An able officer, in Foch’s opinion, is one who can take a general command to get his men such-and-such a place and accomplish such-and-such a thing, and so interpret that command to his men that each and every one of them will, while acting in strict obedience to orders, use the largest possible amount of personal intelligence in accomplishing the thing he was told to do.

It is said that there was probably never before in history a battle fought in which every man was a general—­so to speak—­as at the battle of Chateau Thierry, in July, 1918.  That is to say, there was probably never before a battle in which so many men comprehended as clearly as if they had been generals what it was all about, and acted as if they had been generals to attain their objectives.

It was an intelligent democracy, acting under superb leadership that vanquished the forces of autocracy.

Foch has worked with a free hand to test the worth of his lifelong principles.  And the hundreds of men he trained in those principles were ready to carry them out for him.

No wonder his first injunction was:  Learn to think!

To him, the leadership of units is not a simple question of organization, of careful plans, of strategic and tactical intelligence, but a problem involving enormous adaptability.

Battles are not won at headquarters, he contends; they are won in the field; and the conditions that may arise in the field cannot be foreseen or forestalled—­they must be met when they present themselves.  In large part they are made by the behavior of men in unexpected circumstances; therefore, the more a commander knows about human nature and its spiritual depressions and exaltations, the better able he is to change his plans as new conditions arise.

German power in war, Foch taught his students, lay in the great masses of their effective troops and their perfect organization for moving men and supplies.  German weakness was in the absolute autocracy of great headquarters, building its plans as an architect builds a house and unable to modify them if something happens to make a change necessary.

This he deduced from his study of their methods in previous wars, especially in that of 1870.

And with this in mind he labored so that when Germany made her next assault upon France, France might be equipped with hundreds of officers cognizant of Germany’s weakness and prepared to turn it to her defeat.

X

A COLONEL AT FIFTY

“It was not,” Napoleon wrote, “the Roman legions which conquered Gaul, but Caesar.  It was not the Carthaginian soldiers who made Rome tremble, but Hannibal.  It was not the Macedonian phalanx which penetrated India, but Alexander.  It was not the French army which reached the Weser and the Inn, but Turenne.  It was not the Prussian soldiers who defended their country for seven years against the three most formidable powers in Europe; it was Frederick the Great.”