[Illustration: General Pétain--Marshal Haig--General Foch--General Pershing]
At first the headquarters of this bureau were at Senlis, near Paris. Then they were moved close to France's eastern border where Foch and his associates studied ways and means of meeting a possible attack through Switzerland—if Germany resolved to add that crime to her category—or across northern Italy.
So clearly had Foch foreseen what would happen in the Venetian plain, that he had his plan of French reinforcement perfected long in advance, even to the schedule for dispatching troop trains to the Piave front.
In January, 1917, Marshal Joffre reached the age of retirement (65). He was venerated and loved throughout France as few men have ever been. Gratitude for his great gifts and great character filled every heart to overflowing. His country had no honor great enough to express its sense of his service to France. Yet it was felt that for the operations of the future, the interests of France and of her allies would be best furthered with another strategist in command of the armies in the field. Joffre's retirement was therefore effected.
Joffre is an engineer, a master-builder of fortifications, a great defense soldier. But defense would not end the war. France must look to her greatest offensive strategist.
There could be no question who that strategist was. No one knew it quite so well as Marshal Joffre. And one of the most splendid things about that mighty and noble man is the spirit in which he concurred in (if, indeed, he did not suggest) the change which meant that another should lead the armies of France to victory.
The appointment of General Foch as head of the General Staff was made on May 15, 1917, while Marshal Joffre was in the United States to confer with our officials regarding our part in the war. On the same date General Philippe Pétain, the heroic defender of Verdun, who had been Chief of Staff for a month, was appointed Commander-in-Chief of all French armies operating on the French front.
General Foch installed himself at the Invalides, and addressed himself to the study of all the allies' fronts, the assembling American army, and to another task for which he was signally fitted: that of coordinating the plans and purposes of the Generalissimo and the government.