Saturday news. (Watertown, S.D.) 19??-19??, 1918-04-11
Greatest Strategist"
In Europe Now in
Supreme Command

0sSA SAAAS SVA1AAAAAA0
General Ferdinand Foch, command
er in chief of the armies of democ
racy. That may not be the exact title
the war cabinets of the allies con
fer upon this general of France, blu,
in the popular and broader eye this is
just the position one man has beer
called upon to fill.
Consider what this means:
General Foch is supreme command
er over the greatest force of mer
united in one cause that the world
has ever een His arm of authority
stretches from the bloody weller oil
the new Somnae battlefield to the
Pave lines in Italy; to the entrench
ments of the Franco-British troops
behind Saloniki; to the desert stained
fighters in the Holy Land and the
sands in the shodaw of the pyramids
He is a commander of command.
ers. Under his will are Haig, the
Scotch Englishman; Petain, the
Frenchman; Pershing, the American,
and Diaz, the Italian; their stats,
corps commanders, boards of strategy
and field captains. Wherever men
battle against the cruelty and the lust
of the Germans and their allied foe
men. there stretches the gloved hand
OF this single man, who is above all.
1t has taken nothing short of the
supreme moment of danger and agony
for the allies to lay aside their ma
uonal prejudices and petty jealousies
and unite in the selection of a single
head to guide their defensive arm. In
the throes of the worlds greatest bat
lie, responsibilities greater than any
man has ever borne are placed upon
the shoulders of one man.
E%urope's Greatest Strateaist.
Who is he?
First of all he is conceded-by all
but the Germans-to be Europe's most
skillful s~trategist, one of the military
geniuses of the war, His is the mas
ter mind which handles blocks of
hundreds of thousands of men as a
Jeweler lifts the cogs and cams of
his trade into the delicate machin-
cry of his watch.
To prove his title t this distinction
General Foch executed at the battle
of he Marine the great coup of Sept.
3. which drove a wedge between the
Prussian guard and the Saxon army
and forced the whole ponderous Ger
man machine to swing back from
threatened Paris and dig into the
chalk of France for three wears of
deadlock. His was the army of re-
serve which the victorious Germans
ignored or did not even guess to be in
existence. He timed his blow to fall
when the onrushing German wing was
almost within sight of Paris and there
was no withstanding it.
Again, at the first battle Of Ypres.
General Foch and his Tenth army ar.
rived at the critical moment when the
Hermans had almost cut through the
batting Relgians--and British and he
hurled the foe back across tho User.
Dunkirk and Calais were saved.
The strategy of Foch is nos the
b~ludgeoning hammer blow of a Won
Hindenburg, which sends regiments
and divisions and army corps TO feed
the French T5s. 1t has been proved.
rather, the swift, sure. telling stroke
delivered at the critical and
irresistible in It's force. There is
something of the Napoleonis in Cen
eral Fach's. plan of campaign.
Another Napoleon Feared.
Ferdinand Foch was born ON octo-
Der 2, 1881. near the birshplace ofI
General Joffre. Following the com.
pletion of his military education. ne
was assigned to various positions in
turn until the outbreak of the var
when his exploits in stopping the Ger
MAJ onrl,sha made his name a sound
ing n throughout France. Politicians
saddle He is a man on horseback
realizing the possibility Of General
Fnch's riding to a dictatorship after
the war.
But the exigeney Of the present war
snutdistances the petty powers of the
politicians and Foeh is firmly in the
saddle. III is a man ON horseback
for all the allied world.
Foch was one of the few high OH.
GERS Of the French army who was not
the least surprised by the war. In
fact, he had anticipated it Tor many
years and by talking and writing pre-
paredness he won the u~nenYiabie
abuse that General Leonard Wood had
70 face in this country four years
ago.
One feature of his work General
F0ch knows better than all the rest
he knows The soldier OF ErannaA I'd
in that his arstw1ile enemies pro-
fessed TO 10 q dangerous symptom.
Foch always has been on terms of
absolute felloWShin with the .~1niiu,,
known him from the boots up, what
he was capable of doing, just how far
his sturdy heart and hectic enthusi-
asm would carry him. Most of tho,
commanders who were at the front at
the beginning Of the war had d nm
der Foch's Instruction ait the Ecole de
Guerre and knew him intimately.
He Id said to- be q man who does
not invite ready Condolences not
particularly approachable unless he