As a scholar, Foch is brilliant besides being profound. As a man, he is simple—and France admires simplicity; he is elegant—and France loves the elegance that is the expression of fine thinking, fine feeling; he is modest of his own attainments, and proud of France's glory.
For nearly every great commander, victory in arms has led to power in the state.
Foch is a statesman as preëminently as he is a warrior. His counsel was as weighty in the peace settlement as his strategy was in winning the war.
But one cannot conceive him using his prestige, military or diplomatic, to increase his personal power.
He has served God and man; he has served his country and his conviction of right. He is content therewith—just as he hopes millions of men are content who have done the same according to their best ability.
"I approach the twilight of my life," he wrote not long ago, "with the consciousness of a good servant who will rest in the peace of his Lord. Faith in eternal life, in a good and merciful God, has sustained me in the hardest hours. Prayer has illumined my soul."
In presenting to Foch the baton of a Marshal of France, President Poincaré recalled certain definitions he had often heard Foch reiterate: "War is the department of moral force; battle, the struggle between two wills; victory, the moral superiority of the conqueror, the moral depression of the conquered."
"This moral superiority," said the President of the French Republic to the new Marshal of France, "you have tended like a sacred flame."
Always, the tone of tribute to Foch is one of veneration for the greatness of his soul and his preëminent ability to represent and to lead his people.
"You are not," President Poincaré went on, "of those who let themselves be downcast by danger; neither are you of those whom victory dazzles. You do not believe that we are near the end of our efforts and our sacrifices. You guard against optimism as much as against depression."