Foch
FERDINAND, French general and supreme commander of the Allied forces operating against the Germans on the western front, in Belgium and France during the World War. was born in Tarbes, 1851, the son of a minor departmental official under Napoleon III. Together with his two brothers he was educated in a local college, where he especially distinguished himself in geometry and the higher mathematics.
Already at a very early age he was preparing himself for an army career. Leaving college, he entered the Ecole Polytechnique, from which he graduated as an artilleryman. When the Franco- Prussian War broke out he was only nineteen, but served as a second lieutenant with the army against the Prussians. At the age of twenty-six, when a captain of artillery, he was appointed instructor in strategy and general tactics at the École de Guerre. Here he remained for five years, during which he established his reputation as little less than a genius as a teacher, a reputation which had spread so far and high that several years later, when he had reached the rank of brigadier-general, Clemenceau, who was then Premier, had him sent back to the École de Guerre as a director.
It was not so much his ability to impart information to the students that distinguished the teaching career of General Foch, but rather the spirit with which he permeated the whole institution. He was the very reverse of a dry tactician. He taught rather the art of war than its science; or, rather, he emphasized the human side of it. War, as he taught its principles, was not only a study of explosives and engineering, but the capacity to understand the psychology of the human brain under stress of the excitement of actual military oper- FOCH ations. In his courses intuition played quite as important a part as mathematics. Briefly, he considered morale the most important element in successful warfare. How to inspire this, he taught quite as much by personal demonstration as by precept. This feature of his mode of instruction was more evident in his personal teaching than in his two books, "The Principles of War" and "The Conduct of War," both of which works have been translated into practically all European languages. When the Germans invaded France, in August, 1914, thus beginning the five years' military operations on the western MARSHAL FERDINAND FOCH front, General Foch was in command of the Ninth Army. His remarkable achieve ments following, which gradually brought him to the highest rank on the side of the Allied forces, are historical, rather than biographical. His masterful defeat of the Germans under General von Bülow, on Sept. 8, 1914, known as "The Affair of the Marshes of St. Gond," wherein the Allies registered the first check to the oncoming invaders, was but the beginning of a series of such achievements.
In May, 1917, General Foch succeeded General Pétain as Chief of Staff of the French Army. On March 28, 1918, it was announced that the Allies had finally agreed to amalgamate their forces on the FOCUS western front under a single command, with General Foch as supreme director of operations. Henceforward, the coordination of the Allies equalled that of the Germans, and the defeat of the latter was assured. In the following October Marshal Foch, who still remembered vividly the experiences of the French during the Franco-Prussian War, had the supreme honor of receiving the Gerduring the Franco-Prussian War, had the supreme honor of receiving the German delegation which brought the sur- render of the Central Empires into his hands.