Foch the Man | Page 7

versed in military
understanding to realize how much of the defeat France suffered was
due to her failure to fight on, at this juncture and that, when a stiffer
resistance would have turned the course of events.
But if he did not know then, he certainly knew later. And as soon as he
got where he could impress his convictions upon other soldiers of the
new France he began training them in his great maxim: "A battle is lost
when you admit defeat."
What his devotion to Saint Clément's College was we may know from
the fact of his return there to resume his interrupted studies under the
same teachers, but in sadly different circumstances.
He found German troops quartered in parts of the college, and as he
went to and from his classes the young man who had just laid off the
uniform of a French soldier was obliged to pass and repass men of the
victorious army of occupation.
The memory of his shame and suffering on those occasions has never
faded. How much France and her allies owe to it we shall never be able
to estimate.
For the effect on Foch was one of the first acid tests in which were
revealed the quality of his mind and soul. Instead of offering himself a
prey to sullen anger and resentment, or of flaring into fury when one
time for fury was past and another had not yet come, he used his sorrow

as a goad to study, and bent his energies to the discovery of why France
had failed and why Prussia had won. His analysis of those reasons, and
his application of what that analysis taught him, is what has put him
where he is to-day--and us where we are!
From Metz, Foch went to Nancy to take his examination for the
Polytechnic at Paris.
Just why this should have been deemed necessary I have not seen
explained. But it was, like a good many other things of apparent
inconsequence in this young man's life, destined to leave in him an
impress which had much to do with what he was to perform.
I have seldom, if ever, studied a life in which events "link up" so
marvelously and the present is so remarkably an extension of the past.
Nancy had been chosen by General Manteuffel, commander of the First
German Army Corps, as headquarters, pending the withdrawal of the
victors on the payment of the last sou in the billion-dollar indemnity
they exacted of France along with the ceding of Alsace-Lorraine. (For
three years France had to endure the insolent victors upon her soil.)
And with the fine feeling and magnanimity in which the German was
then as now peculiarly gifted General Manteuffel delighted in ordering
his military bands to play the "Retreat"--to taunt the sad inhabitants
with this reminder of their army's shame.
Ferdinand Foch listened and thought and wrote his examinations for the
school of war.
Forty-two years later--in August, 1913--a new commandant came to
Nancy to take control of the Twentieth Army Corps, whose position
there, guarding France's Eastern frontier, was considered one of the
most important--if not the most important--to the safety of the nation.
The first order he gave was one that brought out the full band strength
of six regiments quartered in the town. They were to play the "March
Lorraine" and the "Sambre and Meuse." They were to fill Nancy with

these stirring sounds. The clarion notes carrying these martial airs were
to reach every cranny of the old town. It was a veritable tidal wave of
triumphant sound that he wanted--for it had much to efface.
Nancy will never forget that night! It was Saturday, the 23d of August,
1913. And the new commandant's name was Ferdinand Foch!
Less than a year later he was fighting to save Nancy, and what lay
beyond, from the Germans.
And this time there was to be a different story! Ferdinand Foch was
foremost of those who assured it.

IV
PARIS AFTER THE GERMANS LEFT
Ferdinand Foch entered the Polytechnic School at Paris on the 1st of
November, 1871, just after he had completed his twentieth year.
This school, founded in 1794, is for the technical education of military
and naval engineers, artillery officers, civil engineers in government
employ, and telegraphists--not mere operators, of course, but telegraph
engineers and other specialists in electric communication. It is
conducted by a general, on military principles, and its students are
soldiers on their way to becoming officers.
Its buildings cover a considerable space in the heart of the great school
quarter of Parts. The Sorbonne, with its traditions harking back to St.
Louis (more than six centuries) and its swarming thousands of students,
is hard by the Polytechnic. So is the College de France,