "a
worshipper of Napoleon," regarding him as the world's greatest
strategist, and in following out and studying Napoleon's campaigns
French personally covered and studied much of the ground in Belgium over
which he has been fighting. French is a year younger than Foch. They are
old friends, as are French and Joffre, and Joffre and Foch.
The inclination of Foch to something of the Napoleonic is shown beyond
the realm of strategy and tactics. Foch is credited with knowing the
French soldier, his heart, his mind, his capabilities, and the method of
getting the most out of those capabilities, in a way reminiscent of the
winner of Jena. And Foch knows not only the privates, but the officers.
When he went to the front he visited each commander; the Colonels he
called by name; the corps commanders, without exception, had attended
his lectures at the Ecole de Guerre.
As for the men, Foch makes it his business to get into personal contact
with them, as Napoleon used to do. Foch does not hobnob with them, there
is no joking or familiarity, but he goes into the trenches and the
occupied villages and looks the men over informally, inspects food or
equipment, makes a useful comment or two, drops a phrase that is worth
repeating, and leaves behind him enthusiasm and respect. The Paris
Figaro says that he has the gift of setting souls afire, of arousing
that élan in the French fighter which made that fighter perform military
miracles when the "sun of Austerlitz" was high. It has been declared by
a French writer that Foch knows the human element in the French Army
better than any other man living.
With all his knowledge of men, his power of inspiring them, Foch is
quiet, retiring, non-communicative, with no taste for meeting people in
social intercourse. His life has been monotonous--work and work and
work. He has the reputation of being a driver; he used to be
particularly severe on shirkers in the war college, and such, no matter
what their influence, had no chance of getting a diploma leading to an
attractive staff position when Foch was Director. When he was in command
at Nancy and elsewhere he used to work his staffs hard, and they had to
share much of the monotony of work which has been chiefly Foch's life.
He did not go in for society, merely making the formal calls required by
the etiquette of garrison towns on the chief garrison hostesses, and
giving dinners two or three times a year to his staff.
Foch, indeed, with his quiet ways and his hard work and his studying of
Napoleon and Caesar, was characterized by some of the officers of the
army as a pedant, a theorist, and these held that Foch had small chance
of doing anything important in such a practical realm as that of real
war.
Because of his Directorship of the Ecole de Guerre he was known to many
officers, but as far as France at large was concerned his name was
scarcely known at all last August. Yet officers knew him in other lands
besides his own. His two great books, "Principles of War" and "Conduct
of War," have been translated into English, German, and Italian, and are
highly regarded by military men. He has been ranked by the
Militär-Wochenblatt, organ of the German General Staff, as one of the
few strategists of first class ability among the Allies.
Foch is a slim man, with a great deal of nervous energy in his actions,
being so quick and graceful in movement, indeed, that a recent English
observer declares he carries himself more like a man of 40 than one of
64. His gray blue eyes are particularly to be noticed, so keen are they.
His speech is quick, precise, logical.
So little has Foch been known to the French public that it has been
stated time and again that he is an Alsatian. He is not, but comes of a
Basque family which has lived for many generations in the territory
which is now the Department of the Hautes-Pyrénées, directly on the
border of Spain. Foch was born in the town of Tarbes in that department.
Joffre was born in the Department Pyrénées-Orientales, on the Spanish
border to the east. Foch's father, Napoleon Foch, was a Bonapartist and
Secretary of the Prefecture at Tarbes under Napoleon III. One of his two
brothers, a lawyer, is also called Napoleon. The other is a Jesuit
priest. Foch and these brothers attended the local college, and then
turned to their professions.
In 1870 Foch served as a subaltern against the Germans, as did Joffre.
After the war Foch began to win recognition as a man of brains, and at
26 he was given a commission as artillery Captain. Later he became
Professor of Tactics in the Ecole de Guerre, with the title of
Commandant, where he remained for five years, and then returned to
regimental work. It was when Foch reached the grade of Brigadier General
that he went back to the War College, this time as Director, one of the
most confidential positions in the War Department. From this post he
went to the command of the Thirteenth Division, thence to the command of
the Eighth Corps at Bourges, and thence to the command of the Twentieth
Corps at Nancy.
At the time that Foch was appointed Director of the Ecole de Guerre,
Clemenceau was Premier, and upon the latter fell the task of choosing an
officer for the important Directorship. There was keen competition for
the position, many influential Generals desiring the appointment, and in
consequence much wire-pulling went on. The story goes that Clemenceau,
a man of action, became impatient of the intrigues for the post, and
determined to make his own choice unhampered.
According to the story, Clemenceau, after a conference one day upon
routine business with Foch, asked the latter to dine. The Ecole de
Guerre was not mentioned during the meal, the men chatting upon general
topics. But as the coffee was being brought on, the Premier turned
suddenly to the General and said, brusquely:
"By the way, I've a good bit of news for you. You're nominated Director
of the Ecole de Guerre."
"Director of the Ecole de Guerre! But I'm not a candidate for the post."
"That is possible. But you're appointed all the same, and I know you
will do excellent work in the position."
Foch thanked the Premier, but he still had some doubts, and added:
"I fear you don't know all my family connections. I have a brother who
is a Jesuit."
"Jesuit be d-----!" the Premier is reported to have roared in reply.
"Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Director! You are the Director of the Ecole
de Guerre. All the Jesuits in creation won't alter that--it is a fait
accompli."
Among the confidential bits of work worthy of note that Foch has done
for the War Department is the report he made upon the larger guns of the
French field artillery, which have done such execution in the present
war. For many weeks Foch went around the great Creusot gun works in the
blouse of a workman, testing, watching, experimenting, analyzing.
Foch was one of the high officers in France who was not in the least
surprised by the war and who had personally been holding himself in
readiness for it for years. He felt, and often said, that a great war
was inevitable; so much used he to dwell upon the certainty of war that
some persons regarded him as an alarmist when he kept declaring that
French officers should take every step within their power to get
themselves and the troops ready for active service at an instant's
notice. He also held that France as a nation should prepare to the
utmost of her power for the assured conflict.
In a recent issue of The London Times there was a description of Foch by
a Times correspondent who had been at Foch's headquarters in the north
of France. The correspondent's remarks are prefaced by the statement
that in a late dispatch General French mentions General Foch as one of
those whose help he has "once more gratefully to acknowledge." The
correspondent writes in part:
What Ernest Lavisse has clone for civilian New France in his
direction of the Ecole Normale General Foch has done in a
large measure for the officers of New France by his teaching
of strategy and tactics at the Ecole de Guerre. He left his
mark upon the whole teaching of general tactics.
I had the honor of being received recently by General Foch at
his headquarters in the north of France--a house built for
very different purposes many years ago, when Flemish civil
architecture was in its flower. The quiet atmosphere of
Flemish ease and burgomaster comfort has completely vanished.
The building hums with activity, as does the whole town. A
fleet of motor cars is ready for instant action. Officers and
orderlies hurry constantly to and fro. There is an occasional
British uniform, a naval airman's armored car, and above all
the noise of this bustle, though lower in tone, the sound of
guns in the distance from Ypres.
The director of all this activity is General Foch. There in
the north he is putting his theories of war to the test with
as much success as he did at the outbreak of hostilities in
Lorraine and later in the centre during the battle of the
Marne. Although born with the brain of a mathematician,
General Foch's ideas upon war are by no means purely
scientific. He refuses, indeed, to regard war, and more
especially modern war, as an exact science. The developments
of science have, indeed, but increased the mental and moral
effort required of each participant, and it is only in the
passions aroused in each man by the conflict of conception of
life that the combatant finds the strength of will to
withstand the horrors of modern warfare.
General Foch is a philosopher as well as a fighter. He is one
of the rare philosophers who have proved the accuracy of their
ideas in the fire of battle. A typical instance of this is
given by "Miles" in a recent number of the Correspondant.
During the battle of the Marne the Germans made repeated
efforts to cut through the centre where General Foch commanded
between Sézanne and Mailly. On three consecutive days General
Foch was forced to retire. Every morning he resumed the
offensive, with the result that his obstinacy won the day. He
was able to profit by a false step by the enemy to take him in
the flank and defeat him.
General Foch's whole life and teaching were proved true in
those days. He has resolved the art of war into three
fundamental ideas--preparation, the formation of a mass, and
the multiplication of this mass in its use. In order to derive
the full benefit of the mass created it is necessary to have
freedom of action, and that is only obtained by intellectual
discipline. General Foch has written:
"Discipline for a leader does not mean the execution of orders
received in so far as they seem suitable, just reasonable, or
even possible. It means that you have entirely grasped the
ideas of the leader who has given the order and that you take
every possible means of satisfying him. Discipline does not
mean silence, abstention, only doing what appears to you
possible without compromising yourself; it is not the practice
of the art of avoiding responsibilities. On the contrary, it
is action in the sense of orders received."
Fifteen years ago at the Ecole de Guerre General Foch was fond
of quoting Joseph de Maistre's remark, "A battle lost is a
battle which one believes to have lost, for battles are not
lost materially," and of adding, "Battles are therefore lost
morally, and it is therefore morally that they are won." The
aphorism can be extended by this one: "A battle won is a
battle in which one will not admit one's self vanquished." As
"Miles" remarks, "He did as he had said."
Ernest Dimnet in The London Saturday Review has this to say in part
about Foch and his two widely known books:
During his two terms of service at the Ecole de Guerre he
produced two considerable works, "Principes de la Guerre" and
"De la Conduite de La Guerre," which give a high idea of their
author's character and talent. There is nothing in them that
ought to scare away the average reader. Their style has the
geometrical lucidity which is the polytechnician's birthright,
but in spite of the deliberate impersonality generally
attached to that style of writing, there emanates from it a
curious quality which gradually shows us the author as a
living person.
We have the impression of a vast mental capacity turned to the
lifelong study of a fascinating subject and acquiring in it
the dignity of attitude and the naturalness which mastery
inevitably produces. War has been the constant meditation of
this powerful brain. In "La Conduite de la Guerre" this
meditation is the minute historical examination of the battles
of the First Empire and 1870. "Nothing can replace the
experience of war," writes the author, "except the history of
war," and it is clear that he understands the word "history"
as all those who go to the past for a lesson in greatness
understand it.
"Les Principes de la Guerre" is more immediately technical,
yet it strikes one as being less a speculation than a
visualizing of what modern war was sure to be. If the reader
did not feel that he lacks the background which only the
contemplation a million times repeated of concrete details can
create, he would be tempted to marvel at the extraordinary
simplicity of these views. But a good judge who was very near
the General until a wound removed him for a while from the--to
him--fascinating scene tells me that this simplicity and
directness--which marked the action of Foch at the battle of
the Marne as they formerly marked his teaching--are the
perfection to which only a few can aspire.