which can hardly have received ever been committed, and as though we were dealing with loyal, honourable, God-fearing men. the approval of Mr Thomas, the eminent Privy Councillor, upon whom the University of Cambridge, to its shame be it said, has conferred a doctor's degree. It is to this effect: "If Soviet Russia intends to take action hostile to Poland on Polish territory, the British Government and its Allies will feel bound to help Poland with all means at their disposal." Will they? Lives there a man so simple, who believes that the British Government would ever be felt bound in any circumstances to help Poland or any one else? If it did, all the anarchists in our midst would set up a howl, would threaten to down tools, and would if they could bring the whole Empire to a premature end. But if, in the phrase dear to our demagogues, the contingency should arise, a orafty answer to a plain question delivered in the House of Commons would discard in an instant the whole burden of responsibility. At the same time, the commercial bargain goes on apace. Each party undertakes to refrain from propaganda, a one-sided arrangement surely, since England has never shown any desire to convert the Russians from or to any opinion, and since it is exceedingly unlikely that the fanatical Lenin regards it of any consequence to keep his pledged word. And so we are to exchange prisoners and promote commercial facilities as though no outrages had Now, all these things are possible only because we rejoice in a Coalition Government. But a Coalition Government should give as well as take, and the susceptibilities of either side should be respected. We can see in all the negotiations with Soviet Russia the influence of the extreme Socialists. We cannot detect in them the restraining effect of the Unionist Party. The supposed leader of the Unionists, Mr Bonar Law, must enjoy the closest confidence of his revered leader, Mr George. Does he dare to argue with him, or is he content to take the master's orders, like the rest of the Cabinet? And does he ever condescend to meet the party which he is said to lead, and upon whose allegiance he is supposed to depend? These are some of the doubts which we should like to see resolved. Our desire, we are sure, will not be gratified. Mr Bonar Law will go on answering questions, more or less inaudibly and rarely intelligibly, so long as Mr George keeps the office of Prime Minister. And it will be the fault of the Unionists themselves if they do not then find a representative leader who will more wisely guide the interests of England than any one of Mr George's colleagues has been able to guide them. Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. No. MCCLIX. SEPTEMBER 1920. VOL. CCVIII. AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL. BY CAPTAIN PETER WRIGHT, A WELL-KNOWN military writer and a combatant in the great war, Major Grasset, has lately made a collection of extracts from the two great works of Fooh, written more than twenty years ago, which are rather too voluminous for the ordinary reader, though even before the war ourious inquirers, without the least direct interest in military affairs, had been attracted by books which treat war from such a philosophical height. These short extracts, published by Major Grasset in book form, reveal the fiery disposition and calculating brain which Foch always points out as the mark of a military leader. But prefaced to these extracts is a short study of the life of Foch. Now this is of unusual interest, because Major Grasset, from the text itself, has evidently VOL, CCVIII.-NO. MCCLIX. obtained his information from the innermost oiroles of the French General Staff: some expressions, some phrases ring very like those of Fook himself: the resemblance can hardly be fortuitous. But if not from Fosh himself, then the information must come from the small group of officers who have always been immediately next to him while he was in any position of high command, for there are some faets, and especially some dates, which ean only be known to this group. And as some of this information is new, and throws a new light on some of the great events in which our armies took part, and especially the battle of St Quentin, it is of the highest interest. Having been at the Supreme War Council during the winter 1917-1918 as assist T ant secretary, I can tell at first hand and with numerical precision the events of that period which he relates at secondhand and vaguely. The world knows Foch only at the height of his achievement, when he drove the Germans before him and would have destroyed them altogether had not his final and fatal blow been stopped by the armistice; it knows him at the moment of success, when his position was at its highest, but it knows little of him in adversity when he himself was at his greatest. This preface of Major Grasset's book tells us something, but not enough, of those earlier battles in which he rose, between 4th August and 4th October 1914, from the command of a corps to the command of an army group, and that the most important, and found himself, in the third month of the war, commanding the generals who had commanded him during the first month. During this first period of the war he was far greater than in the last, when the eyes of all the world were fixed on him, when he took all the tricks, but held all the cards. During the first period he held no cards at all, but won all the same. Then, as later, the words of the greatest of ancient historians, used by him of the man he admired most, are applicable to Foch. "He gave proof of a power of penetration that was natural, wonderful, and infallible. When any crisis arose, however little he expected it, and without any examination, a view of the situation, far superior to that of any one else, sprang from him at once, and he predicted the subsequent course of events with no less certainty. His exposition of his own plans was most lucid: his criticism of other men's schemes consummate: and however incalculable the result might seem, he always knew what would succeed and what would not. In a word, uniting the deepest intellectual grasp with a lightning rapidity of decision, he was the model man of action.” Major Grasset gives us only a slight sketch of his earlier feats. At the Trouée de Charmes in Lorraine, August 24, 1914, he and Dubail defended the line of the Meurthe against odds at least ten times as great. On the last day of August he was put at the head of the 9th Army by Marshal Joffre. This army was to hold the French centre in the first battle of the Marne, and it was against the centre that the main shock of the Germans was to be expected. Foch had 70,000 men: Von Bulow and Von Hausen, whe attacked him (or rather, who faced him, for he attacked them at once as soon as they came within his reach on September 6), had 300,000 men. Thus the plan of the battle hung on whether Foch could hold these odds, while Maunoury and Lord French enveloped the German right: if the Germans could have rolled him over and out the North-Western army group. He left Chalons at ten o'clock in the night. Between four and six o'clock next morning he had given their instructions to his army commanders, and at nine o'clock was directing the furious battle raging round Lens. As we know now, since M. Poincaré made his speech on Fooh's admission to the Academy, it was his view, single and alone among those of the Allied commanders, that the British, few in number and battle-worn as they were, could still hold Ypres, that gave our troops the chance of winning the first battle of Ypres, the crowning victory of 1914, the glorious year of the war for both the Allies. This was the Fooh of 1914. long allied line from Verdun to Paris in two, they would not have been even endangered by this enveloping movement, for they would have destroyed most of the French armies. So the whole plan of the Marne hung on Foch. It was a speculation by Joffre that his lieutenant could win the odds of more than four to one. "Viotery resides in will," writes Fooh. "A battle won is a battle in which one has not admitted oneself defeated." Von Bulow's official report has been published, and we know that, for all his material superiority, he was a beaten man before the battle began. Twenty years before his spiritually superior adversary, then Colonel Foch, had written "Vietory always comes to those who merit it by their greater strength of will and intelligence." Foch had only one week between the 1st and 7th of September to inspire the ninth army, largely composed of defeated and retreating troops, with his determination in that desperate struggle. Almost at once he was given something still more difficult to do. In the beginning of October the fall of Antwerp, the fortress which protected the whole of the Allies' left flank, was suddenly seen to be imminent, and another catastrophe impending. Joffre immediately turned to Fooh. Late at night on October 4, Fooh, who was at Chalons, was told over the telephone that he had been appointed commander of the But subsequent years of the war are far less creditable to the Allies than 1914, for never again during the remaining four years, except for a few weeks in 1918, were the Central Powers to be superior on the Western European front, and that superiority not only short but slight: and daring that period in 1918 the Germans very nearly won the war. The Entente were brought to the edge of defeat by disregarding the advice of Foch, and again saved by him. We can never justly allot the merit of winning the war, or learn the errors that prevented us gaining it far earlier, or profit by the lessons of the struggle, unless we make the effort to discard our vanity and understand the truth. For struggle there will be again in the future, if not in the im mediate present; the evil of war is too inherent to be extirpated by the new, fashionable, but delusive ideas with which some hope to cut it out. For a period that can almost be called of years the British and French were at least 7 to 4 to the Germans in men on the Western front, and almost double in material: in January 1917 the Allies had 178 divisions on the French front to the German 127, which, allowing for the smaller size of the German division, gives more than the proportion mentioned. The dissolution of the Russian army, which began after the Revolution, went on rapidly during 1917: in January 1918 the two Russian groups of armies facing the Central Powers, which had before the Revolution consisted of six armies that is, 74 infantry divisions, huge Russian divisions, and 18 cavalry divisions -had sunk to 325,000 men as a total, and of these the French Military Mission calculated only 35,000 men were in the fighting line; at one railroad point during the winter 10,000 deserters had been counted daily going home; and this collapse left the Roumanian army with a fighting strength of 18 infantry and 2 cavalry divisions exposed, unprotected, and helpless, and eventually driven to submission, the same army which after the defeat of 1916 had sufficiently recovered themselves to infliot a severe defeat on the Germans in 1917. So towards the end of 1917 both Russia and Roumania could be taken as out of it. The new ally, America, had hardly begun to come in: in December 1917 there were only 3 American divisions in France, each of them being, however, two or three times as big as a German division. But in the interval between the exit of Russia, an empire of more than 160 million people, and the entrance of America, a country of more than 100 million, the Allies were compelled to carry on the war with diminished forces. This question therefore put itself to their statesmen, whether or not they could get through this difficult interval. The Germans might be strong enough to snatch a victory during this period of our weakness, in which case it was the duty of our statesmen to make peace while still undefeated; or, on the contrary, we might be able to resist them till the weight of the Americans inolined the balance in their favour, in which ease it was their duty to resist till that moment. The course to be steered towards the end of 1917 depended upon obtaining as accurate a calculation as possible of the enemy's forces, and of their own, leaving out of account Russia and America. To the making of this calculation a War Cabinet Committee applied itself, concentrating all the figures obtainable by the information branches of all the Allies. This Committee on Man Power, whose conclusions were to decide whether the Allies should submit, compromise, or fight, reckoned these |