Even the superior war council of the nation might be politically made up, to pay the War Minister’s scores rather than to protect the country.

All this can happen to a people lulled by a false sense of security—­even to a people which has had to defend itself against the savage rapacity of its neighbors across the Rhine for two thousand years!

It was against these currents of popular opinion and of government opposition that Ferdinand Foch took up his work in the Superior School of War—­that work which was to make possible the first victory of the Marne, to save England from invasion by holding Calais, and to do various other things vital to civilization, including the prodigious achievements of the days that have since followed.

Foch foresaw that these things would have to be done and, with absolute consecration to his task, he set himself not only to train officers for France when she should need them, but to inspire them with a unity of action which has saved the world.

I have various word-pictures of him as he then appeared to, and impressed, his students.

One is by a military writer who uses the pseudonym of “Miles.”

“The officers who succeeded one another at the school of war between 1896 and 1901,” he says, referring to the first term of Foch as instructor there, “will never forget the impressions made upon them by their professor of strategy and of general tactics.  It was this course that was looked forward to with the keenest curiosity as the foundational instruction given by the school.  It enjoyed the prestige given it by the eminent authorities who had held it; and the eighty officers who came to the school at each promotion, intensely desirous of developing their skill and judgment, were always impatient to see and hear the man who was to instruct them in these branches.

“Lieutenant-Colonel Foch did not disappoint their expectations.  Thin, elegant, of distinguished bearing, he at once struck the beholder with his expression—­full of energy, of calm, of rectitude.

“His forehead was high, his nose straight and prominent, his gray-blue eyes looked one full in the face.  He spoke without gestures, with an air of authority and conviction; his voice serious, harsh, a little monotonous; amplifying his phrases to press home in every possible way a rigorous reasoning; provoking discussion; always appealing to the logic of his hearers; sometimes difficult to follow, because his discourse was so rich in ideas; but always holding attention by the penetration of his surveys as well as by his tone of sincerity.

“The most profound and the most original of the professors at the school of war, which at that time counted in its teaching corps many very distinguished minds and brilliant lecturers:  such Lieutenant-Colonel Foch seemed to his students, all eager from the first to give themselves up to the enjoyment of his lessons and the acceptance of his inspiration.”