upied villages and looks the men over informally, inspects food or
equipment, makes a useful comment or two, drops a phrase that is worth
repeating, and leaves behind him enthusiasm and respect. The Paris
Figaro says that he has the gift of setting souls afire, of arousing
that elan in the French fighter which made that fighter perform military
miracles when the "sun of Austerlitz" was high. It has been declared by
a French writer that Foch knows the human element in the French Army
better than any other man living.

With all his knowledge of men, his power of inspiring them, Foch is
quiet, retiring, non-communicative, with no taste for meeting people in
social intercourse. His life has been monotonous--work and work and
work. He has the reputation of being a driver; he used to be
particularly severe on shirkers in the war college, and such, no matter
what their influence, had no chance of getting a diploma leading to an
attractive staff position when Foch was Director. When he was in command
at Nancy and elsewhere he used to work his staffs hard, and they had to
share much of the monotony of work which has been chiefly Foch's life.
He did not go in for society, merely making the formal calls required by
the etiquette of garrison towns on the chief garrison hostesses, and
giving dinners two or three times a year to his staff.

Foch, indeed, with his quiet ways and his hard work and his studying of
Napoleon and Caesar, was characterized by some of the officers of the
army as a pedant, a theorist, and these held that Foch had small chance
of doing anything important in such a practical realm as that of real
war.

Because of his Directorship of the Ecole de Guerre he was known to many
officers, but as far as France at large was concerned his name was
scarcely known at all last August. Yet officers knew him in other lands
besides his own. His two great books, "Principles of War" and "Conduct
of War," have been translated into English, German, and Italian, and are
highly regarded by military men. He has been ranked by the
Militaer-Wochenblatt, organ of the German General Staff, as one of the
few strategists of first class ability among the Allies.

Foch is a slim man, with a great deal of nervous energy in his actions,
being so quick and graceful in movement, indeed, that a recent English
observer declares he carries himself more like a man of 40 than one of
64. His gray blue eyes are particularly to be noticed, so keen a