Part 30

Metz! How much history does the name suggest in the light of the Great War! If the young artillery student could have foreseen the backward and forward swing of the pendulum, as exemplified in that ancient city, how his blood would have quickened!

The summer of 1870 arrived. Ferdinand Foch, a well-grown lad of nineteen, went home to St. Etienne on his first vacation. It had been his first year away from home, and there must have been a joyful reunion. But over the vacation season hung a war cloud. In the middle of July, France was persuaded to declare war. Her first great clash with Germany was on.

The news, however, was not displeasing to Ferdinand. He had supreme confidence in the ability of the trained French army to subdue the "Prussian militia." All France had been soundly fooled as to the extent of the German preparedness. Foch thought of Metz as the starting point of the war which was to wage its victorious course eastward. But the reverse soon proved to be the case. From Metz the Germans drove westward into France. The school at St. Clement was transformed into a military hospital. Ferdinand remained at home watching the turn of events with surprised eyes. When the defeat at Sedan came, in September, it seemed to him like the end of the world.

Then came the frantic call from Paris for new troops. Young Foch was one of the first to respond to this appeal. He could do his bit, at any rate, and once the Second Army was assembled, the invader would see! But alas! he was destined to do no fighting. For four months he remained with his regiment, a high private in the rear ranks, doing drill and garrison duty until peace was declared.

The war was over. France had concluded a shameful peace but one that was forced upon her. This sort of war had brought bitter disillusionment to a host of French boys, and they always thought in their hearts of the day of reckoning which must come later on--and hoped that they would be alive to see it. Such must have been the dream of Foch, the "sleeping firebrand."

For the present, there was nothing for it, but to doff his uniform and take up his studies again. The college of St. Clement had ceased to be a hospital and was again full of classrooms. But over the old fort floated a strange flag--the black, white and red emblem of Germany, and German officers strutted everywhere on the streets. The French signs over the shops and on the street corners were rapidly disappearing. Soon came an official order from Berlin forbidding the teaching of French in the schools of Alsace and Lorraine. The work of benevolent assimilation was begun.

Foch privately shook his fist at the broad backs of the swaggering conquerors, and set to work at his studies with renewed vim. French or German, the old Jesuit college was going to aid him in his task of becoming a soldier--and then his country would have one more recruit at any rate!

We are not surprised to find, therefore, that he passed his entrance examinations with flying colors, and in November, 1871, donned his uniform as a cadet in the Ecole Polytechnique. This building, like the one at Metz, still bore evidences of the recent war. During the siege of Paris it had been used as a hospital; and in the civil war which followed the peace, when the Empire was overthrown, it had been through severe fighting. Shell holes were still to be seen in its roofs and walls. But such scars seemed to make it still more what it was in name, a military school. Foch already felt like a soldier.

Among Foch's fellow students were two others who were destined to play a part in the World War. One was a cadet named Ruffey, who was destined to become a General, in command of the Third Army of France, during 1914. The other was a short, stocky fellow, who came from the Gascon country near Foch's home, and who had been more fortunate than he in seeing some actual fighting during the recent war. He had been in command of a battery of guns during the siege of Paris, and had also taken a physical part in the fighting. Foch looked at this strapping cadet, and then at his own much slighter frame, and a feeling akin to envy came over him, as he may have said to himself:

"If only I could have got into it like that fellow Joffre!"

During the second year of his work here, in 1873, it was announced that, as the army was short of officers, the course would be shortened for the more advanced students, so that they could receive their commissions as soon as possible. Among the students who were granted this honor were Joffre and Foch--the former choosing the engineers, and the latter the artillery. As a special aid in completing his course, Foch secured a transfer to the Artillery School at Fontainebleau.

Here he felt more at home and in more congenial surroundings. He was out of the city with its clamor and clang. Always a country boy at heart, he recalled his beloved St. Etienne in these parks and hills. He had always been fond of horseback riding, and now he had full opportunity of perfecting himself in this art. The daily canters kept his body sound, his brain clear. He came out third in his classes, a highly creditable mark, and received his commission as a sub-lieutenant. He was a soldier at last.

As a reward for his scholarship he was informed that he might choose any post where he would prefer to be stationed. He selected Tarbes, his birthplace, and the town nearest his home. Truly, the fates were kind!

Two years were spent with the garrison at Tarbes, in a round of regimental duties. Then the routine began to pall upon him. He wanted something approaching active service. He had perfected himself in artillery maneuvers; and during his four months as a volunteer in the War, he had drilled in the infantry. So he now applied for transfer to the third branch, the cavalry. His love of horses may also have influenced this desire.

He received the transfer and spent a year in the Cavalry School at Saumur. On completing this course he was given a commission as Captain, and placed in command of a field battery, in Brittany. This transfer marked the beginning of a new era in his life. From being a Gascon, he was now about to become a Breton. He spent so many years of his life in Brittany, that in later years he called his soldiers "my brother Bretons."

Another reason for his change of sentiment was his fortunate marriage to a lady whom he met at Rennes, where his regiment was stationed--Mademoiselle Julie Bienvenue. Her name means "Welcome," and to the lonely and possibly homesick soldier, her advent must have been welcome indeed.

He bought a home in Finisterre, that wild, rocky, well-wooded cape which juts out into the Atlantic. It was an old manor house set in the midst of an estate which from the outset spelled the word "home" for him. There were long sloping meadow lands flanked by stately trees and hills beyond. The old house itself with its somber gray walls and quaint dormer windows seemed always to have nestled here.

Such an idyllic setting, away out on the most sheltered spot of France--far removed from the tramp of an invader, or the other changes which came to the central provinces of France--while pleasant in the extreme was hardly the fitting environment to produce a soldier, a real fighting man. It might produce a fine preacher, or artist, or poet, or farmer--but not likely a famous general.

But Foch did not yield to the blandishments of his new home to the extent of vegetating here. His active mind was looking continually forward. He could not rest content with mediocrity, or a merely comfortable living. "Do what you ought, come what may" was his guiding motto. He applied for admission to the Ecole de Guerre, a higher school recently established for staff officers, but admission to its walls came by favoritism or political pull, and it was many months (1885) before he gained admission.

The course which he took required two years to complete--years which kept him away from home, but were worth while. He graduated as fourth in a large class, and better still had made some valuable acquaintances here. His professors and classmates soon recognized in this quiet, studious Artillery Captain a man worth watching--one who would do in an emergency.

The next eight or ten years were filled with the usual routine of an army officer in peace times. He was transferred from one post to another for periods of two or three years, but always it was active field service which he liked, rather than the routine of office duty. He established a brilliant reputation for horsemanship and cavalry tactics which later were to be of advantage.

But still he had never seen actual warfare, nor heard the bullets whizz about his head. He was an academic soldier, and seemed destined to remain one for the rest of his natural life when, in 1895, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Military History and Strategy, in the Ecole de Guerre, the college from which he had last graduated, a few years before. The faculty had not forgotten him. It was an honor in a way, but Foch doubtless debated long before he accepted it. It meant the giving up of the freedom of his broad outdoors.

He was a major by this time; and after a few years of lecturing, he was made full professor, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. The work in his classes was highly important. This being a post-graduate school, the men to whom he lectured were not cadets but trained soldiers, many of them seasoned veterans. They would have instantly detected any flaw in his teaching. The impress which this college professor then made upon the future heads of the French army was destined to have a profound and far-reaching effect. In the years to come, when France and the civilized world was in search of a leader big enough to measure up to the crisis--they turned to this quiet college professor!

Foch won his position as "the most gifted and original of the professors in the Ecole de Guerre" by no trick or sensational methods. He spoke in an even, almost monotonous voice, using few gestures. But his speech was clear-cut and precise. He reminded his hearers of a scientist dissecting a foreign body, as he expounded the clash of armies or the turning points of battle. He had, in fact, precise knowledge of an event in which he had never actually participated. He had analyzed war and resolved it into its component parts, as though it were heated in a test-tube. And how exact were his theories, later events were to show.

In 1901, Foch returned for a time to active service, being given command of the 29th Regiment at Laon. After the classroom routine, the change was indeed welcome. A few months later we find him stationed again in his beloved Brittany, with the rank of Colonel. But promotion had come slowly. During these years he prepared his class lectures for book publication, forming two volumes, the first being his since-celebrated "Principles of War," and the second "The Conduct of War." In these books he proved himself a master of terse, epigrammatic statement. There did not seem to be a superfluous word in them. They were favorably received by military critics everywhere, and still further established his reputation.

But it was not until 1907, when Foch was fifty-six, that he at last received the rank of Brigadier General, with an assignment to the General Staff at Paris. With this belated appointment it seemed that the tale of his military career was told. Fate had more than one surprise in store, even then, however.

The position as head or Director General of the Ecole de Guerre was vacant. A keen rivalry arose among several Generals for the appointment, but Foch did not present his name. He belonged to the wrong party, the Clerical, or Church Party, and the Anti-Clericals were then in power. Clemenceau was Premier, this being his first term.

One day Foch was surprised by being invited to dine with the Premier. When he arrived he was still further surprised to note that he was the only guest. The "Tiger" did not broach the subject of the invitation until the coffee cups were cleared away. Then he said abruptly, and apropos of nothing that had gone before: