the plans and purposes of the Generalissimo and the
government.

Wherever General Foch goes, one finds him creating harmony and, through
harmony, doubling everyone's strength.

He "gets on" with everybody, but not in the way that sort of thing is
too generally done--not by methods which have come to be called
diplomatic and which involve a great deal of surface affability, of
wordy beating about the bush and concealing one's real purposes from
persons who see his hand and wonder if they are bluffing him about
theirs.

Foch has no stomach for this sort of thing. His whole bent is toward
discovering the right thing to do and then making it so plain to others
that it is the right thing that they adopt it gladly and cooperate in
it with ardor.

In council he is still the great teacher striving always not merely to
make his principles remembered, but to have them shared.

The eminent French painter, Lucien Jonas, who has served in Artois, at
Verdun, on the Somme and in Italy, and has been appointed painter of
the Army Museum at Des Invalides, was commissioned to make a picture of
General Foch holding an allies' council of war at Versailles.

It was, of course, impossible for Jonas to be actually present at a
council meeting. But it was arranged that he should sit outside a
glass door through which he could see all, but hear nothing.

"General Foch," he tells us, "held his auditors in a sort of
fascination. One felt that in his explanations there was not a flaw,
not a hesitancy. All seemed clear, plain, irresistible."

This power was his in great degree in the years before the war. But
now men who listen to him know that his perceptions are not merely
logical--they are workable. His performances prove the worth of his
theories.

On March 21, 1918, Ludendorff launched his great offensive against the
British army. The line bent; it cracked. Amiens seemed doomed; the
British in France were threatened with severance from their
allies--with envelopment!

After four days of onrushing disaster a conference was called to meet
at Doullens--a conference of representatives of the allied governments.
Something must be done to coordinate the various "fronts," to put them
under a supreme command.

Foch was hastily empowered to order whatever he deemed advisable to
prevent the separation of the English and French armies. It is
apparent that the wide powers thus hurriedly given to him were bestowed
with the approval o