Foch the Man | Page 3

does not appear to the reader without that acquaintance. And distinguished Frenchmen, scholars and soldiers, including several members of the French High Commission to the United States, have helped me greatly; most of them have not only close acquaintance with General Foch, having served as staff officers under him, but are eminent writers as well, with the highest powers of analysis and of expression.
Lieutenant-Colonel édouard Réquin of the French General Staff, who was at General Foch's side from the day Foch was made commander of an army, has been especially kind to me in this undertaking; I am indebted to him, not only for many anecdotes and suggestions, but also for his patience in reading my manuscript for verification (or correction) of its details and its essential truthfulness.
And I want especially to record my gratefulness to M. Antonin Barthélemy, French Consul at Chicago, the extent and quality of whose helpfulness, not alone on this but on many occasions, I shall never be able to describe. Through him the Spirit of France has been potent in our community.
Thus aided and encouraged, I have done what I could to set before my countrymen a sketch of the great, dominant figure of the World War.
The thing about Foch that most impresses us as we come to know him is not primarily his greatness as a military genius, but his greatness as a spiritual force.
Those identical qualities in him which saved the world in war, will serve it no less in peace--if we study them to good purpose.
As a leader of men, his principles need little, if any, adaptation to meet the requirements of the re-born world from which, we hope, he has banished the sword.
Not to those only who would or who must captain their fellows, but to every individual soul fighting alone against weakness and despair and other foes, his life-story brings a rising tide of new courage, new strength, new faith.
For the young man or woman struggling with the principles of success; for the man or woman of middle life, fearful that the time for great service has gone by; to the preacher and the teacher and other moulders of ideals--to these, and to many more, he speaks at least as thrillingly as to the soldier.
This is what I have tried to make clear in my simple sketch here offered.

I
WHERE HE WAS BORN
Ferdinand Foch was born at Tarbes on October 2, 1851.
His father, of good old Pyrenean stock and modest fortune, was a provincial official whose office corresponded to that of secretary of state for one of our commonwealths. So the family lived in Tarbes, the capital of the department called the Upper Pyrénées.
The mother of Ferdinand was Sophie Dupré, born at Argèles, twenty miles south of Tarbes, nearer the Spanish border. Her father had been made a chevalier of the empire by Napoleon I for services in the war with Spain, and the great Emperor's memory was piously venerated in Sophie Dupré's new home as it had been in her old one. So her first-born son may be said to have inherited that passion for Napoleon which has characterized his life and played so great a part in making him what he is.
There was a little sister in the family which welcomed Ferdinand. And in course of time two other boys came.
[Illustration: The Room in Which Ferdinand Foch was Born.]
[Illustration: The House in Tarbes Where Foch was Born.]
These four children led the ordinary life of happy young folks in France. But there was much in their surroundings that was richly colorful, romantic. Probably they took it all for granted, the way children (and many who are not children) take their near and intimate world. But even if they did, it must have had its deep effect upon them.
To begin with, there was Tarbes.
Tarbes is a very ancient city. It is twenty-five miles southeast of Pau, where Henry of Navarre made his dramatic entry upon a highly dramatic career, and just half that distance northeast of Lourdes, whose famous pilgrimages began when Ferdinand Foch was a little boy of seven.
He must have heard many soul-stirring tales about little Bernadette, the peasant girl to whom the grotto's miraculous qualities were revealed by the Virgin, and whose stories were weighed by the Bishop of Tarbes before the Catholic Church sponsored them. The procession of sufferers through Tarbes on their way to Lourdes, and the joyful return of many, must have been part of the background of Ferdinand Foch's young days.
Many important highways converge at Tarbes, which lies in a rich, elevated plain on the left bank of the River Adour.
The town now has some 30,000 inhabitants, but when Ferdinand Foch was a little boy it had fewer than half that many.
For many centuries of eventful history it has consisted principally of one very