Part 20

And late in the afternoon of October 4 he telegraphed to General Foch at Chalons, telling him that he was appointed first in command under the generalissimo, and asking him to leave at once for the north, there to coordinate the French, English and Belgian forces that were opposing the German march to the sea.

Five weeks previously Foch had been called to the vicinity of Chalons to assemble an army just coming into existence. Now he was called to leave Chalons and that army he had come to know--that army of which he must have been so very, very proud--and go far away to another task of unknown factors.

But in a few hours he had his affairs in order and was ready to leave.

It was ten o'clock that Sunday night when he got into his automobile to be whirled from the Marne to the Somme.

At four in the morning he was at Breteuil, where General Castelnau had the headquarters of his new army, created on September 20 and designated to service on Manoury's left. General Castelnau had not yet heard of the generalissimo's new order. He was sound asleep when the big gray car came to a stop at the door of his headquarters after its one-hundred-and-fifty-mile dash through silent towns and dark, war-invested country.

Six weeks ago Foch had been his subordinate. Then they became equals in command. Now the magnificent hero of Lorraine who, before the war, had done so much on the Superior War Council to aid Joffre in reorganizing the army, rose from his bed in the chill of a fall morning not yet dawned, to greet his superior officer.

Some black coffee was heated for them, and for two hours they discussed the problems of this new front--Castelnau as eager to serve under Foch, for France, as, eight weeks ago, Foch had been to serve under Castelnau. If the sublime unselfishness of such men could have communicated itself to some of the minor figures of this war, how much more inspiring might be the stories of these civilian commanders!

At six o'clock Foch was under way again--to Amiens, Doullens, St. Pol, and then, at nine, to Aubigny, where General Maud'huy had the headquarters of his army, holding the line north of Castelnau's.

The difficulties of Foch's new undertaking were not military alone, but diplomatic. He had to take account of the English and Belgian armies, each under independent command, and each small. It was the fitness of Foch for the diplomacy needed here, as well as his fitness for the great military task of barring the enemy from the Channel ports, that determined Joffre in nominating him to the place.

In 1912 General Foch had been the head of the French military commission sent to witness the British army maneuvers at Cambridge.

He speaks no English; and not many British generals at that time spoke much French. Yet he somehow managed to get on, with the aid of interpreters, so that his relations with the British officers were not only cordial, in a superficial social way, but important in their results of deepened understanding on his part and of respect on theirs.

His study of what seemed to him the military strength and weakness of France's great neighbor and ally was minute and comprehensive.

In his opinion, the soldiers of Britain were excellent; but he was fearful that their commanders lacked seasoned skill to direct them effectively. This lack he laid to that apparent inability to believe in the imminence of war, which was even more prevalent in Britain, with her centuries of inviolate security, than in France.

Two years before the long-suspended sword fell, Foch foresaw clearly what would be the difficulties in the way of England when she should gird herself for land conflict. Doubtless he had resolved in his mind plans for helping her to meet and to overcome them.

Now he was placed where he could render aid--where he must render aid.

After the Battle of the Marne Sir John French wanted his army moved up north, nearer to its channel communications--that is to say, to its source of supplies. And on October 1 Joffre began to facilitate this movement. It was just well under way when Foch arrived in the north.

And on October 9 the gallant Belgian army withdrew from Antwerp and made its way to the Yser under cover of French and British troops.

Foch soon saw that an allied offensive would not be possible then; that the most they could hope to do was to hold back the invading forces.

Until October 24 he remained at Doullens, twenty miles north of Amiens. Then he removed his headquarters to the ancient town of Cassel, about eighteen miles west and a little south of Ypres.

From there he was able to reach in a few hours' time any strategic part of the north front and from this actual watch-tower (Cassel is on an isolated hill more than 500 feet high, and commands views of portions of France, Belgium, and even--on a clear day--of the chalky cliffs of England; St. Omer, Dunkirk, Ypres, and Ostend are all visible from its heights), he was to direct movements affecting the destinies of all three nations.

The Belgians, whose sublime stand had thwarted Germany's murderous plan against an unready world, were a sad little army when they reached the Yser about mid October. It was not what they had endured that contributed most to break their spirit; but what they had been unable to prevent.

To those heroic men who had left their beautiful country to the arch-fiends of destruction, their parents and wives and children to savages who befoul the name of beasts; who no longer had any possessions, nor munitions wherewith to make another stand on Belgian soil; to them Foch took fresh inspiration with his calm and tremendous personality; to them he sent his splendid Forty-second Division to swell their ranks so frightfully depleted in Honor's cause; to them he gave the suggestion of opening their sluices and drowning out of their last little corner of Belgium the enemy they could not otherwise dislodge.

This done, the next problem of Foch was to establish relations with Sir John French whereby the most cordial and complete cooperation might be insured between the British Field Marshal and the French commander of the armies in the north.

There are several graphic accounts of interviews which took place between these generals.

It was on October 28 that Foch saw the success of the opened sluices and the consequent salvation to the heroic Belgians of a corner of their own earth whereon to maintain their sovereignty.

On the 30th the English suffered severe reverses in spite of the aid lent them by eight battalions of French soldiers and artillery reinforcements. In consequence, they had had to cede considerable ground, their line was pierced, and the flank of General Dubois' army, adjoining theirs, was menaced.

When word of this disaster reached Foch that night he at once set out from Cassel for French's headquarters at Saint Omer.

It was 1 A.M. when he arrived. Marshal French was asleep. He was waked to receive his visitor.