“I think, gentlemen, that in doing me the honor of receiving me into your august body, your desire is to pay homage to that glorious French army which has proved that the soul of France is steadfast for the rights of man, even unto death that men may be free.”

Accepting the honor as paid through him to the men who had proved the worth of that Liberty, Equality and Fraternity the Revolution declared and decreed, Joffre asked permission to name those to whom, he deemed, the gratitude of France and of France’s Immortals was due.  And first among them he named Foch.

This was gracious; it was generous; but it was more than that.  And though Joffre went on to name many leaders, many armies, many moral forces incarnate in many men as co-responsible for victory, no one could know quite so well as he how completely the France of which Renan dreamed as a glorious possibility, is realized and typified in the man whose name leads all the rest as having saved not France only but the liberties of mankind.

Bonaparte, although he was not French (save technically) and not a democrat, captured the hearts of France in spite of all he cost them; because he aggrandized France, made her supreme in many things besides extent and power.  It is instinctive in every Frenchman (or woman, or child!) to revere anyone who does new credit to the name of France or brings new glory to it; for the passionate love of country is the primary religion of the French—­they may or may not have another, but unless they are totally renegade they have that faith, that devotion.

In Ferdinand Foch they have a great leader who is in no sense an “accident” (as Bonaparte was), a sporadic development in their midst, a spectacular growth on an exotic stem.  They have, rather, a quintessential Frenchman of to-day, even more widely representative of his countrymen than Lincoln was of ours.

“The fame of one man,” says Henri Bordeaux, “is nothing unless its represents the obscure deeds of the anonymous multitude.”

This is a typically modern idea, and typically French.  France of to-day would not deny the worth of any development because it was singular, isolate; but what she is particularly interested in is the possibilities of development along the lines that are followed by the many and are open (broadly speaking) to all.  Guynemer, for a shining instance, is the idol of every schoolchild in France, not for his daring alone, nor for the number of boche birds of prey he brought down; but because wealth and influence were unavailing to get him an opportunity beyond what the poorest, humblest youngster might have got in the same indomitable way; and because frail health and puny strength could not debar him from the sublimest exploits of daring for France.  His circumstance—­physical and material—­tended to bind him to the soft places of earth.  His desire to serve France gave him wings to fly far beyond the eagles.  He has no grave.  He rides the empyrean for all time, to tell the youth of France how surmountable is everything to one who loves his country and the rights of mankind.