Clara E. Laughlin - Foch the Man
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Clara E. Laughlin >> Foch the Man
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"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 Chateau 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 Liege 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 Andre
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-a-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.
It was all perfectly practicable--on paper. The only difficulty was
that there were so many things the German staff had omitted from its
careful calculations--omitted, perforce, because it had never guessed
their existence. And that spoiled their reckoning.
Foch had, for years, been teaching that fighting demands supreme
flexibility, adaptability; that war is full of surprises which must be
met as they arise; that morale, the spiritual force of an army, is
subject to fluctuations caused by dozens of conditions which cannot be
foreseen and must be overcome. The phrase oftenest on his lips was:
"What have we to do here?" For, as he conceived warfare, officers and
even privates must constantly be asking themselves that. One plan goes
awry. Very well! we'll find a better.
But Foch had not trained the German general staff. They made war
otherwise. And well he knew it! Well he knew what happened to them
when their "blue prints" would not fit unexpected conditions.
He knew that they expected to take Nancy easily, that they were looking
for some effort to defend it, but not for a French attack.
They did not know his maxim: "The best means of defense is to attack."
He attacked. His Twentieth corps fought its way through the center of
the Bavarian army, into German Lorraine. Then something happened.
Just what it was is not clear--but doubtless will be some day. The
offensive had to be abandoned and the French troops had to withdraw
from German soil to defend their own.
How bitter was the disappointment to Foch we may guess but shall never
know. But remaking plans in his genius.
"What have we to do here?" he asked himself.
Then, "in the twinkling of an eye," says one military historian,
"General Foch found the solution to the defense problem wherewith he
was so suddenly confronted when his offensive failed of support."
XIII
THE BATTLE OF LORRAINE
What is known as the battle of Lorraine began at the declaration of war
and lasted till August 26--though the major part of it was fought in
the last six of those days.
I shall not go into details about it here, except to recall that it was
in this fighting that General Castelnau lost his oldest son, stricken
almost at the father's side.
A German military telegram intercepted on August 27 said:
"On no account make known to our armies of the west [that is to say,
the right wing, in Belgium] the checks sustained by our armies of the
east [the left wing, in Lorraine]."
So much depended on those plans which Castelnau and Dubail and
Foch--and very particularly Foch!--had frustrated.
Joffre realized what had been achieved. And on August 27 he issued the
following "order of the day":
"The First and Second armies are at this moment giving an example of
tenacity and of courage which the commander-in-chief is happy to bring
to the knowledge of the troops under his orders.
"These two armies undertook a general offensive and met with brilliant
success, until they hurled themselves at a barrier fortified and
defended by very superior forces.
"After a retreat in perfect order, the two armies resumed the offensive
and, combining their efforts, retook a great part of the territory they
had given up.
"The enemy bent before them and his recoil enabled us to establish
undeniably the very serious losses he had suffered.
"These armies have fought for fourteen days without a moment's respite,
and with an unshakable confidence in victory as the reward of their
tenacity.
"The general-in-chief knows that the other armies will be moved to
follow the example of the First and Second armies."
Now, where were those other armies? And what were they doing?
France had then eight armies in the field, and was soon to have a
ninth--commanded by General Foch.
There was the First army, under General Dubail; the Second, under
General Castelnau; the Third, under General Sarrail; the Fourth, under
General Langle de Cary; the Fifth, under General Franchet d'Esperey;
the Sixth, under General Manoury; the Seventh and Eighth armies are not
mentioned in the Battle of the Marne, and I have not been able to find
out where they were in service.
The First and Second armies, fighting in Lorraine, we know about. They
developed, in that battle, more than one great commander of whose
abilities Joffre hastened to avail himself. On the day he issued that
order commending the First and Second armies, the generalissimo called
Manoury from the Lorraine front, where he had shown conspicuous
leadership, and put him in command of the newly-created Sixth army,
which was to play the leading part in routing Von Kluck. And on the
next day (August 28) Joffre called Foch from Lorraine to head the new
Ninth army, which was to hold the center at the Battle of the Marne and
deal the smashing, decisive blow.
In two days, while his troops were retreating before an apparently
irresistible force, Joffre created two new armies, put at the head of
each a man of magnificent leadership, and intrusted to those two armies
and their leaders the most vital positions in the great battle he was
planning.
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