Omaha daily bee., 1918-11-20
Marshal FOch
FLOYD Gibbons in Chicago Tribune

Belgium won the war by delaying the herman
hordes on her borders.
Great Britain won the war by blocking the
road to the channel ports 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 conflict.
And after this has been said, it may be stated
with equal decsiveness that the war was won
by one man.
His name is Ferdinand Foch.
The man who outgeneraled and vanquished
the greatest military organization that ever had
been perfected in the history of war was born
in the Pyrenees at the little city OF Iarbes,
where his father held small political position.
Foch was born August 4, 1851.
He was born during 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 warlike 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 Rodes, and later
at Metz he received his early education by
which there was inculcated in him habits of
religious strictness. These influences of his in
characteristics which later distinguished the
man.
During that fateful year of 1871, Foch enter
ed the Ecole Polytechnique, where from the
start he manifested particular inclination to-
ward the precise studies. He readily applied
himself to logic and geometry, but at the same
time studied with avidity the fresh history of
the previous half century.
Al T.. l~J
his own theory of war. According to students
who knew him as a teacher, Foch would first
maintain that to estimate only material factors
in war was mistake. He held that war was
not an exact science, but terrifying and
passionate drama. He held that between know
ing and doing there was a great abyss which
could only be traversed if the start was made
from knowledge and not from ignorance.
At the outbreak of the war Foch was in COM
mand at Nancy. Located with his forces at
that strategic avenue of entrance between the
Vosges mountains and Luxembourg. he repre-
sented the best soldierly material that General
Joffre could station at this vital point.
The French commanders dependence on
Foch was justified in the first battle of the
Marine, when Foch, with his famous belief in
the drectness and decisiveness of an attack,
reported to his commander that with his left
being attacked and his right suffering severe
assault from the enemy, he was attacking with
all ne mad IN the center
That stroke won the first battle of the Marine.
The enemy's terrific offensive upon which was
based the German hope to conclude the war in
six weeks failed signally. Thus did the allies
receive the necessary breathing spell by which
they were able to withstand successive enemy
onslaughts until Americas weight arrived in
the fourth year of the war to turn the tide.
1t was in this year on March 20 that Foch
was placed in command of all of the armies of
the allies. This creation of the unified COM
mand came eight days after the launching of
the terrific German offensive in Picardy where
the enemy had succeeded in putting one entire
British army to rout. Foch was the answer.
That March 81 offensive of the enemy was a
success in view of territory gained and prison
ers and material captured, but for the allies it
unified control. From that time on all allied
effort received direction from one head.
On May II the Germans struck again. this
time on the Chemn DIES Danes, and with a
frightful expenditure of their reserves sue
ceeded in advancing their lines thirty miles
from the valley of the Aisne to the valley Of
the Marine. Foch threw in the Americans and
stopped the enemy advance on the north bank
of the river in the first days of June
On July 10 Foch was ready to strike with the
long delayed allied counter offensive. He
struck in the Nlllers-Cotteret forest The blow
was directed at the right flank of the German
salient To strike that blow Foch needed three
divisions of the hardest fighting soldiers he
could obtain. With the influx of the American
forces, the commander in chiefs armies num-
bered 100000 bayonets. Of all those veteran
troops Foch selected three divisions to strike
the blow on which the future of the world de-
pended. The first division he selected was a
French colonial division from Morocco. The
other two divisions were the First and the
Second United States regular army divisions.
History will undoubtedly date the turn in the
tide of the entire war from that minute of 4:35
on the morning of July IS when those two
American divisions and that one French div-
sion went over the top in the Villers-Cotteret
forest to execute the mastery plan of the allied
commander in chief. History will relate how
the German withdrawal started Immediately,
and history will not overlook the weeks that
followed in August and September, when Foch
began to take advantage of his successes, strik-
ing blow after blow all along the battle line
from Flanders to the Alps until at one time this
master of Hindenburg and Ludendorff was d.
rectng simultaneously seven battles on as many
different fronts
This was the type of man, small, wiry,
nervous, pious, who, on November 10, seated in
the small compartment of railroad train in the
rear of the French front, received, under flag
of truce, the emssaries of the foe.