Part 19

"It was 10 P.M.," he writes, "when I roused General Grossetti from his sleep in the straw, in the miserable little shell-riddled farm of Chapton.

"The order astonished him; but like a disciplined leader, he started to execute it with all the energy of which this legendary soldier was capable."

The Forty-second came! While they were marching to the rescue the Prussian Guard in a colossal effort smashed through Foch's right. They were wild with joy. The French line was pierced. They at once began celebrating, at La Fere-Champenoise.

When this was announced to Foch he telegraphed to general headquarters:

"My center gives way, my right recedes; the situation is excellent. I shall attack."

For this, we must remember, is the man who says: "A battle won is a battle in which one is not able to believe one's self vanquished."

He gave the order to attack. Everything that he cared about in this world was at stake. This desperate maneuver would save it all--or it would not. He gave the order to attack--and then he went for a walk on the outskirts of the little village of Plancy. His companion was one of his staff officers, Lieutenant Ferasson of the artillery; and as they walked they discussed metallurgy and economics.

There could be nothing more typically French or more diametrically opposed to the conceptions of French character which prevailed in other countries before this war. And I hope that if Lieutenant Ferasson survives, he will accurately designate (if he can) exactly where Foch walked on that Wednesday afternoon, September 9, when, his center having given way, his right wing receded, he pronounced the "situation excellent," gave the order for attack, and went out to discuss metallurgy.

Toward six o'clock on that evening the Germans, celebrating their certain victory, saw themselves confronted by a "new" French army pouring into the gap they had thought their road to Paris.

The Forty-second Division (more than half dead of fatigue, but their eyes blazing with such immensity and intensity of purpose it has been said the Germans fled, as before spirits, when they saw these men) had not only blocked the roundabout road to Paris; they had broken the morale of Von Buelow's crack troops. Without this brilliant maneuver and superb execution the successes of all the other armies must have gone for naught.

"To be victorious," said Napoleon, "it is necessary only to be stronger than your enemy at a given point and at a given moment."

Foch's preferred way to take advantage of that given point and moment is with reserves, which he called the reservoirs of force. "The art of war consists in having them when the enemy has none."

But as there were no reserves available at that first Battle of the Marne, he exemplified his other principle that conditions must be met as they arise.

"I still seem," says Rene Puaux, "to hear General Foch telling us, one evening after dinner at Cassel several months later, about that maneuver of September 9.

"He had put matches on the tablecloth"--some red matches which Colonel Requin treasures as a souvenir--"and he illustrated with them the disposition of the troops engaged. For the Forty-second Division he had only half a match, which he moved here and there with his quick, deft fingers as he talked.

"The match representing the Twelfth German Corps (which with the Prussian Guard was cutting the gap in Foch's weak spot) was about to make a half-turn which would bring it in the rear of the French armies.

"The general, laying down the half-match that was the Forty-second Division, made an eloquent gesture with his hand, indicating the move that the Forty-second made.

"'It might succeed,' he said, laconically, 'or it might fail. It succeeded. Those men were exhausted; they won, nevertheless.'"

At nine o'clock the next morning (September 10) the Forty-second entered La Fere-Champenoise, where they found officers of the Prussian Guard lying, dead drunk, on the floors in the cantonments, surrounded by innumerable bottles of stolen champagne wherewith they had been celebrating their victory.

Two days later Foch was at Chalons, to direct in person the crossing of the Marne by his army in pursuit of the fleeing enemy.

"The cavalry, the artillery, the unending lines of supply wagons," says Colonel Requin, "the infantry in two columns on either side of the road; all this in close formation descending like a torrent to resume its place of battle above the passage on the other side of the river; was an unforgettable sight and one that gave all who witnessed it an impression of the tremendous energy General Foch has for the command of enormous material difficulties."

SENT NORTH TO SAVE THE CHANNEL PORTS

Germany's plan to enter France by the east gate, in Lorraine, was frustrated with the aid of Foch.

Her plan to smash through the center of the armies on the Marne was frustrated, with the very special aid of Foch.

Blocked in both these moves, there was just one other for Germany to make, then, on the western front.

And on September 14, Joffre, instead of celebrating the victory on the Marne, was deep in plans to forestall an advance upon the Channel ports, and began issuing orders for the transfer of his main fighting bodies to the north.

All this, of course, had to be done so as to leave no vulnerable spot in all that long battle line from Belfort to Calais.

Joffre had clearly foreseen the length of that line. He predicted it, as we have seen, in 1912. Doubtless he had foreseen also that it would be too long a line to direct from one viewpoint, from one general headquarters. What he was too wise to try to foresee before the war began was, which one of France's trained fighting men he would call to his aid as his second in command. He waited, and watched, before deciding that.