FERDINAND FOCH MILITARY ART T BY LINGARD LOUD HEY can never unite against me," said the Kaiser in 1917. "Therefore I shall defeat them. They are divided by jealousies and mutual distrust; they can never agree upon a single leader, and therefore I shall triumph over them." Nevertheless only a year later a leader had emerged from the "fog of war" and in the hour of greatest peril the jealousies and mutual distrust were burnt out of men's souls and the Allied cause was committed into the strong hands of Ferdinand Foch. This was no sudden emergence of an unknown soldier from obscurity, but the final culmination of a slow, steady process of selection. It was an example of the survival of the fittest. Foch was simply the "fittest" of the Allied generals, and by the workings of that biologic law he was "selected," and through him the Allied cause "survived." When one traces out the little known, unsensational development of this extraordinary military genius, one is led to believe in a Providence, a destiny, either human or divine, which provided the twists and turns, ups and downs, rebuffs and rebounds, which gradually, step by step equipped this devout Christian for his great role as Savior of Civilization. Each stage of his long career carried him closer to the climactic period of 1918. Whether the story of his life be that of a strategist, or whether it be regarded with reverence in the face of the mysterious power which shaped his course in such fashion as to produce the leader in the hour of supreme need, however we approach his life, it illustrates the manner in which instruments are formed by unseen forces to preserve mankind against tyranny. Whether you believe that God, in His Infinite wisdom fashions such instruments; or whether you believe that the mass of men, blundering blindly through darkness in quest of adequate leadership, know by intuition. when they have found a rescuing genius, or whether you believe that Ferdinand Foch, the general who happened to be entrusted with power, chanced to hit upon the correct expedients and strategic moves for the campaign which culminated in Armistice Day, 1918, in the study of his career you are struck at once by the uncanny directness with which he moved from boyhood year after year straight toward the work |