The quest of personal glory is as hard to associate with Ferdinand Foch as with the little Maid of France.  Both fought for God and for France and for a Cause, as their Voices directed them; that he has one of the best brains of modern or of all times, and that she did “not know her A, B, C,” sets them not so far apart as the materialist might imagine; for the thing that made both invincible was the power of their faith to create an unconquerable ardor in themselves and in their men.  The churches in France wherein Foch knelt seeking guidance, beseeching strength, are likely to be doubly-consecrate, for ages, no less than those wherein Jeanne d’Arc prayed.  She is venerated not as a military leader (though she was that) but as the one who awakened the soul of mediaeval, much-partitioned France and made possible the nationalization of her country.  He will be venerated (by the great majority) not as “the first stategist of Europe,” but as the supreme incarnation of that spirit which makes modern France transcendent among nations vowed to democracy.

It is Foch’s “likeness” to the myriad soldiers of France that France adores—­not his difference from the rest.  Her poilu is her beau ideal of faith and courage, of patriotism and devotion to the principles of human rights, of cheerfulness and hopefulness, of invincibility in that his cause is just.  France is too essentially democratic to esteem one set of characteristics in the mass of men and another set in the leaders of men.  Foch and Joffre will live always in the hearts of their countrymen because, like Jeanne d’Arc, they have so much to say to everyone—­so much that illumines every path in life wherever it is laid.

On the 19th of December, 1918, Joffre took his seat among the Immortals of the French Academy.  The vacancy to which he had been elected was that made by the death of Jules Claretie who, before his admission to the Academy and before his absorption in the affairs of La Comedie Francaise, had written several books about the leaders of the French Revolution.

It was Ernest Renan who delivered the address of welcome to Claretie (in February, 1889) and he said that it was still too soon to know whether those leaders of whom Claretie had written were supremely justified or were not.

“You are young,” Renan said to the new Immortal, “and you will see this question solved, . . . some years hence it will be known; if in ten or twenty years France is prosperous and free, faithful to right, strong in the friendship of the free peoples of the world, then the cause of the young Revolutionists is won; the world will enjoy the fruits of their endeavor without having had to know their unripe bitterness.”

Joffre quoted this part of Renan’s address, in taking his seat.  Claretie had not lived quite long enough to see, save with the eye of faith, that day Renan foretold; but Claretie’s successor in the French Academy had seen it!  And it was like him to say: