Foch is the man of Ypres, the commander who was in general control of the successful fight made by the French and the British, aided by the Belgians, to prevent the Germans from breaking through to Calais.
Foch, in short, is one of the military geniuses of the war, so record observers at the front. He is a General who has something of the Napoleonic in his composition; the dramatic in war is for him—secrecy and suddenness, gigantic and daring movements; fiery, yet coldly calculated attacks; vast strategic conceptions carried out by swift, unfaltering tactics. Foch has a tendency to the impetuous, but he is impetuous scientifically. He has, however, taken all in all, much more of the dash and nervousness and warmth of the Southern Latin than has Joffre—cool, cautious, taciturn Joffre. Yet both men are from the south of France. They were born within a few miles of one another, within three months of one another, Foch being born on Oct. 2, 1851, and Joffre on Jan. 12, 1852.
Most writers who have dealt with Foch agree on this as one of his paramount characteristics—the Napoleonic mode of military thought. When Foch was director of the Ecole de Guerre, where he had much to do with shaping the military views of many of the men who are now commanding units of the French Armies, he was considered to be possessed of almost an obsession on the subject of Napoleon. He studied Napoleon's campaigns, and restudied them. He went back much further, however, in his choice of a master, and gave intense application to the campaigns of Caesar. Napoleon and Caesar—these were the minds from which the mind of the Marne and Ypres has learned some of its lessons of success.
Here Foch invites comparison with another of the dominant figures of the war—General French. For French is described by his biographer as "a worshipper of Napoleon," regarding him as the world's greatest strategist, and in following out and studying Napoleon's campaigns French personally covered and studied much of the ground in Belgium over which he has been fighting. French is a year younger than Foch. They are old friends, as are French and Joffre, and Joffre and Foch.
The inclination of Foch to something of the Napoleonic is shown beyond the realm of strategy and tactics. Foch is credited with knowing the French soldier, his heart, his mind, his capabilities, and the method of getting the most out of those capabilities, in a way reminiscent of the winner of Jena. And Foch knows not only the privates, but the officers. When he went to the front he visited each commander; the Colonels he called by name; the corps commanders, without exception, had attended his lectures at the Ecole de Guerre.
As for the men, Foch makes it his business to get into personal contact with them, as Napoleon used to do. Foch does not hobnob with them, there is no joking or familiarity, but he goes into the trenches and the occupied villages and looks the men over informally, inspects food or equipment, makes a useful comment or two, drops a phrase that is worth repeating, and leaves behind him enthusiasm and respect. The Paris Figaro says that he has the gift of setting souls afire, of arousing that élan in the French fighter which made that fighter perform military miracles when the "sun of Austerlitz" was high. It has been declared by a French writer that Foch knows the human element in the French Army better than any other man living.
With all his knowledge of men, his power of inspiring them, Foch is quiet, retiring, non-communicative, with no taste for meeting people in social intercourse. His life has been monotonous—work and work and work. He has the reputation of being a driver; he used to be particularly severe on shirkers in the war college, and such, no matter what their influence, had no chance of getting a diploma leading to an attractive staff position when Foch was Director. When he was in command at Nancy and elsewhere he used to work his staffs hard, and they had to share much of the monotony of work which has been chiefly Foch's life. He did not go in for society, merely making the formal calls required by the etiquette of garrison towns on the chief garrison hostesses, and giving dinners two or three times a year to his staff.
Foch, indeed, with his quiet ways and his hard work and his studying of Napoleon and Caesar, was characterized by some of the officers of the army as a pedant, a theorist, and these held that Foch had small chance of doing anything important in such a practical realm as that of real war.
Because of his Directorship of the Ecole de Guerre he was known to many officers, but as far as France at large was concerned his name was scarcely known at all last August. Yet officers knew him in other lands besides his own. His two great books, "Principles of War" and "Conduct of War," have been translated into English, German, and Italian, and are highly regarded by military men. He has been ranked by the Militär-Wochenblatt, organ of the German General Staff, as one of the few strategists of first class ability among the Allies.
Foch is a slim man, with a great deal of nervous energy in his actions, being so quick and graceful in movement, indeed, that a recent English observer declares he carries himself more like a man of 40 than one of 64. His gray blue eyes are particularly to be noticed, so keen are they. His speech is quick, precise, logical.