GENERAL D'ESPERY.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 December 1918, Page 7

GENERAL D'ESPERY.

VICTOR OF VARDAB , HIS FIGHTING RECORD ',, General Franchet d'Esperey, Com-luander-m-Chief of the Allied armies in the Balkans, is a happy man. Fortune has never yet censed to smile on him (writes .Stephane Lauzanne, 'member of the French, High. Commission to the United States, and editor of Le Matin). At Charleroi, where the French and English were beaten, he was the only Allied General who won a victory. He! was then in command of the Ist Army Corps,, made up for the greater'part of men from Lille and, Flanders'. On 21st and 22nd August, wiiflo the Battle was raging, he was holding the bridges of the Meuse at no great distance from Namur, and it was only toward the evening of the' 23rd that his troops charged. The issue of the battle, however, was already decided, and several Allied corps, which had i" ; a bad start and were in an inferior position both a 9 to '. numbers and equipment, were forced back. It was left to General Franehet d'Esperey and to the Ist Army Corps to protect the right flank of. the-.Franco-.. British .Army, and ho achieved that formidable task with extraordinary dash. Attacking the Saxons, who were pressing closely upon him, he threw them into disorder and drove back to the Meuse an enemy division which had succeeded in crossing the river. So furious an attack, so valiant an attitude, were not to be withstood by the Saxons; they stood as if hypnotised, and during the night of the 23rd and all of the day of the -24 th allowed the entire FrenchJ forces to pass on unmolested, not darmg to interfere.

The enemy commander had to pay a heavy price for the brilliant work of the French General. Von Hausen, one of the'most famous Generals of the German Army, lost his command, and some few later was crossed.off the list' of that army, the following reason betas; given:-<-It was only on 23rd August that von Hausen's Saxon army crossed the Meuse, If better plans had been laid, the crossin;; of thp river could have taken place much; more quiokly, The delay was a contributory cause to the failure of the German Army in the beginning of September, and the German forces tparehIng towards Paris had to be grouped differently." (Kircheisen) On the other hand, the operation brought well-deserved promotion to General Franchet d'Esperey, sole victor of l:he Oharleroi engagements. Foch immediately entrusted him with the command >if an entire army—the Fifth —made up ,>f the, 18th, 3rd, Ist, and 10th Corps, and a cavalry corps. On the Marnc, where French and English were victorious, Franchet d'Esperey, still the favored of Fortune, was the first to win new laurels. He was holding the line to the north of Provins as far as Sezanne, between French and Fooit. As early as the morning of 6th September, when Joffre jravo his famous order to attack, he threw himself with extraordinary fusion the left wing of von Kluck'a army, And the right wing of von Bulow's army.' which were both facing him. He prised a wedge between the two armies, took ' Estornay at the point of the bayonet, threw into disorder everything' on his passage, and on the Sth entered Montmirail over a mountain of Gorman dead. On the morning of the Oth his aviation service signalled that Kluck and Bulow were retreating. From that time all he "had to do was to push forward. To him belongs the glory of having been the first to make a breach in the enemy Wall. And to him, among all the illustrious heroes of that immortal battle, la due the title of first victor. After this General Franchet d'Esperey reached the command of army groups only, that is, he occupied the same rank an men like Foch, Castlenau, Fayolle. His name is associated with all the great operations of the great war—Somme, Champagne, Aisiie, Finally, in June last, he received a new command, that of the armies of the Orient in the Balkans, and eight short weeks after he landed at Salonika he again covered his name with glory; and the victor of the Meuse, the victor of Montmirail, became the victor of Vardar. He is the first General to have gained a great victory in the Balkan theatre of the war, where eo much blood hfta been shed and where it almost seemed as though some evil genius refused to ailow the Allies a «ingle success. But the charm has been broken.

So much good fortune is certainly not the result of pure chance. General Franchet d'Esperey win 3 > victories because he dcesrves to win them- He has learned the secret of making the gods of war smile on him. He is a tremendous worker, and knows how to make others work It will doubtless be related some day how the battle that has just been won was fought on the hardest, the most difficult sector of the front —a sector where there are no roads, no depots of equipment, no heavy artillery; a sector said by tho Bjilearians to be impregnable—uo much so that they only maintained a handful of troops there- In these eight weeks General Franchet d'JEffpere.y has,had roads made, depots' installed., heavy artillery placed in position, and he has organised the system of eommuiiie'ations. On ,14th September, he, thj'eyjfiis Senogaliau and colonial battalions tft the assault of the mountains just is he had thrown his the assault of Montmirail; breach, and through.this Allied forces that, .for three";.^.ebT Sii been marking time pa the condemned to the' same • inaction-, '' j General only know how-to fail w^fceartli.Shit cannon; he aW knows, how.'itojdeal 'tfjtli men. He can make;hia-solders, do ajnyjthing. because ..he. knows sffk fc°v talk 'to them; he hfl3 the ready wpxjl','thaf, wins the heart of the trooper, an^lto-daj 1 it is heart; as miich las'; with rmisole that battles are won'.,. There/are few chiefs as popular as he is. His men love, him, and Jhe feeling is returned. Tor a long time he was a commanding officer in Algeria, that corner of Africa which has given such glorious names to the French Armv of to-day—Gouraud. Mangin. Lyautey, Degouttes—and which is at -the same time the cradle of the famous Foreign Legion. Finallv, to all this may be added that General Franchet d'Esperey is still voung. So Fortune is not through with him ° ret—there are other victories *Wd for him