Part 15

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.

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.

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.