Having got the government of the island into his hands, Galliéni proceeded to apply his system in all its completeness. His most successful experiment was the division of the island into districts, each in charge of a commandant. To these commandants he sent recommendations worthy to rank with the best efforts of Roman Proconsuls. They were penetrated with good sense, enlightenment and precision. "When you root out a nest of pirates, think of the market you must plant on the morrow," was one of his instructions. Another was: "Every advance made must be with a view to the permanent occupation of the country." Both admirably expressed his policy. He believed in markets and schools, in roads and bridges, as instruments of domination.
His fashion of securing collaboration was also crowned with success. With great care he selected his lieutenants, and then allowed them a free hand. He refused to burden his mind with details, and left himself free to reflect upon and discuss the larger issues. Thus, he summoned an authority on horse-breeding, and gave him carte blanche, within certain financial limits, to establish a stud-farm and provide the island with cavalry. "Give me your report in two years' time," he said; "meantime, do the best you can." At the appointed hour the report was forthcoming, and the Governor proceeded to act upon it. It was typical of his modus operandi. This faith in his entourage, after having tested capacity and fidelity, was justified by its results.
His governorship of the island lasted nine years, and its effects were so satisfactory that it seemed as if a miracle had happened. Then, at his own request, he was nominated inspector of troops in Western and Eastern Africa, in the Antilles and Pacific. Thus his colonial career was rounded out, and his title confirmed of "the great French coloniser." In each of his posts, whether in the Soudan, in Tonking, or Madagascar, he had shown capacity and resourcefulness, an earnest and intelligent enthusiasm which had triumphed over obstacles, because science was joined to energy and knowledge to practical principles. Thus the empire he founded was not built upon sand, but upon the bed-rock of native welfare and material advancement. His success in dealing with natives arose as much from his sympathy as from his determination to study the character and antecedents of his administrés with the care with which the physician studies the details of the case upon which he is engaged. Thus success came not as something due to fortune or caprice, but as a definite and calculated result.
Home again after more than thirty years of distinguished colonial service, Galliéni, now a General of Division, was given the 13th Army Corps at Clermont Ferrand, and later the 14th Army Corps at Lyons, carrying with it the eventual command of the army in the Alps. In 1908 he was called to the Superior Council of War. A year or two before the Great War, which was to give him his crowning position of responsibility at the Ministry in the Rue St. Dominique, he took part in the grand manoeuvres in Touraine, and succeeded not only in out-manoeuvring "the enemy," but positively in capturing the General-in-Chief and his staff. Paris laughed long over the episode; the victorious General was anticipating his laurels in actual war.
CHAPTER XII
THE HERO OF THE OURCQ
Four-and-forty years he had waited for that tragic moment: the crossing of the frontier by the Germans for the second time. Through long years of monotonous preparation he had been buoyed up by the thought of serving his country in his country's greatest need. And now the opportunity had come—almost too late, for his normal career had finished two years before. But the old soldier in him arose and refused to be comforted by a country gentleman's occupations, which had filled his retirement. There was great work afoot; he must offer his sword to France. To his friends it did not seem that Michel Joseph Maunoury had greatly changed since the time when he was a spruce artillery captain, and student of the Staff College. Hair, moustache, and goatee beard had changed to white, of course, but the figure remained as slim and alert as in the old days when he galloped each morning in the Bois. Whatever the weather, he appeared in the allées, sitting his horse like a Centaur, and getting himself fit for the great day which he saw by his prophetic vision could not be very far off. He was haunted by the idea of la revanche, and was too honest to conceal it. The word was not popular with politicians. No public man dared utter it, save Deroulede and his League of Patriots thundering against national apathy and supineness in their orations of July 14. General Bailloud, who afterwards distinguished himself in Sarrail's retreat through Macedonia, was punished for saying to his Army Corps at Nancy that the time would come when they would win back the Lost Provinces.
That Maunoury continually thought of these things is clear from the General Order that he issued to the Sixth Army on September 10 after the battle of the Marne. It is dated from his Headquarters at Claye, near Meaux: "The Sixth Army has just sustained, during five entire days, without any intermission or slackening, a struggle against a numerous adversary whose moral has been exalted by success. The struggle has been severe; the losses under fire, the fatigue due to want of sleep and, sometimes, want of food, have surpassed imagination. You have supported all with a valour, a firmness and endurance that words are powerless to glorify as they deserve. Comrades, the General-in-Chief asked you in the name of the patrie to do more than your duty; you have responded beyond what seemed to be possible. Thanks to you, victory has crowned our standards. Now that you know its glorious satisfaction, you will allow it no longer to escape you. As for myself if I have done anything worthy, I have been recompensed by the greatest honour which could have befallen me in my long career, that of commanding men like you. It is with a lively emotion that I thank you for what you have done, for the revenge for 1870, towards which all my energies and all my efforts have been directed for forty-four years, is due to your efforts."
The document is a real profession of faith. It bespeaks the man and his mission, his courage, his modesty, his patriotism, his long-suffering in the Cause. The Order was wrongly attributed to Joffre, because he had added some phrases at the end to express appreciation of the part played by the Sixth Army in keeping engaged a notable portion of the German forces on the Ourcq Front; but none who knew Maunoury and his intimate opinions could question its authenticity. When he signed the Order he wore for the first time (though he had possessed it since 1911) the modest little bronze medal, with its green and black ribbon, which commemorates 1870. Thus were linked in his mind the two dates—1870 and 1914—the one disaster and the other its vindication. Maunoury had every reason to remember 1870. He was an officer-cadet at the time, studying at the engineering and artillery school at Metz, the forerunner of Fontainebleau. When war broke out he was appointed to a battery, and arrived in Paris with it on the very day, September 14, when the Republic was proclaimed. He had no idea, as he marched through the streets with his men, that the Empire had fallen to a new form of government. But he was to see the popular temper even more sharply represented than that. At the gates of Paris was fought the battle of Champigny, and there Maunoury lost his fellow-officers and remained alone with a remnant of his battery. Then the rising tide of the Commune caught him in Paris, unwarned of the retirement of the Regular Army to Versailles. He and his men only escaped from the mob by disguising themselves in mufti and walking singly through the gates.
Happily, he was spared the horrors of a second siege—that of Paris in the hands of the Commune. The first had left poignant memories never to be effaced. Yet his vocation was so firmly fixed that he was not to be turned from it even by this discouraging commencement. The possibility of avenging national humiliation braced his energies and kept him continually at work preparing for the inevitable day through more than two score years. He became one of the most authoritative teachers of the army. At St. Cyr, which he had attended as student, he became professor, and when Fontainebleau started its artillery course, it was he who directed it for the benefit of subalterns. Whilst he was professing artillery at St. Cyr, a great controversy raged on the subject. It was clear that France had been out-classed by Germany in field-guns; it was one of the causes of her defeat. The guns were more powerful, more accurately aimed, and more quickly served. The Germans had learnt the art of shooting, which the French had neglected. Though the De Reffye cannon was much better than its predecessor—a muzzle-loader, firing an eight-pound shell, which broke only at two distances—it was still far behind the German arm. The young war professor pronounced strongly in favour of power. The field-gun, above all, must be all-powerful, he said; mobility could come afterwards. The rival camp protested that mobility should come first; you could mass your light and handy guns and obtain the power required. But Maunoury unveiled what he considered to be the sophistry of this argument. The result of all this heat was the 75 mm., a model field-gun, which wrought wonders for France in the Great War. But its efficiency was not unconnected with an excellent shell.