possible."

This leaves a great responsibility to officers, but it is the secret of
that flexibility which makes the French army so effective.

For Foch carries his belief in individual judgment far beyond the
officers commanding units; he carries it to the privates in the ranks.

An able officer, in Foch's opinion, is one who can take a general
command to get his men such-and-such a place and accomplish
such-and-such a thing, and so interpret that command to his men that
each and every one of them will, while acting in strict obedience to
orders, use the largest possible amount of personal intelligence in
accomplishing the thing he was told to do.

It is said that there was probably never before in history a battle
fought in which every man was a general--so to speak--as at the battle
of Chateau Thierry, in July, 1918. That is to say, there was probably
never before a battle in which so many men comprehended as clearly as
if they had been generals what it was all about, and acted as if they
had been generals to attain their objectives.

It was an intelligent democracy, acting under superb leadership that
vanquished the forces of autocracy.

Foch has worked with a free hand to test the worth of his lifelong
principles. And the hundreds of men he trained in those principles
were ready to carry them out for him.

No wonder his first injunction was: Learn to think!

To him, the leadership of units is not a simple question of
organization, of careful plans, of strategic and tactical intelligence,
but a problem involving enormous adaptability.

Battles are not won at headquarters, he contends; they are won in the
field; and the conditions that may arise in the field cannot be
foreseen or forestalled--they must be met when they present themselves.
In large part they are made by the behavior of men in unexpected
circumstances; therefore, the more a commander knows about human nature
and its spiritual depressions and exaltations, the better able he is to
change his plans as new conditions arise.

German power in war, Foch taught his students, lay in the great masses
of their effective troops and their perfect organization for moving men
and supplies. German weakness was in the absolute autocracy of great
headquarters, building its plans as an architect builds a house and
unable to modify them if something happens to make a change necessary.

This he deduced from his study of their methods in previous wars,
espec