IN THE DAYS OF MARSHAL FOCH

It was one of the terms of peace at the close of the Franco-German War that the German army should march into Paris in triumph. They marched in, to be sure, but there was not much triumph about the march, for there was no one to see it. The Parisians not only kept off the streets, but they pulled down the curtains.

The more the French people thought of their defeat, the more indignant they were. They blamed everybody. They were furiously angry with the Assembly for making such a peace, and with the president of the Assembly for signing it. He was Thiers, the historian, and in stupid revenge the mob burned his valuable historical library. They established a government of their own, which they called the Commune, they shut the city gates against the Assembly, and they burned the beautiful Tuileries and many of the most stately buildings of the city. At length, the troops of the Assembly forced their way into Paris and established order; but only barely in time, for the people were beside themselves with anger and disappointment, and they were about to set up a guillotine and repeat the horrors of the Reign of Terror. To bring such a mob to order was not an easy thing to do, but it was done. Another thing which was not easy was paying the enormous indemnity. Thiers, and, indeed the rest of the world, did not think it would be possible to make up the sum within the three years allowed; but the thrift of the French people paid the final franc in less than half the time, and they saw with great pleasure the last soldier of the German army of occupation march over the border.

The French could pay this enormous sum of money, and they could rebuild some of the structures torn down by the Paris Commune, but they could not recover the lost Alsace and Lorraine. German laws were at once put in force in the two provinces, and it was strictly forbidden to use French in the schools.

France was now a republic. A new constitution was prepared, and in 1875 it was formally accepted by the country. There were no more revolutions, and for thirty-nine years France prospered. Like other countries, she had her troubles, but she had also her glories, and she was making a steady progress in all lines when suddenly the World War, the most terrible conflict of all time, was sprung upon her. The Prussian military party had long been eager for war. Germany was perfectly prepared. Every able-bodied man in the land had been trained as a soldier; guns and ammunition were ready; even large quantities of hospital supplies. Her plans were carefully laid. She would attack France through Belgium, then subdue Russia and England; she would open the way “from Berlin to Bagdad” and the conquest of the East; she would make a wide strip through Europe, from the Baltic Sea to the Mediterranean, her own domain; then she would cross the ocean and extort ransom from the large coast cities of the United States; the rest of the world could be conquered at her leisure.

Germany alone was prepared for war, but Belgium, France, England, and Russia did their best. At the end of 1914, after five months of warfare, the most that could be said was that Germany had not conquered Europe. At the end of 1915, the report was not so very much better. Germany’s opponents had taken some of her colonial possessions, but on the Continent she had not lost a foot of land, and had been successful in several places to the east of Austria. In 1916, the powers allied against Germany had held Verdun in spite of every effort made to conquer it. They had been successful on the Somme, in Armenia, and on the sea. On the other hand, they had failed in the East.

In 1917, the United States entered the war. The piratical U-boat warfare of Germany had destroyed much shipping, but it had brought in this new ally. Germany had made gains in Italy, and Russia had crumbled; but the Allies had captured Bagdad and Jerusalem. And so the news came. The side that gained one day lost the next. The whole struggle had come to a deadlock. Germany must yield in time, but when? How long must the terrible slaughter continue?

Now in every war in which different nations are allied, there is one lesson which has to be learned afresh, and it is that there must be one supreme commander. Thus far the Germans had had a great advantage in that they were under one control. The Allies coöperated, but the army of each nation had its own commander, and unless two commanders were near enough to consult, every one went in great degree his own way. It was now agreed that one man must be in supreme command, and the man chosen was Ferdinand Foch.

He was born in 1851, in a little village in the Pyrenees, not so very many miles from where the knight Roland laid down his life in Charlemagne’s day. The boy’s grandfather had been one of the guards of Napoleon I, and his favorite great-aunt was the widow of a general who had been viceroy of Holland in the days of the First Empire. Stories upon stories of warfare the small boy heard, and he delighted in them all, even when his forgetful great-aunt insisted upon his remembering events that had happened long before he was born.

The little Ferdinand and his brothers and sisters were taught to obey without a question, and there is a rather pathetic story of his struggling to be obedient and eat peas, which he disliked, and saying tearfully, “My heart comes right up in my mouth when I crack them; but I really want to obey, and so I swallow them at one gulp.”

At eighteen, he went to a college at Metz, and two years later he had something harder to endure than eating peas, for the Germans had triumphed over France in the Franco-German War. The victors took possession of the city and even of part of the college; and the young student, who had just spent six months in the French army, was obliged to live in the same building with them, and submit to their demands and insults with outward deference and inward wrath.

Long afterwards he said that in those days he vowed that Alsace and Lorraine should be once more in the hands of France, and that the French should not remain a conquered people. His aim was to prepare to help in the rescue of his country, whenever the time should come, and he did fine and earnest work at the Polytechnic School in Paris. After graduating, he held one military position of honor after another for several years, and then was made professor at the War School in Paris.

This new professor had not forgotten his boyish vows. The young officers who listened to his lectures were to become, not merely part of an army, but the brains of the French army, authorities in whose hands would rest making plans for the forces that might some day be called on to defend France. It is no wonder that he taught with an eagerness to give them his best. He taught them that, although the commander-in-chief _is_ the commander-in-chief and all others must obey him, yet difficulties will arise in carrying out the commander’s orders, and therefore, to obey efficiently, an officer must be able to think for himself. He taught them that they must study the enemy, learn to guess what he is about to do, and watch for his weak points. He taught them that victory is first of all a matter of belief; that the army which firmly expects to win the fight is well on the way to success. He taught them to be cheerful. “Depression is a confession of intellectual weakness,” he said. “Depression has lost more battles than any other cause.”

The great menace to France was Germany, and Foch analyzed with his students the war of 1870, noting carefully the mistakes on both sides, and making plan after plan to oppose any German invasion. He had not expected Germany to toss her agreements aside and march through Belgium, but he had a plan carefully thought out to oppose her even there. The Germans said sneeringly that Foch learned all his strategy from them. Even if this had been true, it is not what a man learns, but how he uses it that counts.

Such was the man who, in March, 1918, became commander-in-chief of the Allied armies. He had already made a fine record at the Marne and at Ypres. Every one knew the story of his famous dispatch to Marshal Joffre at the Marne: “My right wing has been driven back; my left wing is crushed; I shall attack with my center.” Another tale is that, when one of his officers hesitated to advance because his men were worn out, Foch responded, “So are the Germans. Attack!”

For the spring of 1918 the Germans had prepared to make a gigantic offensive on the Western Front. They made it, but unluckily for them the methods of this new commander-in-chief were different from theirs. They believed in elaborate preparation, then a drive, then more preparation, then another drive, and so on. Foch believed in “keeping on going on,” in hammering away at them steadily, first in one place, then in another, wherever they showed signs of weakness.

The Americans came just in time to turn the tide that threatened to overwhelm Paris; and at Sedan, where, half a century earlier, Napoleon III had been obliged to give up his sword to William of Prussia, the final blow was struck. The French were at work west of the American troops; the English were striking hard in Flanders; in Siberia, Palestine, on the Italian Front, and in the Balkans the Germans were losing. Turkey and Austria were out of the war. Germany begged for an armistice, which was in reality an unconditional surrender. The terms of this surrender, severe, but just and strictly in accordance with military rule, were read to the German representatives by Marshal Foch. He had kept the vow of his school-days. Alsace and Lorraine were rescued; France was no longer a conquered nation. Foch rarely talks of his victories, but when he does, he always ends reverently with, “We were the instruments. God was there.”

THE END

The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Author’s spelling of “Jeanne Darc” retained.

Illustrations have been moved for readability. The page numbers in the list of illustrations remain as originally published.