General Foch, the Man of Ypres
An Account of France's New Master of War
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]
"Find out the weak point of your enemy and deliver your blow there,"
said the Commander of the Twentieth French Army Corps at Nancy at a
staff banquet in 1913.
"But suppose, General," said an artillery officer, "that the enemy has
no weak point?"
"If the enemy has no weak point," returned the commander, with a gleam
of the eye and an aggressive tilt of the chin, "make one."
The commander was Foch--Ferdinand Foch--who has suddenly flashed before
the world as the greatest leader in the French Army after Joffre, and
who in that remark at Nancy gave the index to the basic quality of his
character as a General. General Foch is today in command of the northern
armies of France, besides being the chief Lieutenant and confidant of
Joffre. Joffre conceives; Foch, master tactician, executes. He finds the
weak point; if there is no weak point, he creates or seeks to create
one.
When King George of England was at the front in France recently he
conferred the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath--the highest military
distinction in the form of an order within the gift of the British
Crown--on two Frenchmen.
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