Joffre and His Army

The new commander of armies has the gift of inspiring the enthusiasm of his men. They are ready to die for him; to go anywhere at his bidding. His magnetism was as strongly exer...

It is not possible, of course, to repair defects of forty years in two or three years even of unremitting labour; but knowing, as he did, the tone and temper of the men he had t...

The future Generalissimo was a flaxen-haired boy, with a light complexion and a firm, straightforward and kindly expression. There was certainly little of the Southerner either...

The aeroplane could be used also as a link for communicating with armies and their staffs, particularly in the case of a besieged army or town. And, finally, the man-bird is adm...

A certain number of political students had come to the discouraging conclusion that discipline could not exist side by side with a pure democracy. The two things, they said, wer...

This book is intended as a presentation card to the French army. It is a plain story for plain people, and there has been a deliberate avoidance of any technicalities. In it you...

The war has shown the possibility of training the young soldier in less than six months; but when M. Jaures presented his scheme none foresaw the fantastic character that the fi...

The events of the day may call Joffre to the Front, whither he goes in a fast motor-car. On the way he will lunch at a village _auberge_ and scandalises the proprietor, who has...

But the cold fact remained that Joffre did not enter Paris, but flung down the gage of battle on the Marne, leaving Paris on his left as a protection to that flank and the easte...

Another "poilu," a very curious sort of fellow, comes from the Champagne district, and yet another from Verdun, smoking hot with battle. One can imagine the editor inditing his...

It is true, certainly, that trench warfare has inflicted a great loss of the picturesque, of glittering movements, of kaleidoscopic effects which turned and twisted into wonderf...

The classic instance of this is General Petain, who, when the war broke out, was a colonel, and rose with breathless rapidity to take supreme command of the armies at Verdun dur...

Of an old Southern family, the General was born (in 1851) at St. Affrique in the Aveyron, the old Rouergue which came to the French Crown under Henri IV. He likes to speak the _...

Some have compared their existence with the cloistered life. True, they took no vows of celibacy, nor was continence the necessary attribute of their association, but they had s...

To his policy was given the name of "Spots of Oil." It happily expressed the system, which consisted in planting small posts in a region and advancing them gradually towards the...

To convert an army of a few hundred thousands into a mighty machine of millions--what achievement! And this, in a few months. To clothe, equip, and supply these men with munitio...

Whilst, as I have said, there was rapid improvement made in the various services, the defect inherent in all administrations, English as well as French, but perhaps more particu...