THE FOCH PUZZLE.

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 15993, 9 December 1919, Page 3

THE FOCH PUZZLE.

Now that Marshal Foch has received such ovations from the Londoners, and such an honour at the Mansion House, you will be interested in the secret of which he and Clemenceau alone know the facts (says the Paris correspondent of the Sunday Times.) The question is: Was the terrible set-back of the French army at the Chemin-des-Dames, in June, 1918, the result of strategical deficiency on our part, or was it a snare laid for the Germans by the Marshal, who thus enticed them down the Marne, where he dealt them the final blow? In the first place, the Chemin des Dames should be put down as our greatest defeat in the war, which was, of course, the clamorous ' opinion of Mr Franklin-Bonillon at the Radical Congress. In the second, the strategy of the Marshal was certainly the most daring in all military history. The press has been discussing the problem for months; one of the Parliamentary Commissions has taken it up this very week, and close observers of Clemenceau’s last speech at the Chamber took notice of the following mysterious utterance, “There was a day when I played a fateful card, and if I had not played it the war would not have been won.” This utterance has been interpreted as meaning, “Foch asked for my consent before taking the mostl formidable risk in order to make sure of the most formidable victory, and I gave it.” Will the secret in those two brains be revealed to history before or after their disappearance from this world?