FOCH AND THE WAR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20779, 23 January 1931, Page 8

FOCH AND THE WAR.

GREAT SOLDIER'S MEMOIRS.

PHASES OF THE CONFLICT. EVENTFUL DAYS OF 1914. [Copyricht, 19^1. by Doubleday. Doran and Company. Tnc.) (AH Richta Reserved.) No. 1. / Tn the course of the recent war my duties caller! rnc to various posts in the French Army. First, as commander "f [lie Twentieth Corps. I look part in the operations in Lorraine up to the end of August, 1014 1 then commanded the Ninth Army during (he battle of the Marne. Subsequently, as assistant to the Commander-in-Chief, I was entrusted with the task of co-ordinating the action of French troops with that of our Allies, British and Belgian, in the north of France. That period comprised the battles of (he Yser and of Ypres, the Artois attacks, and the battle of the Somme. This brings us up to the end of 1916.

In 1917, as Chiei ot the General Staff, I performed the duties of military adviser to the French Government. For the Government had decided to participate in the conduct, of the war. Among other tasks entrusted to me at this time was that of French co-operation in Italy, beginning in the month of Apri' I personally directed this, work during the last part of October and all of November. Finally, I assisted in establishing (lie American Army mi France. Impressiors of the Moment. Tn 1918, first, as President of the Versailles Military Executive Committee and afterwards as Commander-in-Chief of the [Allied Armies, J. prepared and led the lAllied forces on the Western Front. I am now, in all sincerity, writing my memoirs. They do not form a history of the war; they merely give the story of the A events in which I took part. From what has just been said it follows that only during the last year of the conflict will this narration bear upon the operations cm the Western Front taken as a whole. What I have written is based upon the impressions felt at the moment of action and also upon the information we had. or the hypotheses we made, concerning the enemy; these at the time were necessarily full of uncertainty. . The France of 1914, far from desiring war and still farther from seeking it, did everything possible to avoid it. When, toward the end of July, the struggle seemed imminent, the French t Government made every effort to stave it off. But if her allies were attacked, France, resolved to honour her signature, -would come to their aid. Such was the policy which the Government of the Republic had consistently practised for more than 40 years. Desire to Avert War. While never forgetting her lost provinces and trying by every means to heal the wounds their amputation had caused her, France had replied with dignity and resignation to the virulent provocations that accompanied the successive incidents cf Schnoebele, Tangier, Agadir and Saverne. She had progressively reduced the term of military service from five to three years, then from three to two years, and it was only in face of the menace presented by (he continual reinforcement of the German army and under the stress/of most legitimate anxiety and evident danger, that she hurriedly returned, in 1913, to the three-year service plan. It was high time. Fiance was fully determined not to resort to force unless her existence and her liberty were put in peril by some German aggression; nothing short of such a danger could have driven into war a democratic Government fully alive to the enormity of the sacrifices and the stupendousness of the cataclysm which a European conflict would bring upon the peoples involved Surprises After 40 Years' Peace. Taken as a whole, our Army of 1914 had the defects of its qualities. Above all, the doctrine of the offensive, through having been to greatly accentuated and generalised, tended to impose an invariable rule leading too often to tactics that were blind and brutal, and for that very reason dangerous. It also induced a strategy that was bare and uniform, easily sterile, unproductive of results, and costly. A doctrine as restricted as this was sure to bring surprises during the first contacts with the enemy. Our Army had emerged from an unbroken peace of 40 years. During that period the. field exercises in which it had taken part had naturally furnished no picture of the rigours of the modern battlefield or the violence of the fire action which sweeps it. The outbreak of war found me commanding the Twentieth Corps at Nancy. The inhabitants of this town, like those of ■all Lorraine, manifested in a particularly high degree the patriotic sentiment's which animated everybody in France. During more than 40 years their arms had been stretched across the frontier to captive Jletz and to their brothers in annexed Lorraine, and now they asked themselves whether at last the day might not be dawning that would see their destinies once more commingled. Instructions from Joflre. [Having commmanded the Twentieth Corps during the early, weeks of the war at the preliminary Battle of Morhange, in Lorraine, General Foch was summoned to Joffre's headquarters on August 28, 1914. He arrived just as the Com-toanderiin-Chief was planning how and when to turn upon the pursuing Germans and stop their hitherto victorious advance toward Paris. Although astonished to learn how vast had been the Allies' retreat, Foch was reliever) to find no confusion or panic around Joffri, who forthwith placed him in command of the army detachment, later called the Ninth Army of France.

Foeh's chief-of-staff was Colonel YVeyjgand, who was to remain " with him through the war and is to-day the head of the French military organisation. .Another aide was M. Tardieu, destined to he Premier of France. The new Ninth .Army was welj organised by the time Joffre issued the famous order of September f~>, launching what was to become known as trie first Battle of the Marne, beginning September 6, 191-1. Throughout the battle the Ninth 'Army played a valiant, part. Foch's memoirs of the period are confined to a comparatively limited phase of the 'historic conflict; be is telling his own story, not, writing a history of the entire war. .lust what the Ninth Army did he records in detail. But toward the end of his account it is evident that he i? studying the wide piohlems of the war es a whole, as much as is possible from his restricted vantage-point as commander of a single army The Ninth Army's business was to hold back and then pursue the enemy in the terrain between the Fourth arid Fifth French Armies. On September 9. after three days of terrific combat against the Third German Army under General von Hausen, the Ninth found the, tide definitely turning in favour of the Allies. The enemy began his precipitate retreat. Meanwhile. Foch had issued some stirring orders to his men ] 'To be Continued.)