In 1792 Prussia measured her military skill and her masses of trained men against France’s disorganization—­and overlooked “The Marseillaise.”

In 1914 she weighed her might against what she knew of the might of France—­and omitted to weigh certain spiritual differences which she could not comprehend, but which she felt at the first battle of the Marne, has been feeling ever since, and before which she had to retire, beaten but still blind.

In 1918 she estimated the probable force of those “raw recruits” whom we were sending overseas—­and laughed.  She based her calculations on our lack of military tradition, our hastily trained officers, our “soft,” ease-loving men uneducated in those ideals of blood and iron wherein she has reared her youth always.  She overlooked that spiritual force which the “new era” develops and which made our men so responsive to the command of Foch at Chateau Thierry and later.

“The immensity of a fresh horizon” whereon Goethe saw the new era dawning, is still veiled from the vision of his countrymen.  But across its roseate reaches unending columns of marching men passed, under the leadership of Ferdinand Foch, to liberate the captives the blind brute has made and to strike down the strongholds of “old Europe” forever.

For nearly six years Foch taught such principles as these and others which I shall recall in connection with great events which they made possible later on.

Then came the anti-clerical wave in French politics, and on its crest a new commandant to the School of War—­a man elevated by the anti-clericals and eager to keep his elevation by pleasing those who put him there.

Foch adheres devoutly to the religious practices in which he was reared, and one of his brothers belongs to the Jesuit order.

These conditions made his continuance at the school under its new head impossible.  Whether he resigned because he realized this, or was superseded, I do not know.  But he left his post and went as lieutenant-colonel to the Twenty-ninth artillery, at Laon.

He was there two years and undoubtedly made a thorough study of the country round Laon—­which was for more than four years to be the key to the German tenure in that part of France.

Ferdinand Foch, with his brilliant knowledge and high ideals of soldiering, was now past fifty and not yet a colonel.

Strong though his spirit was, sustained by faith in God and rewarded by those “secret satisfactions” which come to the man who loves his work and is conscious of having given it his best, he must have had hours, days, when he drank deep of the cup of bitterness.  There are, though, bitters that shrivel and bitters that tone and invigorate.  Or perhaps they are the same and the difference is in us.

At any rate, Foch was not poisoned at the cup of disappointment.

And when the armies under his command encircled the great rock whereon Laon is perched high above the surrounding plains I hope Foch was with them—­in memory of the days when he was “dumped” there, so to speak, far away from his sphere of influence at the School of War.