Then he removed his headquarters to the ancient town of Cassel, about
eighteen miles west and a little south of Ypres.
From there he was able to reach in a few hours' time any strategic part
of the north front and from this actual watch-tower (Cassel is on an
isolated hill more than 500 feet high, and commands views of portions
of France, Belgium, and even--on a clear day--of the chalky cliffs of
England; St. Omer, Dunkirk, Ypres, and Ostend are all visible from its
heights), he was to direct movements affecting the destinies of all
three nations.
The Belgians, whose sublime stand had thwarted Germany's murderous plan
against an unready world, were a sad little army when they reached the
Yser about mid October. It was not what they had endured that
contributed most to break their spirit; but what they had been unable
to prevent.
To those heroic men who had left their beautiful country to the
arch-fiends of destruction, their parents and wives and children to
savages who befoul the name of beasts; who no longer had any
possessions, nor munitions wherewith to make another stand on Belgian
soil; to them Foch took fresh inspiration with his calm and tremendous
personality; to them he sent his splendid Forty-second Division to
swell their ranks so frightfully depleted in Honor's cause; to them he
gave the suggestion of opening their sluices and drowning out of their
last little corner of Belgium the enemy they could not otherwise
dislodge.
This done, the next problem of Foch was to establish relations with Sir
John French whereby the most cordial and complete cooperation might be
insured between the British Field Marshal and the French commander of
the armies in the north.
There are several graphic accounts of interviews which took place
between these generals.
It was on October 28 that Foch saw the success of the opened sluices
and the consequent salvation to the heroic Belgians of a corner of
their own earth whereon to maintain their sovereignty.
On the 30th the English suffered severe reverses in spite of the aid
lent them by eight battalions of French soldiers and artillery
reinforcements. In consequence, they had had to cede considerable
ground, their line was pierced, and the flank of General Dubois' army,
adjoining theirs, was menaced.
When word of this disaster reached Foch that night he at once set out
from Cassel for French's headquarters at Saint Omer.
It was 1 A.M. when he arrived. Marshal French was asleep. He was
waked to receive his visitor.
"Marshal," said Foch, "your line is cracked?"
"Yes."
"Have you any resources?"
"I have none."
"Then I give you mine; the gap must be stopped at once; if we allow our
lines to be pierced at a single point we are lost, because of the
masses our enemy has to pour through it. I have eight battalions of
the Thirty-second Division that General Joffre has sent me. Take them
and go forward!"
The offer was most gratefully received. At two o'clock the orders were
given; the gap was stopped.
Nevertheless, the British despaired of their ability to hold. Marshal
French had no reserves, and decided to fall back.
A liaison officer hastened to notify General Dubois that the British
were about to retire, and General Dubois betook himself in all speed to
Vlamertinghe, the Belgian headquarters, to notify their commanding
general. Foch happened to be with the Belgian general. And while
these three were conferring, the liaison officer (Jamet) saw the
automobile of Marshal French pass by.
Realizing the importance of the British commander's presence at that
interview, Jamet ventured to stop him and suggest his attendance.
Foch implored French to prevent retreat. French declared there was
nothing else for him to do--his men were exhausted, he had no reserves.
Foch pointed out to him the incalculable consequences of yielding.
"It is necessary to hold in spite of everything!" he cried; "to hold
until death. What you propose would mean a catastrophe. Hold on!
I'll help you."
And as he talked he wrote his suggestions on a piece of paper he found
on the table before him, and passed it to the British commander.
Marshal French read what was written, at once added to it, "execute the
order of General Foch," signed it, and gave it to one of his staff
officers.
And the Channel ports were saved.
But a greater thing even than that was foreshadowed: Foch had begun to
demonstrate what was in him before which not only the men of his
command must bow but the generals of other nations also.
One of the staff officers of General Foch who was closely associated
with him there in the north in that time of great anxiety, has given us
a pen-picture of the chief as his aides often saw him then. Doubtless
it is a good picture also, except for differences in trifling details,
of the great commander as he has been on many and many a night since,
while the destinies of millions hung in the balance of his decisions.
"All is silence. The little town of Cassel is early asleep. On the
rough pavement of the Grande Place, occasional footsteps break the
stillness. Now they are those of a staff officer on his way to his
billet. Now it is the sentry moving about to warm himself up a bit.
Then silence again.
"In a little office of the Hotel de Ville, a man is seated at a table.
His elbows are on a big military map. A telephone is at his hand. He
waits--to hear the results of orders he has given. And while he waits
he chews an unlighted cigar and divides his attention between the map
and the clock--an old Louis XVI timepiece with marble columns, which
ticks off the minutes almost soundlessly. How slowly its hands go
round! How interminable seems the wait for news!
"Someone knocks, and Colonel Weygand, chief of staff, enters; he has a
paper in his hand: 'Telephoned from the Ninth army at 1.15 A.M.' . . .
"The general has raised his head; his eyes are shining.
"'Good! good!'
"His plans are working out successfully; the reinforcements he sent for
have arrived in time. There is nothing more he can do now; so he will
go to bed.
"A last look at the map. Then his eye-glasses, at the end of their
string, are tucked away in the upper pocket of his coat. The general
puts on his black topcoat and his cap.
"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 Cassel, 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 Réquin calls that Battle of the Yser "like a preface
to the great victory of 1918."
In the spring of 1915 Foch left Cassel and took up headquarters at
Frévent, 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.
[Illustration: General Pétain--Marshal Haig--General Foch--General
Pershing]
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 associates 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.
Gratitude 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 noble 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 Pétain, 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 assembling 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
glass 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 onrushing 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 Pershing to Foch. In the presence of
Foch, Pétain, Clemenceau and Loucheur (Minister of Munitions) Pershing
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."
[Illustration: General Foch--General Pershing]
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 participation as only their press could give them; it was
their issue; their attitude 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?
The boche has been halted since March 27. He has, doubtless,
encountered some obstacle. We have stopped him. Now we shall endeavor
to do better. I do not see that there is anything more to say.
"But as to yourselves, keep at your task. It is a time when everyone
ought to work steadfastly. Work with your pens. We will go on working
with our arms."
"I regret," wrote Lieutenant d'Entraygues in the Paris _Temps_, "only
one thing: that all the people of France were not able to see and hear
this soldier as he spoke to us. They would know why it is not possible
to doubt our victory."
It was probably about that time that Major Darnley Stuart-Stephens
wrote of Foch, for the _English Review_.
"The man who has been consecrated by destiny to the saving from Moloch
of this globe's civilization, is he who will prove once more that in
the conflict between the finely tempered sword and the finely tempered
brain, it is the mental asset that will prevail."
Major Stuart-Stephens had studied the "mental assets" of Ferdinand Foch.
"Now and again at his lectures." he wrote, "I have noticed that
far-away look of the mystic in his eyes that I remember so well in
those of that other soldier-saint, Charles Gordon."
It was that spiritual greatness in Foch which everyone felt, on which
everyone brought into contact with him based his unfaltering faith in
the outcome.
"We do not know," says an editorial writer in the New York _Evening
Sun_, "what the judgments of the military critics will be when they
have carefully studied and sifted the evidence, but to a layman it
looks as if Foch was not merely a very great general but one of the
greatest generals of all recorded history . . . as great a general as
Napoleon or Caesar or Hannibal or Alexander."
But whether they put him, as a military man, on a par with Napoleon, or
come sapiently to the conclusion that he was no more than a very able
general fortunate in being in command at the time the Germanic morale
was breaking, it will never be possible to disprove that he was a
supreme leader of men in a great war of ideals--an incarnation of all
those qualities of faith and fervor, of self-mastery and dependence on
the Divine, of self-realization and with it devotion to the rights and
progress of others, which are embodied in the Christian democracy for
whose preservation millions have gladly died.
XVII
BRINGING GERMANY TO ITS KNEES
Faith in the ability of Foch to lead us all to victory was, however, not
to endure without its grave tests.
The German drive of March 21 was checked by his co-ordination of Allied
forces. But checking the enemy just before he reached the key of the
Channel ports was not defeating him; preventing him from driving a wedge
between the British and French armies was only diverting him to another
point of attack. He was desperate--that enemy! He knew that he must win
a decisive victory soon, or see his own maladies destroy him.
He knew the genius of Foch; he knew the immense increase in strength that
the Allies had achieved in unifying their command. He may have
underestimated the worth in battle of our American fighters; but it is
scarcely probable that he underestimated the worth, behind the lines, of
our army of railroad builders, harbor constructors, supply handlers, and
the like. He knew that whether we could fight or not, we had money and
men and were pouring both into France to help win the war.
And he also knew that victory after victory which he had won had not only
failed to increase his might but had, somehow, weakened him; country
after country had fallen before his sword or before his
poison-propaganda--or both!--his plunder was vast, his accessions in
fighting men available for the Western front were formidable--yet
something in his vitals was wrong, terribly wrong; he must stop, soon,
and look to his health, or he would be too far-gone for recovery. But
not now! not now! "They" must be crushed now or never!
So he fought like a maddened beast whose usual cunning has given place to
frenzied desperation.
Again and again and again he lunged--now here, now there. And the
defenders of civilization fell back and back, before him.
Where was that calm, quiet man who had said: "Well, gentlemen, our
affairs are not going badly; are they?"
"The boche," he had said, "has been halted . . . now we shall endeavor to
do better."
What had happened? The boche was _not_ halted! He was, in fact,
shelling Paris!
It was in those days that the "soldier-saint," as Major Stuart-Stephens
has called him, must have had need of all his faith and all his fortitude.
We don't know much, yet, except of a very superficial sort, about those
days. We know what happened in them insofar as army movements are
concerned, and the heartbreaking re-occupation of towns and villages
where French and American restoration squads were working to make
habitable those places the Huns had laid waste; and the continued
shelling of Paris by the "mystery gun"; and the great exodus of civilians
from the capital as the ravaging hordes drew nearer and always nearer.
These things we know; but not what Foch was thinking--except that he was
not thinking of defeat.
If there was a true heart in France that ever for a moment doubted the
outcome of the war, or dreamed of abandoning the conflict before it had
made the future safe, I have never heard of that one.
Certainly the man who was leading them never doubted. Nor was it on his
own skill that his faith was founded. He knew Who would give his cause
the victory.
In the fifth German drive of 1918 the enemy crossed the Marne! Paris was
almost in sight--Paris! where millions of French were celebrating the
fall of the Bastille and the birth of freedom as if the leering, jeering
enemies of all freemen were not so close to the gates of the Capital that
the gleam of their tusks might almost have been seen from the city's
outermost ramparts. Certainly the drunken fools within--drunk with their
deep draughts of liberty--could hear the snarling and snapping of the
approaching wolves, the baying of Big Bertha, the barking of her smaller
sisters! But it would be like those crazy French to dance and sing and
celebrate the overthrow of autocracy, while an autocracy the like of
which no French King had ever exercised was on the eve of engulfing them.