The Belding banner-news. (Belding, Mich.) 1918-1973, 1918-12-11
F0SH, GENERAL
At HEAD OF ALL
THE ALLIED ARMIES
GAVE PROOF OF EFFICIENCY AT
FIRST BATTLE OF MARINE
WHEN GERMANS LOST.
(By Floyd Gibbons in the Chicago
Tribune \

(By Floyd Gibbons in the Chicago
Tribune.) \
Belgium won the war by delaying
the German hordes on her borders.
Great Britain won the war by
blocking the road to the channel
ports and by the strength of her navy.
France won the war by her heroic
sacrifices at Verdun and in the first
battle of the Marine.
The United States won the war by
producing the needed superiority of
fighting strength to turn the uneven
balance in the fourth year of the con-
flict.
And after this has been said, it
may be stated with equal decisiveness
that the war was won by one man.
His name is Ferdinand Foch.
The man who outgeneraled and van
pushed the greatest military organi-
zation that ever had been perfected
in the history of war was born in the
Pyrenees at the little city of Tarbes.
where his father held a small political
position. Foch was born August A,
1851.
He was born during a period of
great martial disturbances in Europe.
He was born in the freshest history
of the great Napoleonic wars and at
time when France was to undergo the
further conflicts in which the second
empire tried to approach the war-like
triumphs of the first.
In this atmosphere of battle, France
produced the boy who was destined to
save civilization in 1918. At Saint
Etienne, at Rodez, and later at Metz
he received his early education by
which there vas inculcated in him
habits of religious strictness These
influences CT his instructors were re-
ponsive for some of the Characters
tics which later distinguished the
man.
During the fateful year of 1871.
Foch entered the Eeore Polvtechniuue
where from the start he manifested a
particular inclination toward the pre-
else studies. He readily applied him
self to Iooic and geometry. but at the
same time studied with avidity the
fresh history Of the previous half CEN
turv.
With this foundation it was possible
for Foch to develop himself into the
recording genins he proved to be for
the stirring history of those DAYS
which beoan inst at the time when he
took IN the profession of arms. As
an artillery officer he received the
customary assignments to duty in
various garrisons, schools and bar
racks about France in and 1878 he
had gained the rank CT captain.
Six years later he returned as a
student to the French war school and
IL years after that found him with
the rank of major instructing the
future soldiers of France in military
history and theory as embodied in the
doctrines specified by the French gen.
eral staff
In 1901 he was returned to line
duty as a lieutenant colonel and suf-
fered as did manv other French Off
GERS, by reason of the affairs growing
out Of the Dreyfus case with which
Foch was Connected in no manner Il
was almost six years later that he
gained his much deserved rank of
brigadier general. After brief
time in command Of the artillery of
the Fifth French army corps at Or
leans he returned to the war school
as commandant.
Foch, as teacher and theorist, for
INFLATED his own theory of war. Ac-
cording to students who knew him as
a teacher. Foch would first maintain
that to estimate only material factors