Part 16

"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