THE GENERAL HIMSELF
If you talk with the American soldiers, as I did both in their rest
billets and their camps, you will find they have the clearest and most
definite understanding as to their business in Europe. It is to win
the war. I never met a man who had the slightest doubt or hesitation
about it. They know it will happen. They say to you: “Why, the general
himself says so. ‘Germany can and must be beaten.’ The general himself
said that.”
“The general himself,” of course, means General Pershing. He is to
the American soldier what Foch is to the French _poilu_, the supreme
authority who can not be mistaken. And to the French _poilu_, and to
the French public at large, General Pershing, perhaps next to General
Foch, is the commanding figure of the war. This in spite of the fact
that they know nothing whatever of him as a fighting man. They believe
in him, and in my opinion their faith is going to be justified.
“Character,” said General Pershing, “other things being equal, will
decide the last battle.”
The basis of my confidence in General Pershing is that he has
character, strong, original, dynamic. Every word and gesture reveals
personality. He is absolutely straightforward and sincere, and his
manner is simple and natural. Yet underneath that quiet simplicity you
can easily perceive a will of steel and a capacity for great sternness.
His first appearance won Paris completely, and before he has had time
to fight a battle he has become a military hero in the eyes of the
French.
I saw General Pershing first in the reception room of the beautiful
Louis XVI mansion in the Rue de Varennes which has been loaned him for
a town house when he goes to Paris. That is seldom. Most of the time
he lives in a picturesque town in eastern France, which is the general
headquarters of our army. The name of the town is almost never spoken.
It is simply alluded to as G. H. Q. (General headquarters.)
Since the advent of the American forces in France there has been a much
closer co-operation among the allies, a co-operation which reached its
natural climax in the appointment of General Foch as generalissimo of
the allied armies. France has long desired this arrangement, President
Wilson desired it and so did Premier Lloyd George. General Pershing,
in his swift, clear-minded judgment, declared it inevitable. But
difficulties stood in the way of its accomplishment, and it was not
until after several meetings of the allied war council at Versailles
that the thing began to seem remotely possible.
In the interest of stronger co-operation and as commander-in-chief of
the American army, General Pershing has been a constant attendant of
the allied war councils. In a ten-minute interval between luncheon
and departure for an afternoon session of the council, I had my first
conversation with him. As he came into the room it occurred to me
instantly that here was the very embodiment of the American army. The
composite, the perfect type. No wonder the French like him. He _looks_
right.
No Greek of old Sparta was ever a more perfect physical specimen. At
fifty-four, General Pershing is as straight and slender of waist as
when he left West Point. He is tall, powerful of frame, without an
ounce of fat anywhere on his body, and as hard as bronze. His eyes are
keen and young, although his hair is gray. His face is marked with a
few deep, scar-like lines, for tragedy has entered his life, as all the
world knows. The lines do not suggest age, however. General Pershing
looks younger than his years, much younger than most of his published
photographs. His voice is that of a young man, and he speaks crisply,
without ever hesitating for a word.
There is not a particle of pose about Pershing. He has been called
cold, but I did not find him so. When I told him that I had a
son in the army he became decidedly cordial. What was the boy’s
name? His regiment? When did he reach France? Had I seen him? The
commander-in-chief of the American army, on his way to an allied
council with men who have the fate of civilization in their hands, had
time to ask questions about an enlisted man. Lincoln used to do things
like that.
Weeks later I was the guest, with several other correspondents, of the
intelligence department of the army in a motor journey into our war
zone. Our passes were for three days only and three districts were
to be visited. One stopping place was the town alluded to as G. H.
Q., the heart of the American expeditionary force in France. We were
to meet the commander-in-chief informally, but there was to be no
interview. The prospect was pleasing, but not particularly exciting,
and in that it matched up pretty well with the rest of the trip. When
the intelligence department invites correspondents, especially women
correspondents, to a party you can be sure that it is a very staid and
conservative affair.
We traveled by train from Paris to our first point, a big camp where
our engineers had done some wonders of construction, and which was now
a completely equipped school, where thousands of soldiers were being
trained in bombing, trench mortar work and other skilled branches. At
the station we were met by a handsome and diplomatic young intelligence
officer in a big limousine. Under his chaperonage we were to see as
much of the war zone as was considered good for us. The second day
brought us to G. H. Q. and General Pershing.
Then was I glad that I had seen him in the palace in the Rue de
Varennes. Because now I knew something about him. I knew he liked
candor and straight talk. I knew also that with an inflexible will he
possessed a reasonable mind. You can argue with a man like that. I did
argue with General Pershing on the subject of what women correspondents
ought to be permitted to see and to know. I told him what I wanted to
take back to the mothers of American soldiers.
I can not repeat our conversation, because it was confidential. I will
simply say that General Pershing proved the reasonableness of his mind
by greatly extending our facilities on that trip, and turning our prim
little party into an experience wholly worth while from the reporter’s
point of view. Later I shall go into details about that trip up the
line. This chapter is concerned with General Pershing.
In the plain bare room, which is the commander’s private headquarters,
and in which the great campaigns which our men will fight are being
planned, General Pershing appears even more dynamic and forceful than
in his luxurious Parisian home. I have seen generals who wore their
uniforms as if they were business clothes, but not so General Pershing.
If he wore business clothes he would contrive to make them look like
a uniform. His uniform is the most immaculate, the most correct, the
most military thing in the way of garments that I have ever beheld. His
boots look as though he never wore the same pair a second time. Yet
there is nothing stiff or rigid in his appearance. He puts his clothes
on a perfect masculine figure, that is all. He holds himself like an
absolutely fit and athletic man.
General Pershing exalts health. He takes daily cold baths, one of his
young aides told me, and often in the dead of winter runs and exercises
in the open air clad only in a thin bathrobe. To bring every man in the
army up to his physical standard is the commander’s expressed ambition.
To make them supremely healthy, efficient fighting men, and to return
them to their mothers morally as well as physically sound, is General
Pershing’s conception of his responsibility as head of the American
army.
It is always interesting to know how we appear in the eyes of
strangers, and an article published in a well-known French magazine
shows the strong appeal that General Pershing has made to the
imagination of our allies. According to the French writer, there are
two men in the American commander-in-chief, one of them Anglo-Saxon,
the other a Frenchman. In 1749 the ancestors of General Pershing
emigrated from Alsace to America, and Alsace in the eyes of all
Frenchmen is and always will be France.
If by rare favor you are received by General Pershing in his Paris
home you meet the Anglo-Saxon, says the reporter. There his coldness
is positively British. “Tall, slender as a sublieutenant, well set up
in his khaki brown uniform, four stars on the shoulders and on the
collar the golden eagle of his supreme rank. General Pershing receives
you in a manner courteous but glacial. He is entirely the official,
conscious of his great responsibilities, and determined to keep silence
concerning official matters. His blue eyes are clear and cold, even
hard. Above his strong jaw, indicative of implacable energy, his lips,
saber-straight, wear no smile.
“Do not attempt to get from him any details of his mission in France,
or try to induce him to give you any personal souvenirs or anecdotes
of his tour of the French front. His aide-de-camp and interpreter has
an invariable reply to all such questions: ‘The general has nothing to
say.’ Above all, never venture to ask a question concerning his private
life, his joys or sorrows. Immediately the look in his cold eyes
becomes hostile. Before the question is fairly out the answer comes:
‘The general does not think that would interest the public.’
“But if by happy circumstance you are privileged to enter the small
circle of General Pershing’s friends, what a delightful metamorphosis!
The man reveals himself simple, charming, pliant, spontaneous. He is
the Frenchman, cordial and communicative, ready to lend himself to
that juvenile gaiety which so much amuses the Anglo-Saxon. The blue
eyes that we have seen flash so coldly are now at once mischievous and
tender. His features are animated, his smile ready.
“Everything interests him, science, art, literature. Music he loves
almost as well as paintings, and he tells you with what new pleasure
every time he visited the Paris of pre-war days he went each day to
the Louvre galleries. Above all, he tells you how profoundly happy he
is to be in the war on our side. Certainly that joy is rooted in the
satisfaction of a soldier fulfilling his duty, but General Pershing is
more than a soldier. He is an idealist called to accomplish a high
mission, to serve an unselfish cause, to help humanity to a secure and
happy future.”
General Pershing never appeared a bigger man than when he offered to
brigade the American forces in with the English and the French, and
himself take the subordinate position of a commander without a real
command. The offer was made and accepted in the dark and panic-ridden
early days of the March German offensive, when it looked as though the
allied lines might be broken, and all the man power available had to be
mobilized.
That danger is happily past. The Germans have struck and the blow has
proved utterly futile. The Americans are to be allowed to fight under
their own flag and their own officers. They will get full credit for
what they do. But the French and English will never forget that General
Pershing was unselfishly willing, when necessary, to forego both for
himself and the American army every particle of credit, letting the
honors go to the allies. From a man of that character great fighting,
splendid victories may be expected. Under such a commander our sons are
well secured.