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The appointment of General Foch as head of the General Staff was made on May 15, 1917, while Marshal Joffre was in the United States to confer with our officials regarding our part in the war. On the same date General Philippe Pétain, the heroic defender of Verdun, who had been Chief of Staff for a month, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of all French armies operating on the French front.
Accepting the honor as paid through him to the men who had proved the worth of that Liberty, Equality and Fraternity the Revolution declared and decreed, Joffre asked permission to name those to whom, he deemed, the gratitude of France and of France's Immortals was due. And first among them he named Foch. This was gracious; it was generous; but it was more than that.
By the same mechanism through which heroes are incarnated, devils are made. If everything good was to come from Joffre, Foch, Wilson, or Roosevelt, everything evil originated in the Kaiser Wilhelm, Lenin and Trotsky. They were as omnipotent for evil as the heroes were omnipotent for good.
I continued turning, until His Majesty, thinking I had enough, withdrew, laughing and chatting by the camera, followed by General Joffre, Sir Douglas Haig, and General Foch. By this time my spool had run out, so quickly changing I got round to the front of the house to film the royal party leaving. After they had all gone, I heard that Mr. Lloyd George was on his way up from Paris.
On August 25 Joffre declared; "We have escaped envelopment" thanks largely to the action in Lorraine, holding back the Bavarians and, clearly seeing that he could not hope for favorable results from a great battle fought in the north, he gave the order for retreat which meant the abandonment of north-eastern France to the Hunnish hordes. What anguish that order caused him we shall never know.
Luc's became a famous general under Napoleon, a great cavalry leader of singular courage and capacity, and a lineal descendant of his, a general also, fought with the same courage and ability under Joffre and Foch in the World War, being especially conspicuous for his services at both the First and Second Marne.
Alors, one must trust the army and the army must trust Joffre. There is no trust like that of a democracy when it gives its heart to a cause; the trust of the mass in the strength of the mass which sweeps away the middlemen of intrigue. And silence, only silence in Paris; the silence of the old men and the women, and of children who had ceased to play and could not understand.
Hal and Chester quickly sought out the French commander. Upon telling him that they had important information for General Joffre, they soon had a large automobile at their disposal and were dashing toward Soissons, where the French commander-in-chief had established temporary headquarters.
Lunéville had been occupied on the 22nd after the French failure on the Saar, and on the 23rd fighting began for the Grand Couronné de Nancy defended by Castelnau. The line of battle stretched from St. Dié to Pont-á-Mousson; but although the fiercest attack was still to come, the German thrust had been decisively checked at Mirecourt before Joffre determined to stand on the Marne.
Its flowers and fruits are social. They are for the blessing of the world. But its root is personal. You can never start with a class conscious or a mass conscious Christianity. It must begin with just you and God. Marshal Joffre, that fine Christian soldier, said a memorable thing about the winning of the war: "Our victory will be the fruit of individual sacrifice."
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