The Cordova daily times., 1916-07-06

tcrowded on roller. Any portlon or the front in all it's details may be referred to in a moment. In the cen ter of the room desk; and against the wall a table with more maps and drawings, and some of those strange photographs from aeroplanes of gray ish lines of trench systems in a dusky field of shell and mine craters which make on think of the dead world of the moon. Out of doors a field of daisies, birds singing, a typical sunny day in northern France.
 The man and his method are as quiet as the room. With a battle front which remains in the same place month after month the routine of his work has become almost as set as his habitation and not unlike that of the autocrat of some great business or ganization. The regular staff off cers are in a town not far away. Su- bordinate chiefs of the different army branches, be 1t operations, intelli- gence, ordnance or supply, come to him in succession at hours set during the morning to make their reports an dreceive their instructions. They do most of the talking; and they have learned how rot to do more than ne cessary. He listens, decides.
 Like General Joffre. he sleeps long hours. A rested mind is a clear mind for great responsibilities. Like von Hindenburg, he never reads fiction. When reading his not to do with his profession, 1t is of serious books and monthiies and quarterlies. Even dur ing the battle of Ypres, when it was touch and go with disaster, he slept as soundly as Joffre during the bat tie of the Marne At crisis of the retreat from Mons he remarked as quietly as if he were giving a direc- tion to an aide: We shall have to hold on here for a while If we all die for it." There is never any fustion about these modern scientific soldier organizers. Again. during the retreat when certain general became some Gfr O1n him by the arm and walked up and down with him in silence till he was over his fit of nerves on that terrible August day. Those who work with him know that his sign of anger is prolonged silence of a telling kind. He has a temper, but does not let it get past his lips, they say. He has, too, keen sense of humor, with Scotch flavor.
 The impression he leaves on call CT is that of a leader without illusions; a soldier who sees with a soldiers logic: who Is not afraid to be patient.
 "In our Civil war;" he said, "it was case of raising armies of untrained men to fight armies of untrained men, while with us the small nucleus of regular officers who survived the re- treat had to train even larger forces to meet a military machine which had had forty years of preparation. Not only man to man, but in organization must we make ourselves superior to our powerful enemy. The training of battalions and the manufacture of guns in England and their transfer to France represented only the first stage of real preparation for our task. Here they must be organized into di- visions, corps, and armies under the actual conditions of warfare before they could become worthily effective as a whole in any dicisive effort against foe whose staff training, re- inforced by experience III the neId' must remain excellent, however eX- hausted he becomes. Every day he grows weaker and we grow stronger Owing to the indomitable spirit of our officers and men in learning we are accomplishing what seemed the i'm possible to many soldiers at the out set of the war Our cause gives us strength; for we are fighting for civi- lization. Those who have looked to us for victory will have their patience rewarded"
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