LAST ATTACK

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 931, 26 March 1930, Page 9

LAST ATTACK

‘Tiger” As sails Foch and Pershing BITTER FINAL BOOK A violent attack on Marshal FerdinI md Foch, whom he accuses of insubordination, and bitter reproaches directed at General John J.. Pershing for not throwing American troops into the front lines when the French forces were hard pressed, are features of the last book written by Georges Clemenceau, France's “Father of Victory,” before he died. “Grandeur et Miseres d’une Victoire” (The Grandeurs and Miseries of a Victory) is the title of the work by the war-Ume Premier, published in Paris by “La Nacion.” Spares Few War Leaders It i 3 a dramatic book. Few war leaders are spared by the “Tiger’s” bitter pen. Clemenceau shows the impossibility of reconciling the late President Woodrow Wilson’s idealism with the realities of war-torn Europe. Wilson is held up for admiration as a “visionary,” but criticised for his political inexperience. The final message of the man -who led the French to victory is sad and sceptical, like liis own closing years. He warns the world that “to the sound of the Geneva guitar new upheavals are germinating.” The “Tiger” devotes an entire chapter to relating his efforts to induce Pershing to put all available American soldiers into the field when the Allied armies w§re being decimated by the German offensive. He says that slow organisation of the American forces cost much French blood, but that Pershing refused to sacr.'fice his raw regiments and risk a repetition of early British disasters. He insists that Foch failed to make the most of his position as generalissimo of the Allied armies, and declares that at one t : me his own (Clemenceau’s) protection saved the great Marshal from the disgrace demanded by the French Parliament. Viviani Assailed Kene Viviani, French Premier at the outbreak of the war, is assailed for ordering French troops to retire six miles from the frontier directly there was danger of war. Fierce attacks on Raymond Poincare recur all through the book, the closing chapters laying bare the constant disagreements between the Tiger and the Lion o? Lorraine, when the former was Premier and the latter President of the French Republic. Clemenceau bitterly upbraids successive French post-war governments • for whittling down the conditions of j the treaty of Versailles. In his I opinion, Germany is now strong again j and arrogant. One chapter is a dia- ' tribe against German captains of in- j dustry, German aristocracy, philoso- ; phers and savants. The final chapter j confesses the writer’s complete disillusionment and his grief at dying with j fear in his heart of a new war. Nor did the famous statesman of ; France avoid criticism of other influences in the war. His scathing pen has rasped through the records of other leaders of the allies. He decided, apparently, as did Boulanger, to call a spade, not a spade, but a name of a name of a shove!.