“The German high command,” he said later, at Treves, “was not ignorant of the fact that it faced a colossal disaster.  When it surrendered, everything was prepared for an offensive in which it would infallibly have succumbed.  The Germans were lost.  They capitulated.  That is the whole story.”

The German plenipotentiaries arrived at the French front at nine o’clock on the evening of November 7, and were escorted to the Chateau Francfort to spend the night.  The next morning they were taken to Rethondes in the forest of Compiegne.  There Foch (whose headquarters were at Semis, twenty-two miles nearer Paris) awaited them in his special train.

I may be quite wrong about his reason for receiving the German envoys in a railway carriage.  But my surmise about it is that he did not want any fixed place associated with Germany’s humiliation until those empowered to act for the defunct empire of William I came to the Gallery of Mirrors at Versailles and there, where the German empire had been proclaimed, witnessed the formal degradation before the representatives of all civilization of their nation that was built on the principle that Might is Right.

Next to this in poetic justice would have been to summon those plenipotentiaries before him at Senlis where their troops had committed such insensate horrors in September, 1914.  But for reasons of his own (which we may be sure had nothing to do with courtesy) Foch went part way to meet them.

They complained, afterwards, that he received them coldly.  If he was able to keep his manner cold, it was only because his self-command is so great.  For no other man in the world knows so well as he the extent and the enormity of the crimes those men and their masters and their minions are guilty of.  A primitive man, or any undisciplined modern man, would have leaped at their throats.  Instead, Foch treated them as if they were human though not humane beings, and read to them slowly and in a loud voice, the terms of the armistice for which they had asked.

Mathias Erzberger, their spokesman, requested a cessation of hostilities whilst a courier carried the terms to German General Headquarters at Spa.

There the Kaiser, Hindenburg and others awaited particulars.

Foch declined to cease hostilities.  He knew his enemy too well.

As soon as the Kaiser learned what the terms were, he abdicated his throne and fled his country.  When the courier had returned, and the German plenipotentiaries once more presented themselves before Foch (again in his car) the “War Lord” of all the world was cowering in a Holland hiding place, his blubbering heir was in another, and a Social Republic had been declared in Berlin.

How the Hohenzollerns knew the terms of the armistice full twenty-four hours before the courier’s return to German Headquarters at Spa, I have not seen explained or heard any one conjecture.