ially in that of 1870.

And with this in mind he labored so that when Germany made her next
assault upon France, France might be equipped with hundreds of officers
cognizant of Germany's weakness and prepared to turn it to her defeat.

X

A COLONEL AT FIFTY

"It was not," Napoleon wrote, "the Roman legions which conquered Gaul,
but Caesar. It was not the Carthaginian soldiers who made Rome
tremble, but Hannibal. It was not the Macedonian phalanx which
penetrated India, but Alexander. It was not the French army which
reached the Weser and the Inn, but Turenne. It was not the Prussian
soldiers who defended their country for seven years against the three
most formidable powers in Europe; it was Frederick the Great."

And already it has been suggested that historians will write of this
war: "It was not the allied armies, struggling hopelessly for four
years, that finally drove the Germans across the Rhine, but Ferdinand
Foch."

But I am sure that Foch would not wish this said of him in the same
sense that Napoleon said it of earlier generals.

For Foch has a greater vision of generalship than was possible to any
commander of long ago.

His strategy is based upon a close study of theirs; for he says that
though the forms of making war evolve, the directing principles do not
change, and there is need for every officer to make analyses of
Xenophon and Caesar and Hannibal as close as those he makes of
Frederick and Napoleon.

But his conception of military leadership is permeated with the ideals
of democracy and justice for which he fights.

One of his great lectures to student-officers was that in which he made
them realize what, besides the route of the Prussians, happened at
Valmy in September, 1792.

On his big military map of that region (it is on the western edge of
the Argonne) Foch would show his students how the Prussians, Hessians
and some Austrian troops; under the Duke of Brunswick, crossed the
French frontier on August 19 and came swaggering toward Paris,
braggartly announcing their intentions of "celebrating" in Paris in
September.

Brunswick and his fellow generals were to banquet with the King of
Prussia at the Tuileries. And the soldiers were bent upon the cafes of
the Palais Royal.

Foch showed his classes how Dumouriez, who had been training his raw
troops of disorganized France at Valenciennes, dashed with them into
the Argonne to intercept Brunswick; how this and that happened w