also what their gain would mean to the Germans.
He understood the effect of retreat upon the morale of his men. And he
must have been aware of the panic his order would create throughout the
yet-uninvaded parts of France where no one could know at what point the
invasion would be checked. He knew that the nation's faith in him
would be severely shaken, and that even his army's faith in him would
be put to a supreme test.

But when a man trains himself to be a commander of men, he trains
himself to go through, heroically and at any cost, what he believes
must be done. To sacrifice one's self comes comparatively easy--given
compelling circumstances and an obedient soul. But to sacrifice others
never becomes easy to a man who respects the rights of others. And we
shall never begin to comprehend men like Joffre and Foch until we shake
ourselves free from any notion we may have that military expediency
makes it easy for them to order great mental and physical suffering.

General Foch detached himself, on August 29, from his beloved Twentieth
corps and betook himself to the little village of Machault, about
twenty miles northeast of Chalons-sur-Marne, where he found assembled
for his command an army made up of units from other armies. They were
all more or less strange to one another and to him.

There was the Ninth army corps, from Tours, made up of Angevins (men
such as Foch had learned to know when he was at Saumur) and Vendeans
(the Bretons' south neighbors). Some of these men had been fighting
without respite for nine days as they fell back, with the Fourth army,
from the Belgian border. With them, since August 22, had been the
remarkable Moroccan division under General Humbert.

Then there was the Eleventh corps of Bretons and Vendeans, which had
been through the same terrible retreat.

And--not to enumerate too far--there was that Forty-second division of
infantry which was destined to play one of the most dramatic,
thrilling, forever-memorable parts in all warfare. It had been in the
Ardennes, and had fallen back, fighting fiercely as it came.

To help him command these weary men whose hearts were heavy with
forebodings for France, Foch had, as he himself has said, "a general
staff of five or six officers, gathered in haste to start with, little
or no working material, our note books and a few maps."

"Those who lived through these tragic hours near him," says Rene Puaux,
"recall the chief questioning