Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-02-09
Continued From First Page)

one went 10 early mass In the LWln-
lowered Church of st. Clotilde, a Ave-
minute walk from the Foch home, in
the Rue de Grenelle, and only two min
utes more from the Office, one might
have seen the two soldiers, inconspicu-
GUS in civilian clothes, kneeling together
in prayer.
Often in the evenings Weygand sat at
the Foch family table with his COM
mander and Nine. la Marechale. He
was. the old marshal used to say, their
spiritual son."
In 1923 the government again sent
Weygand away from his Paris office,
probably on Foch's recommendation, to
carry out difficult mission beyond the
frontier. Raymond Poincare, then
prime minister, had sent French troops
TO occupy the Ruhr and a wider slice
of the Rhineland on February /. France
had despaired of ever collecting repara-
tions due from Germany without a show
of punitive force. The Germans met the
invasion with passive resistance. The
intricate railway and canal systems of
the great coal and steel region around
Dusseldorf and Essen were soon chaos
of tied-up trains and unmoving bargeS.
Chimneys ceased to smoke there in the
factory-filled valley of the Ruhr, and
oftentimes freight that was marked for
transit to France somehow found its
way northWard into Prussia. Weygand
was given the difficult task OF straight
ening out the tangle.
He had been in the Ruhr only few
weeks when the government appointed
him high commissioner in Syria, from
which post the one-armed Gen. Gou-
raud was retiring. Gouraud had gone to
Syria in 1920, when the French &C.
cepted a mandate over that territory
from the League Of Nations.
Brewing of Trouble.
At the time of Weygand's appoint
ment trouble was brewing in that fire.
uuently turbulent part of the world. The
Turks, while Ismet Pasha bargained
with the allies at Lausanne, were con-
centrating Ottoman troops on the
Syrian frontier and near the British
holdings in MeSopotamia. France
warned the Turks, both at Lausanne
and at Constantinople, that she looked
upon the troop concentrations with an
unfavorable and suspicious eye. AS a
bluff, perhaps, Poincare let it be known
that he had informed the British that
France was sending 10000 additional
soldiers to Syria.
On May 4, while Curzon and the
French still argued with the Turks at
Lausanne, Weygand embarked upon
battleship at Toulon, and in a few days
reached Beirut Not an Ottoman SOL
der had stepped across the Syrian from
tier.
The Druses. who had rebelled more
than once against the French yoke,
gave Weygand an unexpected demon
Stration of sympathy. The Christians, OF
whom there are more than 100000 IN
the inundated territory, also welcomed
him. Weygand soon abolished Gouraud's
confederation of local states, and con-
solidated Aleppo, HONS, Damascus and
Hama into a unit for administrative
purposes. He continued Gouraud'S pro-
gram of road building across the entire
country; gave Damascus, the world
oldest CITY, its first experience with or
ganized street cleaning; revived religious
schools under direction of the Maronite
clergy and the Roman Catholics, and
healed a sore spot in French relations
with the Jebel Druses by pardoning the
imprisoned Sultan Pasha Al-Atrash on
condition that he abstain from in
trigue and support the administration.
The Druses of Lebanon and the
Hauran were their usual turbulent selves
during the Weygand regime. but no out
breaks of serious importance took place
while he ruled Syria.
He had been there little more than a
year when the Cartel des Gauches over
threw Poincare, and the Socialist
Edouard Herriot became prime min
lister. Along with trying to compel AL
sace-Lorraine to abandon support of
church schools out of public funds. Her
riot proceeded to WELD the ak against
many Catholics who held high positions.
Weygand was recalled from Syria and
the anti-clerical Gen. Serial sent there
to replace him.
Reading of Uprisings.
During the next Summer, sitting in
his Office next to Foch, Weygand was
able to read almost every day of up
France lost hundreds OF men and suf-
fered thousands of casualties.
Weygand showed promise of becoming
flrst-rate military man from his early
student days at st. Cyr, the West Point
of France. He was born in Brussels in
January, 1867. and was commissioned
sublieutenant in the l4th Dragons of
the French Army at the age of 20. He
had done so well at st. Cyr that he was
appointed, with few others, for post
graduate work. This class is popularity
called "the school of marshals"
Later, Weygand was made an instruc-
tor and then chief instructor in the
military school at Saumur. When the
Great War began he was a lieutenant
colonel Of cavalry. BY 1917 he had be-
come a brigadier general, then a brevet
major general. The armistice found his
epaulets adorned with the insignia of
a lieutenant general. During the peace
conference he was military adviser to
Poincare, at that time President of the
republic.
The lucidity of Weygand's thoughts,
the workings of his logical mind, the
civilian population have been able to
appreciate to some extent through his
occasional writings. Last year he pub
lished biography of Turenne which
was regarded by the Partisan press as
capital item of front page news. OF
Foch he so far has written but little
principally an article which appeared
III La Revue des Deux MondeS" few
months after the marShals death.
What Foch thought of his right-hand
man and spiritual son." the old mar
shall epitomized one day on his sick
bed not long before he died, when Wey-
gand stood there beside him with one
of the doctors.
"Weygand." said the old marshal,
you are not only a great general, not
only great commander of an army
or group of armies, but you are a great
leader, born leader"
Other than the doctors, the nurses
and the members of the marshals fam
ily Weygand was the only one ad-
mitted to the marshals bed room from
January Ia, when his illness was first
judged to be serious. until his death in
the third week of March.
Mourned by ThrOngs.
The day after Foch died Weygand
ushered into the death chamber a pro-
cession of distinguished men, who ar
rived one after another at the door
step, while a crowd of thousands of
more ordinary mortals stood silently in
the street or stepped just inside the
gate to add their signatures to the long