The Generalissimo went to the Chamber, to act, with General Pau, as Government Commissioner during the progress of the great debate. I imagine that the experience was more painful to him than first facing fire in a Paris fort in 1870. For the Socialist opponents of the Bill heckled the Commissioners, challenging not merely their arguments but also their figures. The temptation was strong upon Joffre at times to retort angrily upon the obstructionists, but he kept his temper and a cold, even tone of courtesy. In his rare interventions he spoke briefly and directly to the point, figures in hand. He maintained throughout an impassive attitude, and looked a formidable figure as he stood resolutely to his guns dominating the wilderness of talk. Even in the lobbies of the Chamber, in the entr'actes of the debate, he did not unbend from his attitude of reserve, which, though it angered the obstructionists, impressed them in spite of themselves. Here was the man who could keep his head—the tête froide demanded by Napoleon as the first essential of a battle-chief. Pau, on the other hand, was much less calm and was visibly vexed at the shameless opposition. The fingers of his whole arm (for he had lost the other in the War of '70) clinched and unclinched as if anxious to meet the foe at close quarters.
Heartily glad to be allowed to return to his labours, Joffre gave himself more thoroughly than ever to the task of preparation. He occupied himself more particularly with the question of transports, and the perfection of the system that he worked out was revealed at the outbreak of the war, when the Commissariat proved an instant success. The trenches were well furnished with food. But alas! the medical service, which depended not upon the General Staff but upon the Ministry of War, proved in those early days a lamentable failure, for the war had caught it in a state of transition. The mobilisation, itself, impressed every observer by its order and regularity; Joffre revealed himself a master organiser. He was as prepared as man could be with the time and "material" to his hand. He had trained his body as well as his mind by a just balance between work and rest and physical exercise. He had the true soldier's horror of growing soft. As a captain he was out riding one day when he fell, owing to his horse stumbling, and was carried to bed with injuries to his head. He spent a few weeks of his convalescence at Rivesaltes. Fearing that his mental powers were affected by his accident, he set himself a hard problem in mathematics to test his brain. At the end of three days' silent work, he cried suddenly in broad Catalan from his bed to his brother, who was sharing the room with him, Soun geuri ("I am cured"). The anecdote shows his strenuous character and detestation of self-indulgence, and also that he is not quite as reserved by nature as his proud title of Le Taciturne would imply. Joffre's taciturnity, in fact, is self-imposed—part of his vigorous system of preparation. It comes, also, from the fact that he is not, naturally, an orator and knows it. Serious and meditative, his temper is not as severe as some suppose; his sternness in all questions of discipline has been forced upon him by duty. On the contrary, it pains him considerably to punish any one, and he suffers as much as his victims when he has to pass judgment upon serious faults and incapacity.
His daily habits made him physically hard, just as his studies equipped him for continuous intellectual labour. The morning gallop in the Bois on a strong horse, such as would have carried Du Guesclin in his wars against the English in the moving Middle Ages, and his walk to the Invalides or the Ministry of War from his distant home in Auteuil gave him the training he needed. On campaign, the motor-car replaced the healthier exercise, but even then he managed to take long solitary walks which reposed his mind and recreated his body. Even the most pressing matters are not allowed to interfere with his regular rest. To bed at nine and up at six is a rule maintained even in the heat of battle. He feels it to be necessary for the equipoise of his constitution. Joffre has the great Corsican's faculty of suspending his intellectual powers by a mere effort of the will and thus obtains complete repose of the cerebral system. His slumbers were childlike even after Charleroi; on his motor journeys, to points along the Front, he slept profoundly. This recuperative power is inestimable in a commander upon whom is cast a vast responsibility. He was often to be seen in his car behind the lines sunk in restorative sleep, his head inclined to an angle like some tired Atlas, worn with supporting the world upon his broad shoulders.
This man, eminently French in heart and mind, has consistently trained for his great position. Nothing has been too great a sacrifice to secure the victory. To railwaymen, who came to thank him for his praise of them in the mobilisation, he said: "I work for the salvation of France and then I shall disappear." Just as he knows the character of the men under him, he knows the value of his own services to France and throws both into the balance at moments when every gramme of weight is of consequence. He seems able to communicate his own confidence and calm to others—he, so uncommunicative with his low voice, his gentle and pensive manner. Evidently, in this preparation of the soul for combat he must shut out the distressing sights and sounds of battle. He must not think of devastated homesteads and ruined villages, he must not think of widowed women and weeping children, nor, as he goes along the line of yesterday's battle, must he think of what lies there, of the ghostly army that is still presenting arms to him. All these things he must banish from his mind, in the hardening processes of a great decision—this man who has never given a contrary order. And yet Joffre l'humain is as just a title as any which honour him, for it expresses his natural kindness and desire to save life. And a Socialist professor wrote, in an organ of his political faith, that if, after the war, a monument was erected to the great General, no mother need turn her head away from it. Joffre was touched when he read the phrase, for he is as proud of his humanity as of those purely military virtues, which have gone to his preparation.
CHAPTER VI
JOFFRE IN ACTION
Fléchier's panegyric of Turenne might have been written for Joffre, for it expresses his traits with a curious exactitude. Said the eloquent Bishop of Nîmes of the Marshal: "He was accustomed to fight without anger, to conquer without ambition, to triumph without vanity.... Bolder to act than speak, resolute and determined within when apparently embarrassed, there was never a man wiser or more prudent, who conducted war with greater order and judgment, who had more precautions and more resources, who was more active and more reserved, who better managed things for his ends and who showed more patience in allowing his enterprises to mature. He took measures that were almost infallible, divining not only what the enemy had done, but what he planned to do; he could be unsuccessful but he was never surprised. And, finally, this system was the source of many successful gains. It kept alive that union of the soldiers with their chief which renders an army invincible; and it spread amongst the troops a spirit of energy, of courage and confidence, which enables them to suffer everything."
There is no feature of this admirable portrait which does not fit the man. Joffre belongs to the same noble line and recommences, it has been said, the same victory on the same theatre with new forms. The history of Alsace will enshrine the two names, for both captains fought there with skill and courage. Turenne's defence of the province occurred almost two hundred years before its cession to Germany as part of the spoils of the victors. If, like other men, Joffre has faults he has also the qualities of greatness. He possesses strength of soul and knowledge formed by study and reflection, and is yet without pedantry. He does not allow himself to be guided by sudden flashes of inspiration, nor does he invent new methods; he prefers a solid system, founded on poise of mind and body and reinforced by calm and consistent attention. Thus he brings to his task a clear and even temperament and a profound and searching judgment. Possessing, perhaps, more character than personality, he has less imagination than clairvoyance and mental vigour, and the fact is an assurance to those he commands. He has the temper to succeed, and is a constant traveller by that road. Slowly his career has unfolded itself, and, at each stage, his nature has deepened and his love of country assumed a warmer tone.
Not a gay and debonair officer, born with title and fortune, he is the son of a working man, who has planned his own career and risen by merit to the top. I do not propose to catalogue Joffre's virtues, or to offer an estimate of his strategy—that must be left to other pens, equipped with the knowledge that staff histories bring, but his career possesses contours that, in their flowing curves, express the beauty and harmony of his life. A "masterpiece of will power and equilibrium," he has known how to inspire the devotion of his soldiers, and this is not the least of his claims. His ability to extract to the utmost the allegiance of those who serve and to make appeal to their secret sympathies is one of his most precious talents. His character, laborious and unobtrusive, free from ambition, solicitous for the common welfare, has given him an irresistible hold upon hearts, so that men's hands stretch out at the moment of action and he is surrounded and enveloped by an atmosphere of good-will incalculably precious for concerted action. And the women, who Joffre says, are sublime, give him stoically their husbands and sons, rivalling in courage those who lay down their lives. And Joffre, by a mysterious predestination, became the instrument of that sacrifice, limitless during the war. And he never called in vain, for, at his first demand, up rose valiant youth ready and joyous to die for the sweet sake of France. He seems to have the art of communicating that secret vibration of the soul, which moves crowds, without so much as opening his lips. It is a southern gift, belonging to the sunny lands where life runs richly and deeply. And for this reason, perhaps, the south has become the region of great generals. By their inventions and manoeuvres they express that species of brimming talent which turns some into poets and plastic workers, others into men of action, statesmen, or charmers of the public ear upon stage and platform. His even temper that takes no umbrage at rival reputations, that seeks in everything only the good of the cause and its strict utility, is the right armour for the martial figure. His silence, like his calm, has its positive and its negative side. It does not spring from lack of thought, but from seriousness and contemplation, just as the other is a proof not of insensibility, but of a considered system of control. Nor is his unshakable determination the sign of obstinacy or a purblind view, but a bright weapon forged in the recesses of the heart as a defence against adversity and as the ready instrument of achievement. Rarely has a man by such simple means, with no eloquence or artifice, with no advertisement, pose, or pretension, reached such a pinnacle of authority at once subtle and conceded and giving confidence to every one.
When President Poincaré presented the Generalissimo with the highest military reward—the Military Medal—he drew a living portrait of the man: "You have shown in the conduct of your armies qualities which were not for an instant belied, a spirit of organisation and order and method, of which the beneficent effects were extended from strategy to tactics; a cold and prudent wisdom, which knows how to guard against the unexpected; strength of mind that nothing can shake; a serenity of which the salutary example spreads abroad confidence and hope."