front.

And on September 14, Joffre, instead of celebrating the victory on the
Marne, was deep in plans to forestall an advance upon the Channel
ports, and began issuing orders for the transfer of his main fighting
bodies to the north.

All this, of course, had to be done so as to leave no vulnerable spot
in all that long battle line from Belfort to Calais.

Joffre had clearly foreseen the length of that line. He predicted it,
as we have seen, in 1912. Doubtless he had foreseen also that it would
be too long a line to direct from one viewpoint, from one general
headquarters. What he was too wise to try to foresee before the war
began was, which one of France's trained fighting men he would call to
his aid as his second in command. He waited, and watched, before
deciding that.

And late in the afternoon of October 4 he telegraphed to General Foch
at Chalons, telling him that he was appointed first in command under
the generalissimo, and asking him to leave at once for the north, there
to coordinate the French, English and Belgian forces that were opposing
the German march to the sea.

Five weeks previously Foch had been called to the vicinity of Chalons
to assemble an army just coming into existence. Now he was called to
leave Chalons and that army he had come to know--that army of which he
must have been so very, very proud--and go far away to another task of
unknown factors.

But in a few hours he had his affairs in order and was ready to leave.

It was ten o'clock that Sunday night when he got into his automobile to
be whirled from the Marne to the Somme.

At four in the morning he was at Breteuil, where General Castelnau had
the headquarters of his new army, created on September 20 and
designated to service on Manoury's left. General Castelnau had not yet
heard of the generalissimo's new order. He was sound asleep when the
big gray car came to a stop at the door of his headquarters after its
one-hundred-and-fifty-mile dash through silent towns and dark,
war-invested country.

Six weeks ago Foch had been his subordinate. Then they became equals
in command. Now the magnificent hero of Lorraine who, before the war,
had done so much on the Superior War Council to aid Joffre in
reorganizing the army, rose from his bed in the chill of a fall morning
not yet dawned, to greet his superior officer.

Some black coffee was heated for them, and for two hours they discussed
the problems of this new front--C