pressions made upon them by their
professor of strategy and of general tactics. It was this course that
was looked forward to with the keenest curiosity as the foundational
instruction given by the school. It enjoyed the prestige given it by the
eminent authorities who had held it; and the eighty officers who came to
the school at each promotion, intensely desirous of developing their
skill and judgment, were always impatient to see and hear the man who was
to instruct them in these branches.

"Lieutenant-Colonel Foch did not disappoint their expectations. Thin,
elegant, of distinguished bearing, he at once struck the beholder with
his expression--full of energy, of calm, of rectitude.

"His forehead was high, his nose straight and prominent, his gray-blue
eyes looked one full in the face. He spoke without gestures, with an air
of authority and conviction; his voice serious, harsh, a little
monotonous; amplifying his phrases to press home in every possible way a
rigorous reasoning; provoking discussion; always appealing to the logic
of his hearers; sometimes difficult to follow, because his discourse was
so rich in ideas; but always holding attention by the penetration of his
surveys as well as by his tone of sincerity.

"The most profound and the most original of the professors at the school
of war, which at that time counted in its teaching corps many very
distinguished minds and brilliant lecturers: such Lieutenant-Colonel Foch
seemed to his students, all eager from the first to give themselves up to
the enjoyment of his lessons and the acceptance of his inspiration."

Colonel E. Requin of the French general staff, who has fought under Foch
in some of the latter's greatest engagements, says:

"Foch has been for forty years the incarnation of the French military
spirit." For forty years! That means ever since he left the cavalry
school at Saumur and went, as captain of the Tenth regiment of artillery,
to Rennes. "Through his teachings and his example," Colonel Requin goes
on to say, in a 1918 number of the _World's Work_, "he was the moral
director of the French general staff before becoming the supreme chief of
the allied armies. Upon each one of us he has imprinted his strong mark.
We owe to him in time of peace that unity of doctrine which was our
strength. Since the war we owe to him the highest lessons of
intellectual discipline and moral energy.

"As a professor he applied the method which consists