United States or Pakistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"We," Foch used to tell his students, "are the successors of the revolution and the empire, the inheritors of the art, new-born upon the field of Valmy to astonish the old Europe, to surprise in particular the Duke of Brunswick, the pupil of Frederick the Great, and to tear from Goethe, before the immensity of a fresh horizon, this profound cry: 'I tell you, from this place and this day comes a new era in the history of the world!"
It was quite an uprooting due to the father's appointment as paymaster of the treasury at Rodez and took the Foch family into an atmosphere very different from that of their old Gascon home, but one which also helped to vivify that history which was Ferdinand's passion.
Quaint, sturdy, picturesque folk they are simple, for the most part, superstitious, tenacious of the old, suspicious of the new, and governable only by those who understand them. Foch must have learned, in those seven years, not only to know the Bretons, but to like them and their rugged country very well.
Moreover there was an elaborate series of underground works, including mines and wolf pits, the latter being covered over with a thin layer of turf and thickly studded with stakes whose points awaited the charging French. General Foch was ready on Sunday morning, May 9, 1915, and his artillery began one of the heaviest bombardments in history.
Four hours were spent discussing the possibility of performing some of the conditions exacted, and modifications were made which in no degree altered the completeness of Germany's subjugation. Then the papers were signed. The Germans were punctiliously escorted to their own lines. I have not heard what Foch did; but it would not surprise me to learn that he went back to bed, and to sleep.
In return the United States and Great Britain pledged themselves to come to the immediate aid of France, in case of an unprovoked attack, by an agreement which was to be binding only if ratified by both countries. This treaty the United States Senate refused to ratify. Foch was opposed to this compromise, and adopted a course of action which was very embarrassing to Clemenceau.
"Then Evans followed him down the street and was surprised to see soldiers salute this man in great excitement, and women and children stopping in their tracks with awe-struck faces as he passed. "It was Foch! And now Evans, of San Bernardino, counts the experience as the greatest in his life.
The room he occupied was nearly bare; an old table, an armchair, a telephone, a huge war map, no profusion of papers, no "air of importance." Foch was writing in a notebook. He rose, when he had finished his entry among those epoch-making memoranda, and received his visitors. He had but a few minutes to give, yet he realized the importance of the occasion and treated it accordingly.
It will be remembered that the armies of General Foch and Langle, especially the latter, had taken no part in the first phase of the Battle of the Aisne, but had stubbornly thrown back the armies of the Duke of Württemberg, which had combined with those of the crown prince.
The offensive had to be abandoned and the French troops had to withdraw from German soil to defend their own. How bitter was the disappointment to Foch we may guess but shall never know. But remaking plans in his genius. "What have we to do here?" he asked himself.
Word Of The Day