Chapter 4

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

"It was not," Napoleon wrote, "the Roman legions which conquered Gaul, but Caesar. It was not the Carthaginian soldiers who made Rome tremble, but Hannibal. It was not the Macedonian phalanx which penetrated India, but Alexander. It was not the French army which reached the Weser and the Inn, but Turenne. It was not the Prussian soldiers who defended their country for seven years against the three most formidable powers in Europe; it was Frederick the Great."

And already it has been suggested that historians will write of this war: "It was not the allied armies, struggling hopelessly for four years, that finally drove the Germans across the Rhine, but Ferdinand Foch."

But I am sure that Foch would not wish this said of him in the same sense that Napoleon said it of earlier generals.

For Foch has a greater vision of generalship than was possible to any commander of long ago.

His strategy is based upon a close study of theirs; for he says that though the forms of making war evolve, the directing principles do not change, and there is need for every officer to make analyses of Xenophon and Caesar and Hannibal as close as those he makes of Frederick and Napoleon.

But his conception of military leadership is permeated with the ideals of democracy and justice for which he fights.

One of his great lectures to student-officers was that in which he made them realize what, besides the route of the Prussians, happened at Valmy in September, 1792.

On his big military map of that region (it is on the western edge of the Argonne) Foch would show his students how the Prussians, Hessians and some Austrian troops; under the Duke of Brunswick, crossed the French frontier on August 19 and came swaggering toward Paris, braggartly announcing their intentions of "celebrating" in Paris in September.

Brunswick and his fellow generals were to banquet with the King of Prussia at the Tuileries. And the soldiers were bent upon the cafés of the Palais Royal.

Foch showed his classes how Dumouriez, who had been training his raw troops of disorganized France at Valenciennes, dashed with them into the Argonne to intercept Brunswick; how this and that happened which I will not repeat here because it is merely technical; and then how the soldiers of the republic, rallied by the cry, "The country is in danger," and thrilled by "The Marseillaise" (written only five months before, but already it had changed the beat of nearly every heart in France), made such a stand that it not only halted Prussia and her allies, but so completely broke their conquering spirit that without firing another shot they took themselves off beyond the Rhine.

"We," Foch used to tell his students, "are the successors of the revolution and the empire, the inheritors of the art, new-born upon the field of Valmy to astonish the old Europe, to surprise in particular the Duke of Brunswick, the pupil of Frederick the Great, and to tear from Goethe, before the immensity of a fresh horizon, this profound cry: 'I tell you, from this place and this day comes a new era in the history of the world!'"

It is that new era which Foch typifies--that new era which his adversaries, deaf to Goethe's cry and blind to Goethe's vision, have not yet realized.

It was "the old Europe" against which Foch fought--the old Europe which learned nothing at Valmy and had learned nothing since; the old Europe that fought as Frederick the Great fought and that had not yet seen the dawn of that new day which our nation and the French nation greeted with glad hails much more than a century ago.

In 1792 Prussia measured her military skill and her masses of trained men against France's disorganization--and overlooked "The Marseillaise."

In 1914 she weighed her might against what she knew of the might of France--and omitted to weigh certain spiritual differences which she could not comprehend, but which she felt at the first battle of the Marne, has been feeling ever since, and before which she had to retire, beaten but still blind.

In 1918 she estimated the probable force of those "raw recruits" whom we were sending overseas--and laughed. She based her calculations on our lack of military tradition, our hastily trained officers, our "soft," ease-loving men uneducated in those ideals of blood and iron wherein she has reared her youth always. She overlooked that spiritual force which the "new era" develops and which made our men so responsive to the command of Foch at Château Thierry and later.

"The immensity of a fresh horizon" whereon Goethe saw the new era dawning, is still veiled from the vision of his countrymen. But across its roseate reaches unending columns of marching men passed, under the leadership of Ferdinand Foch, to liberate the captives the blind brute has made and to strike down the strongholds of "old Europe" forever.

For nearly six years Foch taught such principles as these and others which I shall recall in connection with great events which they made possible later on.

Then came the anti-clerical wave in French politics, and on its crest a new commandant to the School of War--a man elevated by the anti-clericals and eager to keep his elevation by pleasing those who put him there.

Foch adheres devoutly to the religious practices in which he was reared, and one of his brothers belongs to the Jesuit order.

These conditions made his continuance at the school under its new head impossible. Whether he resigned because he realized this, or was superseded, I do not know. But he left his post and went as lieutenant-colonel to the Twenty-ninth artillery, at Laon.

He was there two years and undoubtedly made a thorough study of the country round Laon--which was for more than four years to be the key to the German tenure in that part of France.

Ferdinand Foch, with his brilliant knowledge and high ideals of soldiering, was now past fifty and not yet a colonel.

Strong though his spirit was, sustained by faith in God and rewarded by those "secret satisfactions" which come to the man who loves his work and is conscious of having given it his best, he must have had hours, days, when he drank deep of the cup of bitterness. There are, though, bitters that shrivel and bitters that tone and invigorate. Or perhaps they are the same and the difference is in us.

At any rate, Foch was not poisoned at the cup of disappointment.

And when the armies under his command encircled the great rock whereon Laon is perched high above the surrounding plains I hope Foch was with them--in memory of the days when he was "dumped" there, so to speak, far away from his sphere of influence at the School of War.

In 1903 he was made colonel and sent to the Thirty-fifth artillery at Vannes, in Brittany.

Only two years later he was called to Orleans as chief of staff of the Fifth army corps.

On June 20, 1907, he was made Brigadier General and passed to the general staff of the French army at Paris. Soon afterwards, Georges Clemenceau became Minister of War, and was seeking a new head for the Staff College. Everyone whose advice he sought said: Foch. So the redoubtable old radical and anti-clerical summoned General Foch.

"I offer you command of the School of War."

"I thank you," Foch replied, "but you are doubtless unaware that one of my brothers is a Jesuit."

"I know it very well," was Clemenceau's answer. "But you make good officers, and that is the only thing which counts."

Thus was foreshadowed, in these two great men, that spirit of "all for France" which, under the civil leadership of one and the military leadership of the other, was to save the country and the world.

In 1911 Foch, at 60, was given command of the Thirteenth division at Chaumont, just above the source of the Marne. On December 17, 1912, he was placed at the head of the Eighth Army Corps, at Bourges. And on August 23, 1913, he took command of the Twentieth corps at Nancy.

"When," says Marcel Knecht, "we in Nancy heard that Foch had been chosen to command the best troops in France, the Twentieth Army Corps, pride of our capital, everybody went wild with enthusiasm."

It is M. Knecht who tells us about the visit to General Foch at Nancy, in the spring of 1914, of three British generals whose presence there Foch utilized for two purposes: He showed them what he was doing to strengthen Nancy's defensibility, and thereby urged upon them France's conviction that an attack by Germany was imminent and unavoidable; and he utilized the occasion to show the Lorrainers his warm friendliness for England--which Lorraine was inclined still to blame for the death of Joan of Arc. Foch knew that German propagandists were continually fanning this resentment against England. And he made it part of his business to overcome that prejudice by showing the honor in which he held Great Britain's eminent soldiers.

XI

FORTIFYING FRANCE WITH GREAT PRINCIPLES

So much has been said about France's unreadiness for the war that it is easy for those who do not know what the real situation was to suppose that the French were something akin to fools. For twenty centuries the Germans had been swarming over the Rhine in preying, ravaging hordes, and France had been beating them back to save her national life. That they would swarm again, more insolent and more rapacious than ever after their triumph of 1870, was not to be doubted. Everyone in France who had the slightest knowledge of the spirit that has animated the Hohenzollern empire knew its envy of France, its cupidity of France's wealth, its hatred of France's attractions for all the world. Everyone who came in contact with the Germans felt the bullet-headed belligerence of their attitude which they were never at any pains to conceal.

The military men of France knew that Germany had for years been preparing for aggression on a large scale. They knew that she would strike when she felt that she was readiest and her opponents of the Triple Entente were least ready.

The state of mind of the civilians--busy, prosperous, peace-loving, concerned with conversational warfare about a multitude of petty internal affairs--is difficult to describe. But I think it may not be impertinent to say of it that it was something like the state of mind of a congregation, well fed, comfortable, conscious of many pleasant virtues and few corroding sins, before whom a preacher holds up the last judgment. None of them hopes to escape it, none of them can tell at what moment he may be called to his account, none of them would wish to go in just his present state, and yet none of them does anything when he leaves church to put himself more definitely in readiness for that great decision which is to determine where he shall spend eternity.

In 1911 it seemed for a brief while that the irruption from the east was at hand. But Germany did not feel quite ready; she "dickered"; and things went on seemingly as before.

France seemed to forget. But she was not so completely abandoned to hopefulness as was England--England, who turned her deafest ear to Lord Roberts' impassioned pleas for preparedness.

France has an institution called the Superior War Council. It is the supreme organ of military authority and the center of national defense; it consists of eleven members supposed to be the ablest commanding generals in the nation. The president of this council is the Minister of War; the vice president is known as the generalissimo of the French army.

In 1910 General Joseph Joffre became a member of the Superior War Council, and in 1911 he became generalissimo.

It was because the Council felt the imminence of war with Germany that General Pau--to whom the vice presidency should have gone by right of his priority and also of his eminent fitness--patriotically waived the honor, because in two years he would be sixty-five and would have to retire; he felt that the defense of the country needed a younger man who could remain more years in service. So Joffre was chosen and almost immediately he began to justify the choice.

Joffre and his associates of the council not only foresaw the war, but they quite clearly previsioned its extent and something of its character. In 1912 Joffre declared "the fighting front will extend from four hundred to five hundred miles." He talked little, but he worked prodigiously; and always his insistence was: "We must be prepared!"

"With whole nations," he said, "engaged in a mortal combat, disaster is certain for those who in time of peace failed to prepare for war." And "To be ready means, to-day, to have mustered in advance all the resources of the country, all the intelligence of its citizens, all their moral energy, for the purpose of attaining this one aim--victory. Getting ready is a duty that devolves not only upon the army, but upon all public officials, upon all organizations, upon all societies, upon all families, upon all citizens."

This complete readiness was beyond his power to effect. But in his province--the army--he achieved marvels that were almost miracles.

It was France's good fortune (and that of her allies) that in all he undertook for the purification and strengthening of the army Joffre had, from January, 1912, the complete co-operation of the Minister of War, M. Millerand. Together, these two men, brilliantly supported by some of Joffre's colleagues in the Superior Council--notably Pau and Castelnau--achieved results that have been pronounced "unparalleled in the history of the Third Republic." They freed the army from the worst effects of political influence, made it once more a popular institution, and organized it into an effectiveness which needs, now, no comment.

When Foch was put in command of the Twentieth army corps at Nancy it was in the expectation that Nancy would sustain the first shock of the German invasion when it came. The opinion prevailed that Nancy could not be held. Whether Joffre was of this opinion or not, I do not know. If he was, he probably felt that Foch would give it up only after harder fighting than any other general. But Foch believed that Nancy could be defended, and so did his immediate superior, the gallant General Castelnau, in command of the Second Army of Lorraine.

For nearly a year following upon his appointment to Nancy, Foch labored mightily to strengthen Nancy against the attack which was impending. He seems never to have doubted that Germany would make her first aggression there, only seventeen miles from her own border, and with Metz and Strassburg to back the invading army.

But that there were other opinions, even at Nancy, I happen to know. For, one day while the war was still new, I chanced in rooting in an old bookstall in Paris, to find a book which was written by an officer of the Twentieth Corps, in 1911.[1]

The officer was, if I mistake not, of the artillery, and he wrote this "forecast" to entertain the members of his mess or battery.

He predicted with amazing accuracy the successive events which happened nearly three years later, only he "guessed" the order for mobilization in France to fall on August 14, instead of August 1; and all his subsequent dates were just about two weeks later than the actualities. But he "foresaw" the invasion of Belgium, the resistance at Liége and Namur, the fall of Brussels, the invasion of France by her northeastern portals. Almost--at the time I read this book--it might have served as history instead of prophecy. I would that I had it now! But I clearly remember that it located the final battle of the war in Westphalia, describing the location exactly. And that it said the Emperor would perish in that downfall of his empire. And it cited two prophecies current in Germany--the long-standing one to the effect that Germany's greatest disaster would come to her under an Emperor with a withered arm, and one made in Strassburg in 1870, declaring that the new empire would dissolve under its third Emperor.

The book was published in January, 1912, if I remember rightly, and was almost immediately translated into German. And I was told that one hundred thousand copies were sold in Germany in a very short time, and it was made the subject of editorials in nearly every prominent German paper.

Probably Foch read it. He may even have discussed it with the author. But he held to the belief that when the attack came it would come through Nancy.

He was not, however, expecting it when it came.

[1] The reason I cannot give his name, nor quote directly from his book, is that a fellow-traveler borrowed the book from me and I have never seen it since.

XII

ON THE EVE OF WAR

In the first days of July, 1914, divisional maneuvers were held as usual in Lorraine. Castelnau and Foch reviewed the troops, known throughout the army as "the division of iron."

A young captain, recently assigned from the School of War to a regiment of Hussars forming part of the Twentieth army corps, wrote to his parents on July 5 an account of the maneuvers in which he had just taken part. He said that "the presence of these two eminent men gave a great interest" to the events he described. And the impression made upon him by Foch is so remarkable that his letter is likely to become one of the small classics of the war--endlessly reproduced whenever the story of Foch is told.

"General Foch," he reminds his parents, "is a former commander of the School of War, where he played, on account of his great fitness, a very remarkable role.

"He is a man still young [he was almost 63!], slender and supple, and rather frail; his powerful head seems like a flower too heavy for a stem too slight.

"What first strikes one about him is his clear gaze, penetrating, intellectual, but above all and in spite of his tremendous energy, luminous. This light in his eyes spiritualizes a countenance which otherwise would be brutal, with its big mustache bristling above a very prominent, dominant jaw.

"When he speaks, pointing lessons from the maneuver, he becomes animated to the extent of impassionedness, but never expressing himself otherwise than with simplicity and purity.

"His speech is sober, direct; he affirms principles, condemns faults, appeals to our energies in a brief but comprehensive style.

"He is a priest, who judges, condemns, and instructs in the name of the faith which illumines him and to which he has consecrated all the powers of his mind and his heart. General Foch is a prophet whom his God transports."

The young officer who wrote thus to his parents was Captain André Dubarle; and he later laid down his life for his country on the field of honor commanded by General Foch.

The letter seems to me as treasurable for what it conveys to us of the sort of young man Foch found among his officers and soldiers (there were many such!) as for what it tells us of the impression Foch created even in those days before men's souls were set on fire with fervor for France.

On July 18 General Foch asked and obtained a leave of absence for fifteen days, so that he might join the family group gathered at his home near Morlaix in Brittany. His two sons-in-law, Captain Fournier and Captain Becourt, also obtained leave. The former was attached to the general army staff at Paris, and was granted seventeen days. The latter was in command of a company of the Twenty-sixth battalion of Foot Chasseurs at Pont-à-Mousson. He was given twenty-five days' leave. The wives and children of both were at Morlaix with Madame Foch.

So little expectation of immediate war had France on July 18 that she granted a fortnight's absence to the commander of those troops which were expected to bear the first shock of German aggression when it came.

But I happen to know of a French family reunion held at Nancy on July 14 and the days following, which was incomplete. One of the women of this family was married to a German official at Metz whose job it was to be caretaker for three thousand locomotives belonging to the imperial government and kept at Metz for "emergencies." On July 12 (as it afterwards transpired) he was ordered to have fires lighted and steam got up in those three thousand engines, and to keep them, night and day, ready for use at a moment's notice.

Those smoking iron horses in Metz are a small sample of what was going on all over Germany while France's frontier-defenders were being given permission to visit Brittany.

But for that matter German war-preparations were going on much nearer to Nancy than in Metz, while Foch was playing with his grandchildren at Morlaix.

Beginning about July 21 and ending about the 25th, twelve thousand Germans left Nancy for "points east," and six thousand others left the remainder of French Lorraine.

The pretexts they gave were various--vacations, urgent business matters, "cures" at German watering places. They all knew, when they left, that Germany was mobilizing for attack upon France. They had known it for some time before they left.

Since the beginning of July they had been working in Nancy to aid the German attack. They had visited the principal buildings, public and private, and especially the highest ones, with plans for the installation of wireless at the modest price of $34. "It is so interesting," they said, "to get the exact time, every day, from the Eiffel Tower!"

They had also some amazingly inexpensive contrivances for heating houses, or regulating the heating already installed, or for home refrigeration--things which took them into cellars in Nancy--and before they left to join their regiments they were exceedingly busy demonstrating those things.

They were all gone when General Foch was recalled, on July 26.

On July 30 German under-officers crossed the frontier.

On August 3 Uhlans and infantrymen on motorcycles were shooting and pillaging on the French side of the border, although it was not until 6:45 P.M. that day that Germany declared war on France.

That which France had been unable to suppose even Germany capable of, happened: The treaty with Belgium became a scrap of paper and the main attack upon France was made by way of the north.

But the expectation that Nancy would be one of the first objectives of the Hun-rampant was not without fulfillment. For the hordes advanced in five armies; and the fifth, the German left wing under Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria, was ordered to swarm into France south of that of the Imperial Crown Prince, spread itself across country behind the French armies facing northward, join with Von Kluck's right wing somewhere west of Paris, and "bag" the French--armies, capital and all--"on or about" September 1.