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Updated: June 13, 2025
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 René Puaux, "to hear General Foch telling us, one evening after dinner at Cassel several months later, about that maneuver of September 9.
At present he was making an inspection of all the Allied armies at the Rhine crossings, together with their equipment, transportation facilities, artillery, and all the other branches on which a successful advance would so much depend. After a short conversation in the open, Marshal Foch and General Pershing entered the regimental headquarters, accompanied by the higher officers of both staffs.
At the most critical moment, the decisive hour of the battle, he accomplished a magnificent maneuver, which is known under the name of the maneuver of Fère Champenoise. Foch noted a rift between the German army of Von Bülow and that of Von Hausen. The German Guard was engaged with the Tenth Division of the reserve in the region of the marshes of St. Gond.
For what matters most under the kind of tension which prevailed in March, 1918, is less the rightness of a particular move than the unbroken expectation as to the source of command. Had Foch "gone to the people" he might have won the debate, but long before he could have won it, the armies which he was to command would have dissolved.
In presenting his name Premier Clemenceau said: "At the hour when the enemy, by a formidable offensive, counted on snatching the decision and imposing a German peace upon us, General Foch and his admirable troops vanquished him. Paris is not in danger, Soissons and Chateau Thierry have been reconquered, and more than villages have been delivered.
And we shall never begin to comprehend men like Joffre and Foch until we shake ourselves free from any notion we may have that military expediency makes it easy for them to order great mental and physical suffering.
So, too, hostile airplanes had hovered over the Channel port, trying to make it unpleasant for the British Tommies in camp near by. But since Marshal Foch opened operations on a large scale, together with the furious drive of General Pershing's army, this had altogether ceased. Major Denning had a car at their disposal.
The German official dispatches point out that General von Bülow's retreat was necessitated by the retreat of General von Kluck. Of this there is no doubt, but even military necessity does not quite explain why General von Bülow bolted so precipitately. His losses were fearful, and the offensive of General Foch rendered it necessary for the Germans to fall back on the Aisne.
The eminent French painter, Lucien Jonas, who has served in Artois, at Verdun, on the Somme and in Italy, and has been appointed painter of the Army Museum at Des Invalides, was commissioned to make a picture of General Foch holding an allies' council of war at Versailles. It was, of course, impossible for Jonas to be actually present at a council meeting.
The army commanded by General Foch was at one time driven back by overwhelming odds, but immediately resumed the offensive, and making a flank attack forced the Germans to retreat. Not that he mentioned his part in the battle of the Marne. Not that any member of his staff so much as intimated it. But these are things that get back. "How is America affected by the war?"
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