FOCH’S WARNING OF WAR

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 27 August 1927, Page 11

FOCH’S WARNING OF WAR

I- NTERVIEWED by a London newspaper, Marshal Foch has spoken on the inevitability of war on a gigantic scale —wherein not only the world’s manhood but women and children will be involved —“in the course of the next 15 or 20 years.” “The Entente Cordiale with England,” he declared ill the same breath, “is now as heretofore our sole safeguard.” As a rule Marshal Foch’s utterances, into which it is always possible to read a political attitude, are passed by without notice. This time, however, French Radical opinion has revolted. It is, significantly enough, his reference to the Entente Cordiale Flint is principally resented as a diplomatic indiscretion of the first order. Thus M. Pierre Bertrand denounces its “impropriety” in the “Quotidien.” “We are not going to deny the truth of what the Marshal says of the Entente Cordiale,” writes M. Bertrand, “yet is it not dangerous for a great nation to have only one means of saving itself, especially if that sole means is the friendship of a rival nation?”

Marshal Foch speaks of the. Entente Cordiale, protests M. Henri Barde in the “Oeuvre:” It would have burnt his lips, no doubt, to speak of Locarno.” Y"et that Entente, even enlarged into a Triple Entente, did not prevent war in 1914. And this Radical writer proceeds to prove that the Pact of Locarno, including, as it does, Germany, is an incomparably sounder guarantee. But it is principally Marshal Foch’s doctrine of the inevitability of war and his prophecy of it within 15 or 20*years that most exercises the editor of the “Quotidien.” This means, he claims, for our children and tor us henceforth nothing but military preparations, armament, and super-armament. Marshal Foch s declaiations are therefore of the utmost gravity. Nom we have to put the question straightly. Does the French Gpvernment also regard them as grave ? And has it given any mandate to Marshall Foch—for he is an official personage or has it even authorised him to use such

ON A GIGANTIC SCALE

ENTENTE OR LOCARNO

language ? If so, some deputy in the Chamber must demand explanations and ask how this menace of early war is to be reconciled with Ihe policy of Locarno. But if, on the contrary, the Marshall has spoken off his own bat, might not M. Briand, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, gently advise him to keep this sort of talk his intimate friends or for his own night-cap?” On all matters of war Marshall Foch speaks, of course, with an authority equivalent to his fame, but it is only just to point out that there is another military school in France, or elsewhere which, so far from sharing his vision of whole populations, irrespective of age or sex, drawn into the vortex, has serious doubts of the value of the mass levy, regards conscription, in fact, as out of date, and believes the future lies in France, as in Germany, with comparatively small professional armies trained to the last ounce and equipped to perfection with all the modern instrumentation of war. More and more mechanisation is its ci’y, as against more and more cannon fodder. Naturally, this school is less concerned with Germany’s disarmament under the Versailles Treaty than with the superb efficiency of the small army that was left to Germany by that treaty-

For that reason the coming annual man oeuvres of the Reichswehr are being awaited with keen interest. They note particularly the extraordinary use the Germans made of motorlorries for the swift transport of troops. Tonight in the Journal des Debats, General de Cuquac speaks with alarm of what he calls the 4 ‘ motorisation ”of the German army. England, too, is having manoeuvres with motorised units. Indeed all countries ai*e pursuing this method which will certainly be the stiategic novelty of the next war. Let us hope that we shall not be the last to try the experiment of the motorisation of the army. Timid little experiments will not do. We must experiment seriously with great units transported in their entirety by means of the automobile, for this will be the decisive instrument of the strategy of the future.”