Chapter 1

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FOCH THE MAN

A Life of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies

by

CLARA E. LAUGHLIN

With Appreciation by Lieut.-Col. Edouard Réquin of the French High Commission to the United States

With Illustrations

Revised and Enlarged Edition

[Frontispiece: Marshal Foch at the Peace Conference.]

New York -------- Chicago Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, 1918, 1919, by Fleming H. Revell Company First Printing - November 11, 1918 Second Printing - November 19, 1918 Third Printing - November 29, 1918 Fourth Printing - December 7, 1918 Fifth Printing - January 9, 1919 Sixth Printing - May 1, 1919

DEDICATION

TO THE MEN WHO HAVE FOUGHT UNDER GENERAL FOCH'S COMMAND. TO ALL Of THEM, IN ALL GRATITUDE. BUT IN AN ESPECIAL WAY TO THE MEN OF THE 42D DIVISION, THE SPLENDOR OF WHOSE CONDUCT ON SEPTEMBER 9, 1914, NO PEN WILL EVER BE ABLE ADEQUATELY TO COMMEMORATE.

[Transcriber's note: The letter in the second and third illustrations is shown translated on the following page.]

Dear MADEMOISELLE LAUGHLIN:

I have read with the keenest interest your sketch of the life of Marshal Foch. It is not yet history: we are too close to events to write it now, but it is the story of a great leader of men on which I felicitate you because of your real understanding of his character.

Christian, Frenchman, soldier, Foch will be held up as an example for future generations as much for his high moral standard as for his military genius.

It seems that in writing about him the style rises with the noble sentiments which inspire him.

Thus in form of presentation as well as in substance you convey admirably the great lesson which applies to each one of us from the life of Marshal Foch.

Please accept, Mademoiselle, this expression of my respectful regards.

LT.-COLONEL E. RÉQUIN.

"THEY SHALL NOT PASS!"

Three Spirits stood on the mountain peak And gazed on a world of red,-- Red with the blood of heroes, The living and the dead; A mighty force of Evil strove With freemen, mass on mass. Three Spirits stood on the mountain peak And cried: "They shall not pass!"

The Spirits of Love and Sacrifice, The Spirit of Freedom, too,-- They called to the men they had dwelt among Of the Old World and the New! And the men came forth at the trumpet call, Yea, every creed and class; And they stood with the Spirits who called to them, And cried: "They shall not pass!"

Far down the road of the Future Day I see the world of Tomorrow; Men and women at work and play, In the midst of their joy and sorrow. And every night by the red firelight, When the children gather 'round They tell the tale of the men of old. These noble ancestors, grim and bold, Who bravely held their ground. In thrilling accents they often speak Of the Spirits Three on the mountain peak.

O Freedom, Love and Sacrifice You claimed our men, alas! Yet everlasting peace is theirs Who cried, "They shall not pass!"

ARTHUR A. PENN.

_Reprinted by permission of M. Witmark & Sons, N. Y._

_Publishers of the musical setting to this poem._

CONTENTS

I. WHERE HE WAS BORN

Stirring traditions and historic scenes which surrounded him in childhood.

II. BOYHOOD SURROUNDINGS

The horsemarkets at Tarbes. The school. Foch at twelve a student of Napoleon.

III. A YOUNG SOLDIER OF A LOST CAUSE

What Foch suffered in the defeat of France by the Prussians.

IV. PARIS AFTER THE GERMANS LEFT

Foch begins his military studies, determined to be ready when France should again need defense.

V. LEARNING TO BE A ROUGH RIDER

Begins to specialize in cavalry training. The school at Saumur.

VI. FIRST YEARS IN BRITTANY

Seven years at Rennes as artillery captain and always student of war. Called to Paris for further training.

VII. JOFFRE AND FOCH

Parallels in their careers since their school days together.

VIII. THE SUPERIOR SCHOOL OF WAR

Where Foch's great work as teacher prepared hundreds of officers for the superb parts they have played in this war.

IX. THE GREAT TEACHER

Some of the principles Foch taught. Why he is not only the greatest strategist and tactician of all time, but the ideal leader and coordinator of democracy.

X. A COLONEL AT FIFTY

Clemenceau's part in giving Foch his opportunity.

XI. FORTIFYING FRANCE

How the Superior War Council prepared for the inevitable invasion of France. Foch put in command at Nancy.

XII. ON THE EVE OF WAR

True to his belief that "the way to make war is to attack" Foch promptly invaded Germany, but was obliged to retire and defend his own soil.

XIII. THE BATTLE OF LORRAINE

How the brilliant generalship there thwarted the German plan; and how Joffre recognized it in reorganizing his army.

XIV. THE FIRST VICTORY AT THE MARNE

"The Miracle of the Marne" was Foch. How he turned defeat to victory.

XV. SENT NORTH TO SAVE CHANNEL PORTS

Foch's skill and diplomacy in that crisis show him a great coordinator.

XVI. THE SUPREME COMMANDER

How Foch stopped the German drive that nearly separated the French and English armies.

XVII. BRINGING GERMANY TO ITS KNEES

The completest humiliation ever inflicted on a proud nation.

XVIII. DURING THE ARMISTICE--AND AFTER

How Foch carries himself as victor.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Marshal Foch at the Peace Conference . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

The room in which Ferdinand Foch was born

The house in Tarbes where Foch was born

Ferdinand Foch as a schoolboy of twelve

The school in Tarbes

Marshall Joffre--General Foch

General Pétain--Marshal Haig--General Foch--General Pershing

General Foch--General Pershing

Marshal Foch, Executive head of the allied forces

Ferdinand Foch, Marshal of France

FOREWORD TO REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION

When the Great War broke out, one military name "led all the rest" in world-prominence: Kitchener. Millions of us were confident that the hero of Kartoum would save the world. It was not so decreed. Almost immediately another name flashed into the ken of every one, until even lisping children said _Joffre_ with reverence second only to that wherewith they named Omnipotence. Then the weary years dragged on, and so many men were incredibly brave and good that it seemed hard for anyone to become pre-eminent. We began to say that in a war so vast, so far-flung, no one man _could_ dominate the scene.

But, after nearly four years of conflict, a name we had heard and seen from the first, among many others, began to differentiate itself from the rest; and presently the whole wide world was ringing with it: Foch!

He was commanding all the armies of civilization. Who was he?

Hardly anyone knew.

Up to the very moment when he had compassed the most momentous victory in the history of mankind, little was known about him, outside of France, beyond the fact that he had been a professor in the Superior School of War.

Now and then, as the achievements of his generalship rocked the world, someone essayed an account of him. They said he was a Lorrainer, born at Metz; they said his birthday was August 4; they said he was too young to serve in the Franco-Prussian war; and they said a great many other things of which few happened to be true.

Then, as the summer of 1918 waned, there came to me from France, from Intelligence officers of General Foch's staff, authoritative information about him.

And also there came those, representing France and her interests in this country, who said:

"Won't you put the facts about Foch before your people?"

If I could have fought for France with a sword (or gun) I should have been at her service from the first of August, 1914, when I heard her tocsin ring, saw her sons march away to fight and die on battlefields as familiar to me as my home neighborhood.

Not being permitted that, I have yielded her such service as I could with my pen.

And when asked to write, for my countrymen, about General Foch, I felt honored in a supreme degree.

In due course we shall have many volumes about him: his life, his teachings, his writings, his great deeds will be studied in minutest details as long as that civilization endures which he did so much to preserve to mankind.

But just now, while all hearts are overflowing with gratefulness to him, it may be--I cannot help thinking--as valuable to us to know a little about him as it will be for us to know a great deal about him later on.

My sources of information are mainly French; and notable among them is a work recently published in Paris: "Foch, His Life, His Principles, His Work, as a Basis for Faith in Victory," by René Puaux, a French soldier-author who has served under the supreme commander in a capacity which enabled him to study the man as well as the General.

French, English and some few American periodicals have given me bits of impression and some information. French military and other writers have also helped. And noted war correspondents have contributed graphic fragments. The happy fortune which permitted me to know France, her history and her people, enabled me to "read into" these brief accounts much which does not appear to the reader without that acquaintance. And distinguished Frenchmen, scholars and soldiers, including several members of the French High Commission to the United States, have helped me greatly; most of them have not only close acquaintance with General Foch, having served as staff officers under him, but are eminent writers as well, with the highest powers of analysis and of expression.

Lieutenant-Colonel Édouard Réquin of the French General Staff, who was at General Foch's side from the day Foch was made commander of an army, has been especially kind to me in this undertaking; I am indebted to him, not only for many anecdotes and suggestions, but also for his patience in reading my manuscript for verification (or correction) of its details and its essential truthfulness.

And I want especially to record my gratefulness to M. Antonin Barthélemy, French Consul at Chicago, the extent and quality of whose helpfulness, not alone on this but on many occasions, I shall never be able to describe. Through him the Spirit of France has been potent in our community.

Thus aided and encouraged, I have done what I could to set before my countrymen a sketch of the great, dominant figure of the World War.

The thing about Foch that most impresses us as we come to know him is not primarily his greatness as a military genius, but his greatness as a spiritual force.

Those identical qualities in him which saved the world in war, will serve it no less in peace--if we study them to good purpose.

As a leader of men, his principles need little, if any, adaptation to meet the requirements of the re-born world from which, we hope, he has banished the sword.

Not to those only who would or who must captain their fellows, but to every individual soul fighting alone against weakness and despair and other foes, his life-story brings a rising tide of new courage, new strength, new faith.

For the young man or woman struggling with the principles of success; for the man or woman of middle life, fearful that the time for great service has gone by; to the preacher and the teacher and other moulders of ideals--to these, and to many more, he speaks at least as thrillingly as to the soldier.

This is what I have tried to make clear in my simple sketch here offered.

I

WHERE HE WAS BORN

Ferdinand Foch was born at Tarbes on October 2, 1851.

His father, of good old Pyrenean stock and modest fortune, was a provincial official whose office corresponded to that of secretary of state for one of our commonwealths. So the family lived in Tarbes, the capital of the department called the Upper Pyrénées.

The mother of Ferdinand was Sophie Dupré, born at Argèles, twenty miles south of Tarbes, nearer the Spanish border. Her father had been made a chevalier of the empire by Napoleon I for services in the war with Spain, and the great Emperor's memory was piously venerated in Sophie Dupré's new home as it had been in her old one. So her first-born son may be said to have inherited that passion for Napoleon which has characterized his life and played so great a part in making him what he is.

There was a little sister in the family which welcomed Ferdinand. And in course of time two other boys came.

These four children led the ordinary life of happy young folks in France. But there was much in their surroundings that was richly colorful, romantic. Probably they took it all for granted, the way children (and many who are not children) take their near and intimate world. But even if they did, it must have had its deep effect upon them.

To begin with, there was Tarbes.

Tarbes is a very ancient city. It is twenty-five miles southeast of Pau, where Henry of Navarre made his dramatic entry upon a highly dramatic career, and just half that distance northeast of Lourdes, whose famous pilgrimages began when Ferdinand Foch was a little boy of seven.

He must have heard many soul-stirring tales about little Bernadette, the peasant girl to whom the grotto's miraculous qualities were revealed by the Virgin, and whose stories were weighed by the Bishop of Tarbes before the Catholic Church sponsored them. The procession of sufferers through Tarbes on their way to Lourdes, and the joyful return of many, must have been part of the background of Ferdinand Foch's young days.

Many important highways converge at Tarbes, which lies in a rich, elevated plain on the left bank of the River Adour.

The town now has some 30,000 inhabitants, but when Ferdinand Foch was a little boy it had fewer than half that many.

For many centuries of eventful history it has consisted principally of one very long street, running east and west over so wide a stretch of territory that the town was called Tarbes-the-Long. Here and there this "main street" is crossed by little streets running north and south and giving glimpses of mountains, green fields and orchards; and many of these are threaded by tiny waterways--small, meandering children of the Adour, which take themselves where they will, like the chickens in France, and nobody minds having to step over or around them, or building his house to humor their vagaries.

Tarbes was a prominent city of Gaul under the Romans. They, who could always be trusted to make the most of anything of the nature of baths, seem to have been duly appreciative of the hot springs in which that region abounds.

But nothing of stirring importance happened at or near Tarbes until after the battle of Poitiers (732), when the Saracens were falling back after the terrible defeat dealt them by Charles Martel.

Sullen and vengeful, they were pillaging and destroying as they went, and probably none of the communities through which they passed felt able to offer resistance to their depredations--until they got to Tarbes. And there a valiant priest named Missolin hastily assembled some of the men of the vicinity and gave the infidels a good drubbing--killing many and hastening the flight, over the mountains, of the rest.

This encounter took place on a plain a little to the south of Tarbes which is still called the Heath of the Moors.

When Ferdinand Foch was a little boy, more than eleven hundred years after that battle, it was not uncommon for the spade or plowshare of some husbandman on the heath to uncover bones of Christian or infidel slain in what was probably the last conflict fought on French soil to preserve France against the Saracens. And there may still have been living some old, old men or women who could tell Ferdinand stories of the 24th of May (anniversary of the battle) as it was observed each year until the Revolution of 1789. At the southern extremity of the battlefield there stood for many generations a gigantic equestrian statue, of wood, representing the holy warrior, Missolin, rallying his flock to rout the unbelievers. And in the presence of a great concourse singing songs of grateful praise to Missolin, his statue was crowned with garlands by young maidens wearing the picturesque gala dress of that vicinity.

Some forty-odd years after Missolin's victory, Charlemagne went with his twelve knights and his great army through Tarbes on his way to Spain to fight the Moors. And when that ill-starred expedition was defeated and its warriors bold were fleeing back to France, Roland--so the story goes--finding no pass in the Pyrénées where he needed one desperately, cleaved one with his sword Durandal.

High up among the clouds (almost 10,000 feet) is that Breach of Roland--200 feet wide, 330 feet deep, and 165 feet long. A good slice-out for a single stroke! And when Roland had cut it, he dashed through it and across the chasm, his horse making a clean jump to the French side of the mountains. That no one might ever doubt this, the horse thoughtfully left the mark of one iron-shod hoof clearly imprinted in the rock just where he cleared it, and where it is still shown to the curious and the stout of wind.

It is a pity to remember that, in spite of such prowess of knight and devotion of beast. Roland perished on his flight from Spain.

But, like all brave warriors, he became mightier in death even than he had been in life, and furnished an ideal of valor which animated the most chivalrous youth of all Europe, throughout many centuries.

With such traditions is the country round about Tarbes impregnated.

It has been suggested that the name Foch (which, by the way, is pronounced as if it rhymed with "hush") is derived from Foix--a town some sixty miles east of St. Gaudens, near which was the ancestral home of the Foch family.

Whatever the relatives of Ferdinand may have thought of this as a probability, it is certain that Ferdinand was well nurtured in the history of Foix and especially in those phases of it that Froissart relates.

Froissart, the genial gossip who first courted the favor of kings and princes and then was gently entreated by them so that his writing of them might be to their renown, was on his way to Blois when he heard of the magnificence of Gaston Phoebus, Count of Foix. Whereupon the chronicler turned him about and jogged on his way to Foix. Gaston Phoebus was not there, but at Orthez--150 miles west and north--and, nothing daunted, to Orthez went Froissart, by way of Tarbes, traveling in company with a knight named Espaing de Lyon, who was a graphic and charmful raconteur thoroughly acquainted with the country through which they were journeying. A fine, "that-reminds-me" gentleman was Espaing, and every turn of the road brought to his mind some stirring tale or doughty legend.

"Sainte Marie!" Froissart cried. "How pleasant are your tales, and how much do they profit me while you relate them. They shall all be set down in the history I am writing."

So they were! And of all Froissart's incomparable recitals, none are more fascinating than those of the countryside Ferdinand Foch grew up in.

II

BOYHOOD SURROUNDINGS

The country round about Tarbes has long been famed for its horses of an Arabian breed especially suitable for cavalry.

Practically all the farmers of the region raised these fine, fleet animals. There was a great stud-farm on the outskirts of town, and the business of breeding mounts for France's soldiers was one of the first that little Ferdinand Foch heard a great deal about.

He learned to ride, as a matter of course, when he was very young. And all his life he has been an ardent and intrepid horseman.

A community devoted to the raising of fine saddle horses is all but certain to be a community devotedly fond of horse racing.

Love of racing is almost a universal trait in France; and in Tarbes it was a feature of the town life in which business went hand-in-hand with pleasure.

In an old French book published before Ferdinand Foch was born, I have found the following description of the crowds which flocked into Tarbes on the days of the horse markets and races:

"On these days all the streets and public squares are flooded with streams of curious people come from all corners of the Pyrénées and exhibiting in their infinite variety of type and costume all the races of the southern provinces and the mountains.

"There one sees the folk of Provence, irascible, hot-headed, of vigorous proportions and lusty voice, passionately declaiming about something or other, in the midst of small groups of listeners.

"There are men of the Basque province--small, muscular and proud, agile of movement and with bodies beautifully trained; plain of speech and childlike in deed.

"There are the men of the Béarnais, mostly from towns of size and circumstance--educated men, of self-command, tempering the southern warmth which burns in their eyes by the calm intelligence born of experience in life and also by a natural languor like that of their Spanish neighbors.

"There are the old Catalonians, whose features are of savage strength under the thick brush of white hair falling about their leather-colored faces; the men of Navarre, with braided hair and other evidences of primitiveness--vigorous of build and handsome of feature, but withal a little subnormal in expression.

"Then, in the midst of all these characteristic types, moving about in a pell-mell fashion, making a constantly changing mosaic of vivid hues, there are the inhabitants of the innumerable valleys around Tarbes itself, each of them with its own peculiarities of costume, manners, speech, which make them easily distinguishable one from another."

It was a remarkable crowd for a little boy to wander in.

If Ferdinand Foch had been destined to be a painter or a writer, the impressions made upon his childish mind by that medley of strange folk might have been passed on to us long ago on brilliant canvas or on glowing page.

But that was not the way it served him.

I want you who are interested to comprehend Ferdinand Foch, to think of those old horsefairs and race meets of his Gascony childhood, and the crowds of strange types they brought to Tarbes, when we come to the great days of his life that began in 1914--the days when his comprehension of many types of men, his ability to "get on with" them and harmonize them with one another, meant almost as much to the world as his military genius.

Tarbes had suffered so much in civil and religious wars, for many centuries, that not many of her ancient buildings were left. The old castle, with its associations with the Black Prince and other renowned warriors, was a ramshackle prison in Ferdinand Foch's youth. The old palace of the bishops was used as the prefecture, where Ferdinand's father had his office.

There were two old churches, much restored and of no great beauty, but very dear to the people of Tarbes nevertheless.

Ferdinand and his brothers and sister were very piously reared, and at an early age learned to love the church and to seek it for exaltation and consolation.

Later on in these chapters we shall see that phase of a little French boy's training in its due relation to a maréchal of France, directing the greatest army the world has ever seen.