ALLIED LEADERS (11) General Georges

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 31, 26 January 1940, Page 2

ALLIED LEADERS (11) General Georges

HE man who has command of the Allied armies in the field is General Georges, France’s No. 2 soldier. His is the supreme responsibility for the defence of the French frontier. Even the British generals are at his service. General Georges has never been to England, and is little known outside Army circles in France. Photographs of ---

him are rare; so are personal stories, for he fights the publicity he cannot escape. In October, 1934, he was sitting with King Alexander of Yugoslavia when the King was assassinated at Marseilles. General Georges received four bullets in his chest and arm and nearly bled to death, but to-day, at the age of 64, he is one of the most important men in France. Regarded as one of the greatest military strategists in the world, General Georges was trained at St. Cyr, the Sandhurst of France. Except for two years at the Ecole de Guerre, he was on active service in Algeria and Morocco until the Great War broke out. In 1914 he commanded a battery of artillery and had a finger shot off. Then he joined the French General Staff with Marshal Foch and went to the Near East for two years. And there, in Macedonia, he saw a British soldier for the first time. General Georges reconstructed the Serbian Army and restored its moral. While doing so he met King Alexander. After the Great War General Georges was with the French Army of Occupation in the Rhineland and collaborated in planning the Maginot Line. Later he joined Marshal Petain as his chief of staff in the Riff Campaign, and then commanded the French fforces_ in Morocco. :