ents; fiery, yet coldly
calculated attacks; vast strategic conceptions carried out by swift,
unfaltering tactics. Foch has a tendency to the impetuous, but he is
impetuous scientifically. He has, however, taken all in all, much more
of the dash and nervousness and warmth of the Southern Latin than has
Joffre--cool, cautious, taciturn Joffre. Yet both men are from the south
of France. They were born within a few miles of one another, within
three months of one another, Foch being born on Oct. 2, 1851, and Joffre
on Jan. 12, 1852.

Most writers who have dealt with Foch agree on this as one of his
paramount characteristics--the Napoleonic mode of military thought.
When Foch was director of the Ecole de Guerre, where he had much to do
with shaping the military views of many of the men who are now
commanding units of the French Armies, he was considered to be possessed
of almost an obsession on the subject of Napoleon. He studied Napoleon's
campaigns, and restudied them. He went back much further, however, in
his choice of a master, and gave intense application to the campaigns of
Caesar. Napoleon and Caesar--these were the minds from which the mind of
the Marne and Ypres has learned some of its lessons of success.

Here Foch invites comparison with another of the dominant figures of the
war--General French. For French is described by his biographer as "a
worshipper of Napoleon," regarding him as the world's greatest
strategist, and in following out and studying Napoleon's campaigns
French personally covered and studied much of the ground in Belgium over
which he has been fighting. French is a year younger than Foch. They are
old friends, as are French and Joffre, and Joffre and Foch.

The inclination of Foch to something of the Napoleonic is shown beyond
the realm of strategy and tactics. Foch is credited with knowing the
French soldier, his heart, his mind, his capabilities, and the method of
getting the most out of those capabilities, in a way reminiscent of the
winner of Jena. And Foch knows not only the privates, but the officers.
When he went to the front he visited each commander; the Colonels he
called by name; the corps commanders, without exception, had attended
his lectures at the Ecole de Guerre.

As for the men, Foch makes it his business to get into personal contact
with them, as Napoleon used to do. Foch does not hobnob with them, there
is no joking or familiarity, but he goes into the trenches and the
occ