d his
teaching and were imbued with it; and as they practically all, at the
beginning of the war, occupied high positions of command, one may
estimate as he can the profound and far reaching influence of this one
grand spirit."

Let us try to get some idea of the sort of thing that Foch taught those
hundreds of French army officers, not only about war but about life.

From all his study, he repeatedly declared, one dominant conviction has
evolved: Force that is not dominated by spirit is vain force.

Victory, in his belief, goes to those who merit it by the greatest
strength of will and intelligence.

It was his endeavor, always, to develop in the hundreds of officers who
were his students, that dual strength in which it seemed to him that
victory could only lie: moral and intellectual ability to perceive what
ought to be done, and intellectual and moral ability to do it.

In his mind, it is impossible to be intelligent with the brain alone.
The Germans do not comprehend this, and therein, to Ferdinand Foch,
lies the key to all their failures.

He believes that each of us must think with our soul's aid--that is to
say, with our imagination, our emotions, our aspiration--and employ our
intelligence to direct our feeling.

And he asks this combination not from higher officers alone, but from
all their men down to the humblest in the ranks.

He believes in the invincibility of men fighting for a principle dearer
to them than life--but he knows that ardor without leadership means a
lost cause; that men must know how to fight for their ideals, their
principles; but that their officers are charged with the sacred
responsibility of making the men's ardor and valor count.

At the beginning of his celebrated course of lectures on tactics he
always admonished his students thus:

"You will be called on later to be the brain of an army. So I say to
you to-day: Learn to think."

By this he was far from meaning that officers were to confine thinking
to themselves, but that they were to teach themselves to think so that
they might the better hand on intelligence and stimulate their men to
obey not blindly but comprehendingly.

It was a maxim of Napoleon's, of which Foch is very fond, that "as a
general rule, the commander-in-chief ought only to indicate the
direction, determine the ends to be attained; the means of getting
there ought to be left to the free choice of the mediums of execution,
without whom success is im