NORTHERN LEADER.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 3978, 10 July 1915, Page 7

NORTHERN LEADER.

HO W FOCH PREPARED IN.PEA.CE:

FOR ACHIEVEMENTS i IN WARI

STRATEGY BRINGS REWARD

General Foch, the commander of. France’s northern armies, which. have been doing such brilliant work north of Arras and in the Labyrinth, is regarded even by Germans as a strategist of high capacity. NAPOLEON AS A MODEL..

General Foch, who is 03 years of age, blit possesses the litheness and the ability as a horseman of a man Of, 40, was born in Metz, and is of Basque family. His achievements in the l northern line in .January were but the prelude to the brilliant successes recorded later. Yet before war tested and found him true, he was snceied at as a “professor.” He read and read again the campaigns of Caesar and Napoleon, writing books on war and sleeping in luxurious chateaux •during manoeuvres. He taught strategy at the war academy for years, being rated there as a pedant, slightly fantastical, with an obsession om the subject of Napoleon. His active years were thought to be over, for no saw service in the campaign of IS< •>, and lu> has been troubled with rheumatism. Every 10 years or so foch would bring out a new ' volume on some technical aspect ot strategy Ins specialty. Ho does not seem to have given himself forth as a tactician, despite Ins minute study ol artillery. Foch went about the Crousot works for a Jong time in a workman’s blouse, for lie had been commissioned to make the official report on the gun that has since done so much to the Germans along the Marne and the Aisne. ECO NO AI Y PRACTISED. Foch seems to impress all stu louts of iiis character as nervous, nor to say impetuous, out of touch with all reality apart from army life,, and as typically southern Latin in tempera m n: Ho thinks much more of the essentially Gallic qualities than does t’ cool, careful Joffro. Foch will go in. for grand charges, tremendous surprises. daring strategical conceptions —what they know in France as the Napoleonic gesture. He thinks the French genius lends itself to this, and Napoleon thought so, too. Ho has lived very simply always, mostly as a professor at the Ernie do -Guerre and commander of a division, at home, j Lis people wore poor, and when lie was a student at the Polytechnic, one story runs, he lived on black bread. One of hi-; brothers was then in training for the priesthood. The parentsof General Foch were thrifty in the French sense, hut they found it difficult to educate their sons liberally. Ilis abstemious habits, acquired in youth and maintained over since, have kept Lim thin and robbed' him likewise of the ease and self-confidence displaced by his own subordinates. General d'Lrbal and General de Maud’liuy. The pair were Foc-lrs pupils when he taught strategy at the. war school, as was Grossetti, now commanding an army corps at the

front. They all acquired from him his peculiarly dramatic conception of war—to surprise the enemy by- strategy and secrecy, to operate rapidly and w ith suddenness. GENERAL STUDIES TITS MEN. General Foch is credited with knowing the human element in the French army bettor than any man living. When he taught at the war college, ambitious captains tried hard to get a diploma there, for the sake of a staff jxisition. Foch weeded out all shirkers remorselessly. His private life has always been somewhat dreary and monotonous, and it is alleged of him that he makes the laborious days of his staff dull and insipid. Foch lias always liver! very.much alone, and his face and manner show that.

General Focli appears greatly perturbed by the blaze of European publicity into which he has emerged, for unlike Jofl're, lie has no arts of manner and no adaptability to civilian standards. “Focli.’’ said Jotfre to a correspondent- of a London periodical, “is the greatest- strategist in Europe and the humblest.” To this the Paris “Figaro” adds that Focli has knowledge, energy, and experience. He sets souls afire as well as trenches. He. is a “temperament” as well as a “character.” No sooner had he appeared at- the front than every commander received a visit. Foeh cultivated no splendid isolation. He could call each colonel bv name.