“Jesuit be d-----!” the Premier is reported to have roared in reply. 
“Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Director!  You are the Director of the Ecole
de Guerre.  All the Jesuits in creation won’t alter that—­it is a fait
accompli.”

Among the confidential bits of work worthy of note that Foch has done for the War Department is the report he made upon the larger guns of the French field artillery, which have done such execution in the present war.  For many weeks Foch went around the great Creusot gun works in the blouse of a workman, testing, watching, experimenting, analyzing.

Foch was one of the high officers in France who was not in the least surprised by the war and who had personally been holding himself in readiness for it for years.  He felt, and often said, that a great war was inevitable; so much used he to dwell upon the certainty of war that some persons regarded him as an alarmist when he kept declaring that French officers should take every step within their power to get themselves and the troops ready for active service at an instant’s notice.  He also held that France as a nation should prepare to the utmost of her power for the assured conflict.

In a recent issue of The London Times there was a description of Foch by a Times correspondent who had been at Foch’s headquarters in the north of France.  The correspondent’s remarks are prefaced by the statement that in a late dispatch General French mentions General Foch as one of those whose help he has “once more gratefully to acknowledge.”  The correspondent writes in part: 

What Ernest Lavisse has clone for civilian New France in his direction of the Ecole Normale General Foch has done in a large measure for the officers of New France by his teaching of strategy and tactics at the Ecole de Guerre.  He left his mark upon the whole teaching of general tactics.

I had the honor of being received recently by General Foch at his headquarters in the north of France—­a house built for very different purposes many years ago, when Flemish civil architecture was in its flower.  The quiet atmosphere of Flemish ease and burgomaster comfort has completely vanished.  The building hums with activity, as does the whole town.  A fleet of motor cars is ready for instant action.  Officers and orderlies hurry constantly to and fro.  There is an occasional British uniform, a naval airman’s armored car, and above all the noise of this bustle, though lower in tone, the sound of guns in the distance from Ypres.

The director of all this activity is General Foch.  There in the north he is putting his theories of war to the test with as much success as he did at the outbreak of hostilities in Lorraine and later in the centre during the battle of the Marne.  Although born with the brain of a mathematician, General Foch’s ideas upon war are by no means purely scientific.  He refuses, indeed, to regard war, and more especially