Glory to Foch

It is known in France how to honor even the greatest of heroes, not by many words, but with a few deeds less cheap. During the two days and nights that Marshal Ferdinand Foch lay in state, last week -beneath the Emperor Napoleon's tremendous Arch of Triumph -the government suppressed and darkened every electric sign which might have profaned the scene. As thousands and tens of thousands filed past the bier, all night long the only light was that from funeral torches and the blue "Sacred Flame" which burns eternally beneath the Arch for the Unknown Soldier.

Men had sweated with pick and shovel, earlier in the week, uprooting all the police "safety islands" in the boulevards along which the cortege would pass. On his last ride the supreme generalissimo must swerve neither to right nor left, and so the ugly "islands" were uprooted, and straight down the centre of the long ribbons of asphalt passed Ferdinand Foch.

He had not so much loved as delighted in children, and so the long terraces of the Tuilleries gardens were reserved pour les enfants des soldats de La Grande Armee. Alongside the children on other terraces were les blesses, crippled, blinded perhaps, but every man in shining uniform, rigid and silent as they gave the Last Salute, many with streaming eyes.

For the first time the President of the Republic -just now M. Gaston Doumergue -chose to ignore the inflexible protocol which decrees that the Head of the State does not follow the corpse of a citizen. For the first time the King of the Belgians -tall, chivalrous, heroic Albert I - came to Paris in the simple quality of general, kissed the hand of Mme. La Marechale Foch, looked for the last time on the Supreme Generalissimo, whose orders even His Majesty had obeyed as a subordinate, and returned to Brussels after only three hours in the French capital.

Excepting only the Unknown Soldier, the last hero to lie beneath the Arc de Triomphe up to last week was Victor Hugo, 43 years ago. The emotion of Frenchmen was keyed to such a pitch that even the official tellers of the Chamber of Deputies -men chosen for no other quality than their incorruptible honor -majestically lied when the Communist Deputies voted against a bill granting $12,000 to defray the expenses of the funeral. Though every Communist who had thus voted rose and blatantly proclaimed the fact, the official count showed that the bill had passed unanimously, and the President of the Chamber refused to entertain any appeal against the falsehood.

Draped completely in long streamers of black were the high walls and soaring towers of the Cathedrale de Notre Dame. Thus, with a deed, the Catholic Church received the most illustrious and possibly the most devout of her warrior sons, the sole generalissimo who ever commanded ten million men in arms, the great and humble Catholic who reviewed his victory thus: "Without claiming the intervention of a miracle, I say that when, at a moment in history, a clear view is given to a man and he finds later that that clear view has determined movements of enormous consequences in the conduct of a formidable war -then I hold that that clear view, which I think I had in 1918, comes from a Providential Force in the hands of which one is an instrument, and that the victorious decision descends from on high, from a Will which is superior and divine."

The final deed by which France would honor her "Little Warrior"* was to inter him in the only vacant sarcophagus left among those sarcophagi which are ranged about the gigantic, glistening red stone urn in which the Emperor Napoleon sleeps -bathed in purple light which filters through the Dome des Invalides.

Of all the word-tributes paid to Ferdinand Foch last week -and the few speeches of French statesmen were almost incredibly Spartan and brief -perhaps the most significant was uttered by a certain Mile. Breton, telephone operator to Foch from 1924 until last week. As she came to sit at her little switchboard, in the gate keeper's lodge of the Marshal's residence, Mile. Breton said:

"During the 48 months of the War, I was with him. Hour by hour I experienced alternating doubt, hope and then the great joy of Triumph. But as for him, he never doubted. I still hear, and will always hear his voice -crisp and yet always the same, a voice which not only commanded, but gave comfort. Now he has gone, but I have returned to my work today as usual because I thought it the best homage I could give him and felt that he would have been pleased with me for doing so."

Vengeance to Foch. "However highly President von Hindenburg may esteem Foch as a military man, the German people simply would not understand why he should pay tribute to the man who at Compiegne so deeply humiliated the German Armistice Commission. It is not his qualities of a soldier that we question but the manner in which he 'rubbed in' his authority."

Thus last week the Private Secretary of Old Paul von Hindenburg explained to correspondents why Der Alte Feldmarschall sent only the frostiest expression of official regret through German Ambassador at Paris, Dr. Leopold von Hoesch. Meanwhile German news organs indignantly recalled how Victor Foch had "rubbed it in." Facts are that when Herr Matthias Erzberger entered the Allied Generalissimo's staff car at the head of the German Armistice Commission to sue for peace, he was pointedly ignored by Foch who remarked to his staff: "Who are these gentlemen? What do they want?"

"We are the German plenipotentiaries," said Herr Erzberger humbly, "we have come to receive your propositions for an armistice."

"I do not make propositions!" snapped the Marshal, and only after the Germans had been made to eat a great deal more crow did the negotiants finally come to terms.

When the Germans had finally withdrawn Ferdinand Foch exclaimed: "Now my son and my son-in-law [killed in the War] are avenged!"

Catholic Foch & Atheist Clemenceau. Spruce, sword-handy professors at the French War College were first to detect the military genius of Student Foch, quick to realize that he possessed a unique "geometric brain," keen, strong, supple, above all superbly balanced. Eight years after graduation he was welcomed into the faculty, achieved popularity and reputation in a few swift years, produced those master manuals of the new warfare, The Principles of War and The Conduct of War, and presently was gazetted Lieutenant Colonel without ever having commanded on a field of battle. With a future of promise unsurpassed before him, suddenly he was booted out of the War College during the Anti-Clerical strife of 1901, because he was a devout Roman Catholic.

Sped six years. The new Prime Minister was that savage atheist M. Georges Clemenceau, well called "The Tiger." One day Catholic Foch was bidden to luncheon by Atheist Clemenceau. They merely chatted until the General reached the point of raising and sipping his demitasse, when The Tiger suddenly flashed, "You are the new Director of the War College! I have just signed your appointment."

"I fear, M. le President,"* smiled Catholic Foch, continuing to sip his coffee, "that you do not know of all my family connections. I have a brother who is a Jesuit."

"Damn your Jesuit brother!" roared Clemenceau, "I say you are M. le Di-recteur de I'Ecole Superieure de Guerre, and all the Jesuits in creation can't alter that fact!"

Years afterwards during the War, a trembling orderly faced the Tiger, who had dashed out from Paris to confer with Generalissimo Foch. "He is at Mass, M. le President," stammered the orderly. "Shall I tell him you are here?"

"No! No! Don't disturb him," said Atheist Clemenceau. "It has always succeeded well with him -the Mass. I will wait."

Paradoxically Tiger and Generalissimo became estranged in the very dawn of victory. Foch, knowing that the Germans were about to sue for an armistice, asked Clemenceau what were the political terms on which the Allied statesmen desired to conclude peace. In effect the Tiger replied that Foch should mind his own business, conclude a purely military Armistice, and keep his nose out of the Peace Conference. Stung to the quick of pride, the Generalissimo obeyed these instructions literally, and, having concluded the Armistice, washed his hands of the Peace with these icy words to Clemenceau, "M. Le President, my work is finished. Yours begins."

Came the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Foch seemed to divine, by intuition, that President Woodrow Wilson's pledge that the U.S. would guarantee French security was wasted breath. After the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the Treaty, Marshal Foch declared with concentrated scorn in an authorized interview:

"Clemenceau reminds me of Wilhelm II. The Kaiser lost the War, the Tiger the Peace. His apologies will have little success in France. He will cry and be sentimental like all old people."

Last week tough old Atheist Clemenceau, 87, followed Death to the house of Christian Foch, 77, and condoled privily with Mme. la Marechale. Stumping forth with sturdy cane, he said: "It is unjust. He was my junior and it is I who come to salute him who is dead. He is entitled to the profoundest respect."

Equally frigid and correct are the relations of "Tiger" Clemenceau with the grizzled "Lion of Lorraine," M. Raymond Poincare -now Prime Minister -who was President of France during the war. At the triumphal French entry into Strassburg in 1918, the Lion and the Tiger formally embraced each other, but it is said that they have never met or spoken since. Last week a personal autograph letter was sent by M. Poincare to M. Clemenceau, inviting him in the name of the French Government to attend the funeral of Marshal Foch; but Le Tiger replied to Le Lion that he had already taken leave of Le Patron. French poilus called Foch Le Patron ("the boss") out of homage and respect, reserving the merely affectionate nickname of Le Papa for bumbling old Marshal Joseph Jacques Cesaire Joffre.

Will Always Wins. The grand legacy of Marshal Foch to future Generalissimos, and the touchstone of all his victories, is a psychological concept of warfare which he stated thus:

"War belongs to the department of moral force. A battle is the conflict of two mills. Victory is a moral superiority on the part of the conqueror and a moral depression on the part of the conquered."

When practical English and Scotch generals were inclined to have their doubts, General Foch would confute them thus:

"Very well, Messieurs, let us be practical! One hundred thousand men leave 10,000 of their number dead upon the ground and acknowledge themselves beaten. They retreat before the victors who have lost as many men, if not more. Neither one side nor the other side knows when they withdraw what its own losses have been nor how heavy those of the opposing force. Therefore, it is not on account of material damage, still less from any possible computation of the figures, that the losers give up the struggle. The will to conquer sweeps all before it. There is a psychological phenomenon in great battles which explains and determines their results. The moral factor is the most important element in war."

A most astounding application of these principles was the complete reversal of the Allied plan of campaign in 1918, when Ferdinand Foch was given supreme command as Generalissimo. So irresistible seemed the German advance in those black days that the Allies were preparing to abandon Paris.

"Paris!" cried Foch when he assumed supreme command, "Paris has nothing to do with this matter! Paris is far away. We must stop the Germans where they are. We have only to say 'They shall not pass!' and they will not pass. . . . Three-fourths of the battle is won when the men know they are not going to retreat."

* Less than 100 lbs. at Death.

*Four Frenchmen are correctly addressed as "M. le President": The President of France The President of the Cabinet The President of the Senate The President of the Chamber.

* Father Germain Foch S. J. survives Marshal Foch.