Part 25

And on that day the Hohenzollern government at Berlin had so little relish for the situation on all fronts, that it besought the President of the United States "to take in hand the restoration of peace, acquaint all the belligerent states with this request and invite them to send plenipotentiaries for the purpose of opening negotiations. . . . With a view to avoiding further bloodshed, the German Government requests the immediate conclusion of an armistice on land and water and in air."

October 10, Austria and Turkey joined Germany in appealing for peace terms. Notes continued to pass between the Germanic capitals and Washington, D. C.

But Foch fought on.

The Americans had cleared the last corner of the Argonne of German machine-gun nests and gunners, and were widening their offensive on the Meuse. The French had taken Laon, and were pushing on. The British had taken Lens and Cambrai and were advancing on Douai and Lille.

On the 23rd of October the President of the United States referred the matter of the armistice to the Allies. On the 29th, the Allied War Council met at Versailles to fix the armistice conditions.

(Foch meanwhile had launched an offensive against the Austrians on the Piave.)

Now, an armistice is supposed to be a cessation of hostilities for an agreed period, all combatants to remain as they were; if the parley for peace is not successful, the struggle is to resume where it paused, neither side having gained or lost, except as delay may or may not have been favorable to them.

Foch had not the smallest intention of granting the hard-pushed enemy that sort of an armistice--time to recuperate, to parley while Winter came on and postponed the resumption of his offensive until Spring. To do that meant to prolong the war probably another year, at enormous cost in lives, suffering, materials.

What he would grant would be an armistice in which the enemy, so far from keeping his positions would abandon them all and retire far behind the Rhine; in which the Allies, so far from keeping their positions, would follow the retreating enemy into his own country, and police it; in which the enemy, so far from resting on his sword, would hand it over--his swords, and his cannon, and his machine-guns, and his fleet and his submarines and his aircraft and his locomotives; in which he would release all Allied prisoners and not ask the release of any of his captured men.

The terms were the most ignominious ever imposed upon a prostrate enemy. The sole reason for referring to them as "armistice terms" was that peace terms are final and absolute, and these were not final--they would be made much worse if the Germans failed to satisfy their conquerors on every point.

When the Allied War Council had agreed with Foch on the armistice terms, he said:

"Within ten days or a fortnight I can break the German army in three, envelop a section of it, and take a million prisoners. Is there any condition which, in the opinion of any of you, could be imposed upon the enemy then, more conclusive than those of the armistice?"

No one could think of anything that might add a jot to the completeness of Germany's subjugation.

"Then, gentlemen," answered the Commander-in-Chief, "we will proceed with the armistice. When all is won that can be won for the safety and honor of France and her Allies, I cannot for the sake of prestige or gratification or personal glory, order action that would cost the life of any parents' young son, any little child's father. I am a bereaved father. I think of the fathers and mothers whom further fighting must bereave. The enveloping advance which our armies could make in ten to fourteen days would cost us thousands of lives, many maimed men. If those things must be to bring the triumph of Right, we can bear them again as we have borne them these years past. But not for any other reason!"

"The German high command," he said later, at Treves, "was not ignorant of the fact that it faced a colossal disaster. When it surrendered, everything was prepared for an offensive in which it would infallibly have succumbed. The Germans were lost. They capitulated. That is the whole story."

The German plenipotentiaries arrived at the French front at nine o'clock on the evening of November 7, and were escorted to the Chateau Francfort to spend the night. The next morning they were taken to Rethondes in the forest of Compiegne. There Foch (whose headquarters were at Semis, twenty-two miles nearer Paris) awaited them in his special train.

I may be quite wrong about his reason for receiving the German envoys in a railway carriage. But my surmise about it is that he did not want any fixed place associated with Germany's humiliation until those empowered to act for the defunct empire of William I came to the Gallery of Mirrors at Versailles and there, where the German empire had been proclaimed, witnessed the formal degradation before the representatives of all civilization of their nation that was built on the principle that Might is Right.

Next to this in poetic justice would have been to summon those plenipotentiaries before him at Senlis where their troops had committed such insensate horrors in September, 1914. But for reasons of his own (which we may be sure had nothing to do with courtesy) Foch went part way to meet them.

They complained, afterwards, that he received them coldly. If he was able to keep his manner cold, it was only because his self-command is so great. For no other man in the world knows so well as he the extent and the enormity of the crimes those men and their masters and their minions are guilty of. A primitive man, or any undisciplined modern man, would have leaped at their throats. Instead, Foch treated them as if they were human though not humane beings, and read to them slowly and in a loud voice, the terms of the armistice for which they had asked.

Mathias Erzberger, their spokesman, requested a cessation of hostilities whilst a courier carried the terms to German General Headquarters at Spa.

There the Kaiser, Hindenburg and others awaited particulars.

Foch declined to cease hostilities. He knew his enemy too well.

As soon as the Kaiser learned what the terms were, he abdicated his throne and fled his country. When the courier had returned, and the German plenipotentiaries once more presented themselves before Foch (again in his car) the "War Lord" of all the world was cowering in a Holland hiding place, his blubbering heir was in another, and a Social Republic had been declared in Berlin.

How the Hohenzollerns knew the terms of the armistice full twenty-four hours before the courier's return to German Headquarters at Spa, I have not seen explained or heard any one conjecture.

From Rethondes to Spa is a matter of some two hundred and fifty miles, by road, and nearly forty-eight hours were consumed by the courier in covering that distance; he did not reach German Headquarters until ten o'clock Sunday morning, November 10. But the Kaiser abdicated and the Crown Prince renounced his claims to the throne, in Spa on Saturday morning, and they were both out of the country when the courier was received, his papers were read, and he was sent back with word to the plenipotentiaries to get amelioration of some conditions, if possible, but in any event to sign.

If the press reports are not in error as to the time the courier arrived at Spa, then the terms of the armistice must have been made known to the Hohenzollerns by telegraph or other quick communication very early on Saturday--probably as soon as the courier recrossed his own lines, which he could have done not many hours after quitting Compiegne forest. And Berlin seems to have known the terms at least as soon; for it was "the receipt of an urgent telegram" from Berlin, which the Kaiser is reported to have read with a shiver, that precipitated the abdication and flight.

These details are significant, even in so brief a sketch of Foch's life as this is; for in their very confusion and obscurity they tell a great story of what was either realized or feared in the German camps and in the German capital.

The magnitude of that which Foch was ready (and was by his enemies known to be ready) to do could not be better conveyed to us than by the panicky haste of those who knew themselves doomed, to make any concessions but at all costs to avert Foch's next move.