hoped to build a great palace for the little King of Rome; but whereon,
many years after he and his son had ceased to need mansions made by
hands, the French republic built a magnificent palace for the French
people. This vast building, with its majestic gardens, was the principal
feature of the French national exhibition of 1878, which, like its
predecessor of 1867 and its successors of 1889 and 1900, was held on the
Champ-de-Mars.
Facing the Trocadéro Palace, on the Champ-de-Mars, is the Eiffel Tower
(nearly a thousand feet high) which was erected for the exposition of
1889, and has served, since, then-unimaginable purposes during the stress
and strain of war as a wireless station. The "Ferris" wheel put up for
the exposition of 1900 is close by. And a stone's throw from the
military school are the Hôtel des Invalides, Napoleon's tomb, and the
magnificent Esplanade des Invalides down which one looks straightway to
the glinting Seine and over the superb Alexander III bridge toward the
tree-embowered palaces of arts on the Champs-Élysées.
On the other side of the Hôtel des Invalides from that occupied by the
military school and Champ-de-Mars is the principal diplomatic and
departmental district of Paris, with many embassies (not ours, however,
nor the British--which are across the river) and many administrative
offices of the French nation.
Soldiers and government officials and foreign diplomats dominate the
quarter--and homes of the old French aristocracy.
The Hotel des Invalides, founded by Louis XIV and designed to
accommodate, as an old soldiers' home, some seven thousand veterans of
his unending wars, has latterly served as headquarters for the military
governor of Paris, and also--principally--as a war museum.
Here are housed collections of priceless worth and transcendent interest.
The museum of artillery contains ten thousand specimens of weapons and
armor of all kinds, ancient and modern. The historical museum, across
the court of honor, was--in the years when I spent many fascinating hours
there--extraordinarily rich in personal souvenirs of scores of
illustrious personages.
What it must be now, after the tragic years of a world war, and what it
will become as a treasure house for the years to come, is beyond my
imagination.
It was into this enormously rich atmosphere, pregnant with everything
that conserves France's most glorious military traditions, that Captain
Ferdinand Foch was called in 1885 for two years of intensive training and
study.
VII
JOFFRE AND FOCH
After quitting the School of War in 1887 (he graduated fourth in his
class, as he had at Saumur; he was third at Fontainebleau), Ferdinand
Foch was sent to Montpellier as a probationer for the position of staff
officer.
He remained at Montpellier for four years--first as a probationer and
later as a staff officer in the Sixteenth Army Corps, whose headquarters
are there.
[Illustration: Marshall Joffre, General Foch]
It is a coincidence--without special significance, but interesting--that
Captain Joseph Joffre had spent several years at the School of
Engineering in Montpellier; he left there in 1884, after the death of his
young wife, to bury himself and his grief in Indo-China; so the two men
did not meet in the southern city.[1]
Joffre returned from Indo-China in 1888, while Foch was at Montpellier,
and after some time in the military railway service, and a promotion in
rank (he was captain for thirteen years), received an appointment as
professor of fortifications at Fontainebleau.
Some persons who claim to have known Joffre at Montpellier have
manifested surprise at the greatness to which he attained thirty years
later; he did not impress them as a man of destiny. That is quite as
likely to be their fault as his. And also it is possible that Captain
Joseph Joffre had not then begun to develop in himself those qualities
which made him ready for greatness when the opportunity came.
If, however, any one has ever expressed surprise at Ferdinand Foch's
attainment, I have not heard of it. He seems always to have impressed
people with whom he came in contact as a man of tremendous energy,
application, and thoroughness.
The opportunities for study at Montpellier are excellent, and the region
is one of extraordinary richness for the lover of history. The splendor
of the cities of Transalpine Gaul in this vicinity is attested by remains
more numerous and in better preservation than Italy affords save in a
very few places. And awe-inspiring evidences of medievalism's power
flank one at every step and turn. Without doubt, Foch made the most of
them.
Needless to remark, the commander-in-chief of the allied armies has not
confided to me what were his favorite excursions during these four years
at Montpellier. But I am quite sure that Aigues-Mortes was one of them.
And I like to think of him, as we know he looked then, pacing those
battlements and pondering the warfare of those militant ages when this
vast fortress in the wide salt marshes was one of the most formidable in
the world. What fullness of detail there must have been in the mental
pictures he was able to conjure of St. Louis embarking here on his two
crusades? What particularity in his appreciation of those defenses!
The place is, to-day, the very epitome of desolation--much more so than
if the fortifications were not so perfectly preserved. For they look as
if yesterday they might have been bristling with men-at-arms--whereas not
in centuries has their melancholy majesty served any other purpose than
that of raising reflections in those to whom the past speaks through her
monuments.
From Montpellier, Ferdinand Foch returned to Paris, in February, 1891, as
major on the general army staff.
He and Joffre had now the same rank. Joffre became lieutenant colonel in
1894 and colonel in 1897; similar promotions came to Foch in 1896 and
1903. He was six years later than Joffre in attaining a colonelcy, and
exactly that much later in becoming a general.
Neither man had a quick rise but Foch's was (as measurable in grades and
pay) specially slow.
About the time that Major Joffre went to the Soudan, to superintend the
building of a railway in the Sahara desert, Major Foch went to Vincennes
as commander of the mounted group of the Thirteenth Artillery.
Vincennes is on the southeastern skirts of Paris, close by the confluence
of the Seine and the Marne; about four miles or so from the Bastille,
which was the city's southeastern gate for three hundred years or
thereabouts, until the fortified inclosure on that side of the city was
enlarged under Louis XIV.
The fort of Vincennes was founded in the twelfth century to guard the
approach to Paris from the Marne valley. And on account of its pleasant
situation--close to good hunting and also to their capital--the castle of
Vincennes was a favorite residence of many early French kings.
It was there that St. Louis is said to have held his famous open-air
court of justice, which he established so that his subjects might come
direct to him with their troubles and he, besides settling them, might
learn at first hand what reforms were needed.
Five Kings of France died there (among them Charles VI, the mad king, and
Charles IX, haunted by the horrors of the massacre on St. Bartholomew's
eve), and one King of England, Harry Hotspur. King Charles V was born
there.
From the days of Louis XI the castle has been used as a state prison.
Henry of Navarre was once a prisoner there, and so was the Grand Condé,
and Diderot, and Mirabeau, and it was there that the young Duc d'Enghien
was shot by Napoleon's orders and to Napoleon's everlasting regret.
The castle is now (and has been for many years) an arsenal and school of
musketry, artillery, and other military services. Before its firing
squad perish many traitors to France, whose last glimpse of the country
they have betrayed is in the courtyard of this ancient castle.
The vicinity is very lovely. The Bois de Vincennes, on the edge of which
the castle stands, is scarcely inferior to the Bois de Boulogne in charm.
We used to go out there, not infrequently, for luncheon, which we ate in
a rustic summerhouse close to the edge of the lake, with many sociable
ducks and swans bearing us company and clamoring for bits of bread.
It would be hard to imagine anything more idyllic, more sylvan, on the
edge of a great city--anything more peaceful, restful, anywhere.
Yet the whole locality was, even then, a veritable camp of Mars--forts,
barracks, fields for maneuvers and for artillery practice, infantry
butts, rifle ranges, school of explosives; and what not.
France knew her need of protection--and none of us can ever be
sufficiently grateful that she did!
But she did not obtrude her defensive measures. She seldom made one
conscious of her military affairs.
In Germany, for many years before this war, remembrance of the army and
reverence to the army was exacted of everyone almost at every breath.
Forever and forever and forever you were being made to bow down before
the God of War.
In France, on the contrary, it was difficult to think about war--even in
the very midst of a place like Vincennes--unless you were actually
engaged in organizing and preparing the country's defenses.
After three years at Vincennes, Ferdinand Foch was recalled to the army
staff in Paris. And on the 31st of October, 1895, he was made associate
professor of military history, strategy, and applied tactics, at the
Superior School of War.
He had then just entered upon his forty-fifth year; and the thoroughness
of his training was beginning to make itself felt at military
headquarters.
[1] I have found it interesting to compare the careers of Joffre and Foch
from the time they were at school together, and I daresay that others
will like to know what steps forward he was taking who is not the subject
of these chapters but inseparably bound up with him in many events and
forever linked with him in glory.
VIII
THE SUPERIOR SCHOOL OF WAR
After a year's service as associate professor of military history,
strategy, and applied tactics at the Superior School of War in Paris,
Ferdinand Foch was advanced to head professorship in those branches and
at the same time he was made lieutenant-colonel. This was in 1896. He
was forty-five years old and had been for exactly a quarter of a century
a student of the art of warfare.
His old schoolfellow, Joseph Joffre, was then building fortifications in
northern Madagascar; and his army rank was the same as that of Foch.
It was just twenty years after Foch entered upon his full-fledged
professorship at the Superior School of War that Marshal Joffre, speaking
at a dinner assembling the principal leaders of the government and of the
army, declared that without the Superior School of War the victory of the
Marne would have been impossible.
All the world knows this now, almost as well as Marshal Joffre knew it
then. And all the world knows now as not even Marshal Joffre could have
known then, how enormous far, far beyond the check of barbarism at the
first battle of the Marne--is our debt and that of all posterity to the
Superior School of War and, chiefly, to Ferdinand Foch.
It cannot have been prescience that called him there. It was just
Providence, nothing less!
For that was a time when men like Ferdinand Foch (whose whole heart was
in the army, making it such that nothing like the downfall of 1870 could
ever again happen to France), were laboring under extreme difficulties.
The army was unpopular in France.
This was due, partly to the disclosures of the Dreyfus case; partly to a
wave of internationalism and pacifism; partly to jealousy of the army
among civil officials.
An unwarranted sense of security was also to blame. France had worked so
hard to recoup her fortunes after the disaster of 1870 that her
people--delighted with their ability as money makers, blinded by the
glitter of great prosperity--grudged the expanse of keeping up a large
army, grudged the time that compulsory military training took out of a
young man's life. And this preoccupation with success and the arts and
pleasures of prosperous peace made them incline their ears to the
apostles of "Brotherhood" and "Federation" and "Arbitration instead of
Armament."
Little by little legislation went against the army. The period of
compulsory service was reduced from three years to two; that cut down the
size of the army by one-third. The supreme command of the army was
vested not in a general, but in a politician--the Minister of War. The
generals in the highest commands not only had to yield precedence to the
prefects of the provinces (like our governors of states), but were
subject to removal if the prefects did not like their politics and the
Minister of War wished the support of the prefects.
Even the superior war council of the nation might be politically made up,
to pay the War Minister's scores rather than to protect the country.
All this can happen to a people lulled by a false sense of security--even
to a people which has had to defend itself against the savage rapacity of
its neighbors across the Rhine for two thousand years!
It was against these currents of popular opinion and of government
opposition that Ferdinand Foch took up his work in the Superior School of
War--that work which was to make possible the first victory of the Marne,
to save England from invasion by holding Calais, and to do various other
things vital to civilization, including the prodigious achievements of
the days that have since followed.
Foch foresaw that these things would have to be done and, with absolute
consecration to his task, he set himself not only to train officers for
France when she should need them, but to inspire them with a unity of
action which has saved the world.
I have various word-pictures of him as he then appeared to, and
impressed, his students.
One is by a military writer who uses the pseudonym of "Miles."
"The officers who succeeded one another at the school of war between 1896
and 1901," he says, referring to the first term of Foch as instructor
there, "will never forget the impressions made upon them by their
professor of strategy and of general tactics. It was this course that
was looked forward to with the keenest curiosity as the foundational
instruction given by the school. It enjoyed the prestige given it by the
eminent authorities who had held it; and the eighty officers who came to
the school at each promotion, intensely desirous of developing their
skill and judgment, were always impatient to see and hear the man who was
to instruct them in these branches.
"Lieutenant-Colonel Foch did not disappoint their expectations. Thin,
elegant, of distinguished bearing, he at once struck the beholder with
his expression--full of energy, of calm, of rectitude.
"His forehead was high, his nose straight and prominent, his gray-blue
eyes looked one full in the face. He spoke without gestures, with an air
of authority and conviction; his voice serious, harsh, a little
monotonous; amplifying his phrases to press home in every possible way a
rigorous reasoning; provoking discussion; always appealing to the logic
of his hearers; sometimes difficult to follow, because his discourse was
so rich in ideas; but always holding attention by the penetration of his
surveys as well as by his tone of sincerity.
"The most profound and the most original of the professors at the school
of war, which at that time counted in its teaching corps many very
distinguished minds and brilliant lecturers: such Lieutenant-Colonel Foch
seemed to his students, all eager from the first to give themselves up to
the enjoyment of his lessons and the acceptance of his inspiration."
Colonel E. Réquin of the French general staff, who has fought under Foch
in some of the latter's greatest engagements, says:
"Foch has been for forty years the incarnation of the French military
spirit." For forty years! That means ever since he left the cavalry
school at Saumur and went, as captain of the Tenth regiment of artillery,
to Rennes. "Through his teachings and his example," Colonel Réquin goes
on to say, in a 1918 number of the _World's Work_, "he was the moral
director of the French general staff before becoming the supreme chief of
the allied armies. Upon each one of us he has imprinted his strong mark.
We owe to him in time of peace that unity of doctrine which was our
strength. Since the war we owe to him the highest lessons of
intellectual discipline and moral energy.
"As a professor he applied the method which consists in taking as the
base of all strategical and tactical instruction the study of history
completed by the study of military history--that is to say, field
operations, orders given, actions, results, and criticisms to be made and
the instructions to be drawn from them. He also used concrete
cases--that is to say, problems laid by the director on the map or on the
actual ground.
"By this intellectual training he accustomed the officers to solving all
problems, not by giving them ready-made solutions, but by making them
find the logical solution to each individual case.
"His mind was trained through so many years of study that no war
situation could disturb him. In the most difficult ones, he quickly
pointed out the goal to be reached and the means to employ, and each one
of us felt that it must be right."
But best of all the things said about Foch in that period of his life, I
like this, by Charles Dawbarn, in the _Fortnightly Review_:
"Such was"--in spite of many disappointments--"_his fine confidence in
life, that he communicated to others not his grievances, but his secret
satisfactions_."
IX
THE GREAT TEACHER
Foch made the men who sat under him love their work for the work's sake
and not for its rewards. He fired them with an ardor for military art
which made them feel that in all the world there is nothing so
fascinating, so worth while, as knowing how to defend one's country
when she needs defense.
He was able, in peace times when the military spirit was little
applauded and much decried, to give his students an enthusiasm for
"preparedness" which flamed as high and burned as pure as that which
ordinarily is lighted only by a great national rush to arms to save the
country from ravage.
It was tremendously, incalculably important for France and for all of
us that Ferdinand Foch was eager and able to impart this enthusiasm for
military skill.
But also it is immensely important, to-day, when the war is won, and in
all days and all walks of life, that there be those who can kindle and
keep alight the enthusiasm of their fellows; who can overlook the
failure of their own ardor and faithfulness to win its fair reward, and
convey to others only the alluring glow of their "secret satisfactions."
In the five years, 1895-1901 (his work at the school was interrupted by
politics in 1901), "many hundreds of officers," as René Puaux says,
"the very elite of the general staffs of our army, followed his
teaching and were imbued with it; and as they practically all, at the
beginning of the war, occupied high positions of command, one may
estimate as he can the profound and far reaching influence of this one
grand spirit."
Let us try to get some idea of the sort of thing that Foch taught those
hundreds of French army officers, not only about war but about life.
From all his study, he repeatedly declared, one dominant conviction has
evolved: Force that is not dominated by spirit is vain force.
Victory, in his belief, goes to those who merit it by the greatest
strength of will and intelligence.
It was his endeavor, always, to develop in the hundreds of officers who
were his students, that dual strength in which it seemed to him that
victory could only lie: moral and intellectual ability to perceive what
ought to be done, and intellectual and moral ability to do it.
In his mind, it is impossible to be intelligent with the brain alone.
The Germans do not comprehend this, and therein, to Ferdinand Foch,
lies the key to all their failures.
He believes that each of us must think with our soul's aid--that is to
say, with our imagination, our emotions, our aspiration--and employ our
intelligence to direct our feeling.
And he asks this combination not from higher officers alone, but from
all their men down to the humblest in the ranks.
He believes in the invincibility of men fighting for a principle dearer
to them than life--but he knows that ardor without leadership means a
lost cause; that men must know how to fight for their ideals, their
principles; but that their officers are charged with the sacred
responsibility of making the men's ardor and valor count.
At the beginning of his celebrated course of lectures on tactics he
always admonished his students thus:
"You will be called on later to be the brain of an army. So I say to
you to-day: Learn to think."
By this he was far from meaning that officers were to confine thinking
to themselves, but that they were to teach themselves to think so that
they might the better hand on intelligence and stimulate their men to
obey not blindly but comprehendingly.
It was a maxim of Napoleon's, of which Foch is very fond, that "as a
general rule, the commander-in-chief ought only to indicate the
direction, determine the ends to be attained; the means of getting
there ought to be left to the free choice of the mediums of execution,
without whom success is impossible."
This leaves a great responsibility to officers, but it is the secret of
that flexibility which makes the French army so effective.
For Foch carries his belief in individual judgment far beyond the
officers commanding units; he carries it to the privates in the ranks.
An able officer, in Foch's opinion, is one who can take a general
command to get his men such-and-such a place and accomplish
such-and-such a thing, and so interpret that command to his men that
each and every one of them will, while acting in strict obedience to
orders, use the largest possible amount of personal intelligence in
accomplishing the thing he was told to do.
It is said that there was probably never before in history a battle
fought in which every man was a general--so to speak--as at the battle
of Château Thierry, in July, 1918. That is to say, there was probably
never before a battle in which so many men comprehended as clearly as
if they had been generals what it was all about, and acted as if they
had been generals to attain their objectives.
It was an intelligent democracy, acting under superb leadership that
vanquished the forces of autocracy.
Foch has worked with a free hand to test the worth of his lifelong
principles. And the hundreds of men he trained in those principles
were ready to carry them out for him.
No wonder his first injunction was: Learn to think!
To him, the leadership of units is not a simple question of
organization, of careful plans, of strategic and tactical intelligence,
but a problem involving enormous adaptability.
Battles are not won at headquarters, he contends; they are won in the
field; and the conditions that may arise in the field cannot be
foreseen or forestalled--they must be met when they present themselves.
In large part they are made by the behavior of men in unexpected
circumstances; therefore, the more a commander knows about human nature
and its spiritual depressions and exaltations, the better able he is to
change his plans as new conditions arise.
German power in war, Foch taught his students, lay in the great masses
of their effective troops and their perfect organization for moving men
and supplies. German weakness was in the absolute autocracy of great
headquarters, building its plans as an architect builds a house and
unable to modify them if something happens to make a change necessary.
This he deduced from his study of their methods in previous wars,
especially in that of 1870.
And with this in mind he labored so that when Germany made her next
assault upon France, France might be equipped with hundreds of officers
cognizant of Germany's weakness and prepared to turn it to her defeat.
X
A COLONEL AT FIFTY