the liaison officers who did not know
exactly where the different units were, punctuating his questions with:
'You don't know? Very well, then go and find out!'; putting together
in his head the mosaic of which there were still so many pieces
missing; gradually visioning a plan for bringing them together;
calculating his effectives; estimating approximately his reserves of
ammunition; discovering his bases of food supply."

And through all this stress he had the personal anguish of being unable
to get word of his only son, Germain Foch, or of his son-in-law,
Captain Becourt, both of whom had been fighting on the Belgian front.

"It was not, however," M. Puaux says, "the time for personal emotions.
The father effaced himself before the soldier. There was nothing to be
thought of save the country."

Thus we see Ferdinand Foch, on the eve of the first Battle of the Marne.

XIV

THE FIRST VICTORY AT THE MARNE

It was Saturday, August 29, 1914, when General Foch went to Machault to
take command of the various units he was to weld into the Ninth army.

On the Tuesday following (September 1) Joffre was quartered with his
general staff at the little old town of Bar-sur-Aube, fifty miles south
of Chalons, and he had then determined the limits to which he would
permit the retreat of his armies.

If a stand could be taken and an offensive launched further north than
the Aube River, it should be done; but in no event would the withdrawal
go beyond the Seine, the Aube and the region north of Bar-le-Duc.

He then placed his armies in the field in the relation in which he
deemed they would be most effective: the First army, under General
Dubail, was in the Vosges, and the Second army, under General
Castelnau, was round about Nancy; the Third army, under General
Sarrail, east and south of the Argonne in a kind of "elbow," joining
the Fourth army, under General de Langle de Cary; then the Ninth army,
under General Foch; then the Fifth army, under General Franchet
d'Esperey; then the little British army of three corps, under General
Sir John French; and then the new Sixth army, under General Manoury.

So Foch, on the third day of organizing his new command, received
orders--at once terrible and immensely flattering--that he was to
occupy the center of Joffre's battle line and to sustain the onslaught
of Von Buelow and the famous Prussian Guards.

In the morning of Saturday, September 5, all commanders received from
J