GENERAL JOFFRE

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2294, 30 October 1914, Page 6

GENERAL JOFFRE

PEN SKETCH OF THE ALLIES' COMMANDER ("Times" and Sydney "Sua" Services.) London, October 28. "General Joffre," writes the '•Times" correspondent in France, in an interesting pen sketch of tho Commander-in-Chief of tho .Allied Armies, "is rarely seen on horseback. He' spendi hours daily in his motor-car; and wears out two chauffeurs daily. He. also spends long hours in an unpretentious room with a telephone receiver to his ear. His chief characteristic is his calmness, the result of confidence in himself. This has given confidence to others of tho Staff. He never for a moment doubts his capacity to win, and, that conviction lias percolated through the masses of the troops and made him popular, though lie eschows popularity, arid is modest and unassuming.

"His readiness to accept suggestions has fostered the belief that he is an adaptor, and organiser rather than a strategist. The campaign has shown that he is a soldier, an engineer, and' an organiser. His groat maxim is: 'Nothing can be improvised; everything must be thought out.' He takes infinite trouble necessary to secure successes, and has brought together the best military brains in France and co-ordinated and controlled their efforts. He has exorcised politics, the greatest bane, ; from tho French army. Himself a Re-' publican and a Freemason, ho is surrounded by Catholics, who are disposed to cavil at the'present constitution. As a result of his firmness and singleness of purpose, he commands the greatest fighting machine iii the world, from which every consideration other' than efficiency has been obliterated. "General Joffre is just a plain soldier. He possesses a modern, scientific mass of theoretical knowledge, and this i 3 backed by a high sense of the practical. He understands what to expect from the common soldier, and how to extend to him consideration on occasion. This is a war of silence and anonymity, and accoTds with Joffre's genius.. It is a German-made scientific war, as opposed to the artistic, and General Joffre lias become, master of a new system j which ho did not invent."