d thus for more than four years, sharing the
awfulness of his burden only with Almighty God, must needs have passed
to a spiritual plane whereon such self-considerations as still sway the
rest of us have ceased to obtrude themselves.

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