final drive on Paris. They would start that drive on the night of July
14, while the fools were celebrating, when they were least expecting an
attack. Probably most of them would be drunk. Oh, almost certainly!
Their resistance would be weak, And for all time thereafter it would make
an impressive tale for schoolbooks throughout the Pan-Germanized world,
that democracy was dispatched in her last orgy of exultation.
As clearly as if he were not only present in the councils of German
Headquarters, but present inside the thick round skulls about the council
table, this boche attitude and intent was comprehended by the small frail
man at Mormant, where his Headquarters then were.
On that night of July 14 he began the great offensive which never stopped
until the whining boche was east of the Rhine!
His Intelligence Department told him that the German drive would probably
begin at ten minutes past midnight. They might be quite wrong, but that
was their guess. Foch was all-but sure they were not wrong; that it was
not in German nature to reason other than as I have described.
An hour before midnight the Germans were (doubtless) surprised by some
lively action of French artillery. Strange! But it couldn't mean
anything, of course! So the boche came on. The behavior of the French
was not quite what he had expected; one thing after another happened that
was not in his calculations. But that did not argue aught against the
calculations! It was the exasperating habit of the French to do
unexpected things. Most annoying! But not able to affect the outcome,
of course.
On July 18th they got "more unexpected still"--they and sundry "green"
troops from the flaccid, fatuous U. S. A.! Some "hounds of the devil"
were let loose upon the gray-clad armies of righteousness. It was
outrageous the way those sons of Satan fought! They rushed upon the
legions of the Lord's anointed as if killing Germans were the noblest
work a man could be about.
So many things happened that were not down on paper--in the plans of the
German General Headquarters! It became distressingly evident that these
Yanks knew as little, and cared as little, what was expected of them as
the stupid Britishers or the mercurial French or the suicidal Belgians.
They didn't know how to fight--they couldn't know--they had never done
any fighting, and whom had they had to teach them warfare? They were
absurd. They didn't know the simplest rules of war--they didn't know
enough to surrender when they were surrounded, cut off, outnumbered.
They fought on! They didn't know how to fight; but Lord! how they could
kill Germans. And then they were such fools that their medical corps
came out onto the battlefield and when they found a German who wasn't
dead but was suffering, their doctors bound up his wounds and gave him
water to quench his raging thirst, and left him for his own comrades to
carry away and nurse--that, instead of gouging his eyes out with a
bayonet's end or bashing in his skull with the butt of a gun! Strange
people! They never could become good slaves of Kultur; so the wounded
Germans whose agonies they had assuaged, rose up on their elbows and shot
them dead.
In six hours the Allies, not only reinforced but recreated by this tide
of new life, new eagerness, re-took twice as much ground on the
Soissons-Rheims salient as the Germans had won in six days' desperate
advance.
When the word to fight came to the men of the American army, it was less
like a command to them than like a release, a long-desired permission.
Many, if not most, of them had for nearly four years been straining at
the leash which held them from the place where their sense of honor told
them they should be.
[Illustration: Marshal Foch, Executive Head of the Allied Forces]
"They were superb," Marshal Foch has said, paying wholehearted tribute to
them. "There is no other word. Our armies were fatigued by years of
relentless struggle and the mantle of war lay heavily upon them. We were
magnificently comforted by the virility of the Americans. The youth of
the United States brought a renewal of the hope that hastened victory.
Not only was this moral factor of the highest importance, but also the
enormous material aid placed at our disposal. Nobody among us will ever
forget what America did."
Let us hope that neither will any among us ever forget for a single
instant how much was paid for us in blood and anguish by those who held
the beast at bay from us for long years before we put forth a stroke in
our own defense or in friendly help or in support of our ideals.
That our aid arrived in time to help turn the tide, that our men were
magnificent when their opportunity was given them, is cause not for
vaunting ourselves, but only for gratefulness that our honor remains to
us--that we have not had to accept life and liberty at other men's hands
while our hands stayed in our pockets.
Our fighting men redeemed us in our own eyes; they restored our souls'
dignity; for this we can never be grateful enough to them. But we can
never be braggart about it. It might so easily have come too late!
On August 6, Foch was made Marshal of France.
And two days later, the British, on the Somme, launched the first really
successful offensive of the war--not stopping a drive, but inaugurating
one.
At last Foch was able to make war as he had for years contended that war
should be made: The way to make war is to attack.
It was his plan, now that he had the men to make this possible, to keep
the enemy busy by striking first at one point of the long line running
from Belgium to the Piave, and then at another. And by the first of
September the Allied line on the Western front was back where it ran in
the deadlock of 1915-16 while the attack on Verdun was raging.
"General Pershing," Foch has said, "wished to have his army concentrated,
as far as possible, in an American sector. The Argonne and the heights
of the Meuse were a sector hard to tackle. So I said to him: 'All right;
your men have the devil's own punch. They will get away with it. Go to
it.'"
And they went! That was the famous St. Mihiel salient. The American
infantry started their advance there on September 26. They went forward
with a rush. On their left, the French advanced as rapidly, and on
October 1 re-took St. Quentin, which the Germans had held since the
beginning of the war. October 2 the British, operating on the left of
the French, reached Cambrai which also had been in German hands for more
than four years.
October 4 the Hohenzollern King of Bulgaria deserted his doomed allies
and his throne and began looking for a place of refuge.
And on that day the Hohenzollern government at Berlin had so little
relish for the situation on all fronts, that it besought the President of
the United States "to take in hand the restoration of peace, acquaint all
the belligerent states with this request and invite them to send
plenipotentiaries for the purpose of opening negotiations. . . . With a
view to avoiding further bloodshed, the German Government requests the
immediate conclusion of an armistice on land and water and in air."
October 10, Austria and Turkey joined Germany in appealing for peace
terms. Notes continued to pass between the Germanic capitals and
Washington, D. C.
But Foch fought on.
The Americans had cleared the last corner of the Argonne of German
machine-gun nests and gunners, and were widening their offensive on the
Meuse. The French had taken Laon, and were pushing on. The British had
taken Lens and Cambrai and were advancing on Douai and Lille.
On the 23rd of October the President of the United States referred the
matter of the armistice to the Allies. On the 29th, the Allied War
Council met at Versailles to fix the armistice conditions.
(Foch meanwhile had launched an offensive against the Austrians on the
Piave.)
Now, an armistice is supposed to be a cessation of hostilities for an
agreed period, all combatants to remain as they were; if the parley for
peace is not successful, the struggle is to resume where it paused,
neither side having gained or lost, except as delay may or may not have
been favorable to them.
Foch had not the smallest intention of granting the hard-pushed enemy
that sort of an armistice--time to recuperate, to parley while Winter
came on and postponed the resumption of his offensive until Spring. To
do that meant to prolong the war probably another year, at enormous cost
in lives, suffering, materials.
What he would grant would be an armistice in which the enemy, so far from
keeping his positions would abandon them all and retire far behind the
Rhine; in which the Allies, so far from keeping their positions, would
follow the retreating enemy into his own country, and police it; in which
the enemy, so far from resting on his sword, would hand it over--his
swords, and his cannon, and his machine-guns, and his fleet and his
submarines and his aircraft and his locomotives; in which he would
release all Allied prisoners and not ask the release of any of his
captured men.
The terms were the most ignominious ever imposed upon a prostrate enemy.
The sole reason for referring to them as "armistice terms" was that peace
terms are final and absolute, and these were not final--they would be
made much worse if the Germans failed to satisfy their conquerors on
every point.
When the Allied War Council had agreed with Foch on the armistice terms,
he said:
"Within ten days or a fortnight I can break the German army in three,
envelop a section of it, and take a million prisoners. Is there any
condition which, in the opinion of any of you, could be imposed upon the
enemy then, more conclusive than those of the armistice?"
No one could think of anything that might add a jot to the completeness
of Germany's subjugation.
"Then, gentlemen," answered the Commander-in-Chief, "we will proceed with
the armistice. When all is won that can be won for the safety and honor
of France and her Allies, I cannot for the sake of prestige or
gratification or personal glory, order action that would cost the life of
any parents' young son, any little child's father. I am a bereaved
father. I think of the fathers and mothers whom further fighting must
bereave. The enveloping advance which our armies could make in ten to
fourteen days would cost us thousands of lives, many maimed men. If
those things must be to bring the triumph of Right, we can bear them
again as we have borne them these years past. But not for any other
reason!"
"The German high command," he said later, at Trèves, "was not ignorant of
the fact that it faced a colossal disaster. When it surrendered,
everything was prepared for an offensive in which it would infallibly
have succumbed. The Germans were lost. They capitulated. That is the
whole story."
The German plenipotentiaries arrived at the French front at nine o'clock
on the evening of November 7, and were escorted to the Château Francfort
to spend the night. The next morning they were taken to Rethondes in the
forest of Compiègne. There Foch (whose headquarters were at Semis,
twenty-two miles nearer Paris) awaited them in his special train.
I may be quite wrong about his reason for receiving the German envoys in
a railway carriage. But my surmise about it is that he did not want any
fixed place associated with Germany's humiliation until those empowered
to act for the defunct empire of William I came to the Gallery of Mirrors
at Versailles and there, where the German empire had been proclaimed,
witnessed the formal degradation before the representatives of all
civilization of their nation that was built on the principle that Might
is Right.
Next to this in poetic justice would have been to summon those
plenipotentiaries before him at Senlis where their troops had committed
such insensate horrors in September, 1914. But for reasons of his own
(which we may be sure had nothing to do with courtesy) Foch went part way
to meet them.
They complained, afterwards, that he received them coldly. If he was
able to keep his manner cold, it was only because his self-command is so
great. For no other man in the world knows so well as he the extent and
the enormity of the crimes those men and their masters and their minions
are guilty of. A primitive man, or any undisciplined modern man, would
have leaped at their throats. Instead, Foch treated them as if they were
human though not humane beings, and read to them slowly and in a loud
voice, the terms of the armistice for which they had asked.
Mathias Erzberger, their spokesman, requested a cessation of hostilities
whilst a courier carried the terms to German General Headquarters at Spa.
There the Kaiser, Hindenburg and others awaited particulars.
Foch declined to cease hostilities. He knew his enemy too well.
As soon as the Kaiser learned what the terms were, he abdicated his
throne and fled his country. When the courier had returned, and the
German plenipotentiaries once more presented themselves before Foch
(again in his car) the "War Lord" of all the world was cowering in a
Holland hiding place, his blubbering heir was in another, and a Social
Republic had been declared in Berlin.
How the Hohenzollerns knew the terms of the armistice full twenty-four
hours before the courier's return to German Headquarters at Spa, I have
not seen explained or heard any one conjecture.
From Rethondes to Spa is a matter of some two hundred and fifty miles, by
road, and nearly forty-eight hours were consumed by the courier in
covering that distance; he did not reach German Headquarters until ten
o'clock Sunday morning, November 10. But the Kaiser abdicated and the
Crown Prince renounced his claims to the throne, in Spa on Saturday
morning, and they were both out of the country when the courier was
received, his papers were read, and he was sent back with word to the
plenipotentiaries to get amelioration of some conditions, if possible,
but in any event to sign.
If the press reports are not in error as to the time the courier arrived
at Spa, then the terms of the armistice must have been made known to the
Hohenzollerns by telegraph or other quick communication very early on
Saturday--probably as soon as the courier recrossed his own lines, which
he could have done not many hours after quitting Compiègne forest. And
Berlin seems to have known the terms at least as soon; for it was "the
receipt of an urgent telegram" from Berlin, which the Kaiser is reported
to have read with a shiver, that precipitated the abdication and flight.
These details are significant, even in so brief a sketch of Foch's life
as this is; for in their very confusion and obscurity they tell a great
story of what was either realized or feared in the German camps and in
the German capital.
The magnitude of that which Foch was ready (and was by his enemies known
to be ready) to do could not be better conveyed to us than by the panicky
haste of those who knew themselves doomed, to make any concessions but at
all costs to avert Foch's next move.
Shortly after midnight on Sunday, the German delegation (which had by
Foch's orders been scrupulously served in the matter of their creature
comforts) again presented itself before him in his railway car. Four
hours were spent discussing the possibility of performing some of the
conditions exacted, and modifications were made which in no degree
altered the completeness of Germany's subjugation.
Then the papers were signed.
The Germans were punctiliously escorted to their own lines. I have not
heard what Foch did; but it would not surprise me to learn that he went
back to bed, and to sleep.
Perhaps, after giving orders for notifying his Government and her Allies,
he sent a message to Madame Foch. But I am quite sure that otherwise he
did not "celebrate," except that he gave God thanks for the victory.
XVIII
DURING THE ARMISTICE AND AFTER
When the French army rode into Metz, Foch was not at its head. There
may or there may not be another man who could and would have foregone
that satisfaction; but certainly there are not many.
It does not seem probable that he avoided the occasion; although it
would be like him to take advantage of some good excuse for absence if
he thought there was one of his generals who specially deserved and
desired the honor of that triumphant entry into reclaimed Metz.
The attitude of Foch toward praise and plaudits and personal glory is,
it seems to me, one of the supremely great things about him. I cannot
imagine him "ducking" shyly away from any place where he knew he ought
to for fear of salvos of acclaim; it would be as unsoldierly to him to
dodge cheers as to flee from battle, if that way his duty lay. And,
similarly, I cannot imagine him going anywhere to gratify his personal
feelings and collect the praises due him, if there was an urgent reason
for his being somewhere else.
[Illustration: Ferdinand Foch. Showing His Insignia as a Marshal of
France, Consisting of Seven Stars on Each Sleeve and Four Rows of Oak
Leaves on His Cap.]
The business, military and executive, of seeing that the armistice
terms were fulfilled, was tremendous. Much of it devolved upon him and
made inconceivably great requisitions on that genius he has "for the
command of enormous material difficulties"--a genius he first displayed
in getting the Ninth Army across the Marne in pursuit of the fleeing
Germans, in September, 1914; and which he further evidenced in every
succeeding phase, beginning with the reconstitution of all the forces
fighting on the Yser.
The armistice period was a period of extreme demands on him. In it
there was scant opportunity to go here or there with his triumphant
armies. His work in the field, as a commanding general, had
practically ceased with his removal from the Ninth Army after little
more than a month of such command. From the time he took up his
headquarters on the hill at Cassel, he became "a desk man"; it was no
longer his function to execute orders; thenceforth he had the far more
trying duty of issuing orders--a truly awful responsibility and one
which demands much solitude, much soul-searching as well as
map-pondering and other weighing of the ponderable which is so easily
off-set by the imponderable, the unguessable.
There are few situations possible in life in which a man could be set
apart with his soul and have so much demanded of his communings as was
demanded of Foch from October, 1914, on to October, 1918. Every
decision he made involved lives--hundreds and thousands or hundreds of
thousands of lives--and not one pang of what must be suffered for each
life laid down was strange to him; his only son was among the first to
die for France and human liberties; and one of his daughters was
widowed; the home he "left in the joyousness of a midsummer Sunday" was
desolate, and it stood forever to him as a symbol of the homes in
France and latterly, in the lands of all the Allies, with whose
best-beloved he made this or that move in the war to preserve
civilization. Nor were the lives he staked all that were involved;
there were all that were incidentally menaced if his strategy
failed--all that must suffer immediately and all that must suffer
ultimately under the heel of the brute if the brute were not destroyed.
A man who has lived thus for more than four years, sharing the
awfulness of his burden only with Almighty God, must needs have passed
to a spiritual plane whereon such self-considerations as still sway the
rest of us have ceased to obtrude themselves.
The quest of personal glory is as hard to associate with Ferdinand Foch
as with the little Maid of France. Both fought for God and for France
and for a Cause, as their Voices directed them; that he has one of the
best brains of modern or of all times, and that she did "not know her
A, B, C," sets them not so far apart as the materialist might imagine;
for the thing that made both invincible was the power of their faith to
create an unconquerable ardor in themselves and in their men. The
churches in France wherein Foch knelt seeking guidance, beseeching
strength, are likely to be doubly-consecrate, for ages, no less than
those wherein Jeanne d'Arc prayed. She is venerated not as a military
leader (though she was that) but as the one who awakened the soul of
mediaeval, much-partitioned France and made possible the
nationalization of her country. He will be venerated (by the great
majority) not as "the first stategist of Europe," but as the supreme
incarnation of that spirit which makes modern France transcendent among
nations vowed to democracy.
It is Foch's "likeness" to the myriad soldiers of France that France
adores--not his difference from the rest. Her poilu is her beau ideal
of faith and courage, of patriotism and devotion to the principles of
human rights, of cheerfulness and hopefulness, of invincibility in that
his cause is just. France is too essentially democratic to esteem one
set of characteristics in the mass of men and another set in the
leaders of men. Foch and Joffre will live always in the hearts of
their countrymen because, like Jeanne d'Arc, they have so much to say
to everyone--so much that illumines every path in life wherever it is
laid.
On the 19th of December, 1918, Joffre took his seat among the Immortals
of the French Academy. The vacancy to which he had been elected was
that made by the death of Jules Claretie who, before his admission to
the Academy and before his absorption in the affairs of La Comédie
Française, had written several books about the leaders of the French
Revolution.
It was Ernest Renan who delivered the address of welcome to Claretie
(in February, 1889) and he said that it was still too soon to know
whether those leaders of whom Claretie had written were supremely
justified or were not.
"You are young," Renan said to the new Immortal, "and you will see this
question solved, . . . some years hence it will be known; if in ten or
twenty years France is prosperous and free, faithful to right, strong
in the friendship of the free peoples of the world, then the cause of
the young Revolutionists is won; the world will enjoy the fruits of
their endeavor without having had to know their unripe bitterness."
Joffre quoted this part of Renan's address, in taking his seat.
Claretie had not lived quite long enough to see, save with the eye of
faith, that day Renan foretold; but Claretie's successor in the French
Academy had seen it! And it was like him to say:
"I think, gentlemen, that in doing me the honor of receiving me into
your august body, your desire is to pay homage to that glorious French
army which has proved that the soul of France is steadfast for the
rights of man, even unto death that men may be free."
Accepting the honor as paid through him to the men who had proved the
worth of that Liberty, Equality and Fraternity the Revolution declared
and decreed, Joffre asked permission to name those to whom, he deemed,
the gratitude of France and of France's Immortals was due. And first
among them he named Foch.
This was gracious; it was generous; but it was more than that. And
though Joffre went on to name many leaders, many armies, many moral
forces incarnate in many men as co-responsible for victory, no one
could know quite so well as he how completely the France of which Renan
dreamed as a glorious possibility, is realized and typified in the man
whose name leads all the rest as having saved not France only but the
liberties of mankind.
Bonaparte, although he was not French (save technically) and not a
democrat, captured the hearts of France in spite of all he cost them;
because he aggrandized France, made her supreme in many things besides
extent and power. It is instinctive in every Frenchman (or woman, or
child!) to revere anyone who does new credit to the name of France or
brings new glory to it; for the passionate love of country is the
primary religion of the French--they may or may not have another, but
unless they are totally renegade they have that faith, that devotion.
In Ferdinand Foch they have a great leader who is in no sense an
"accident" (as Bonaparte was), a sporadic development in their midst, a
spectacular growth on an exotic stem. They have, rather, a
quintessential Frenchman of to-day, even more widely representative of
his countrymen than Lincoln was of ours.
"The fame of one man," says Henri Bordeaux, "is nothing unless its
represents the obscure deeds of the anonymous multitude."