ever been committed, and as though we were dealing with loyal, honourable, Gcd-fearing men.

which can hardly have received the approval of Mr Thomas, the eminent Privy Councillor, upon whom the University of Cambridge, to its shame be Now, all these things are it said, has conferred a possible only because we redoctor's degree. It is to this joice in a Coalition Governeffeet: "If Soviet Russia ment. But a Coalition Govintends to take action hostile ernment should give as well as to Poland on Polish territory, take, and the susceptibilities of the British Government and either side should be respected. its Allies will feel bound to We can see in all the negotiahelp Poland with all means at tions with Soviet Russia the their disposal." Will they? influence of the extreme SocialLives there a man so simple, ists. We cannot detect in who believes that the British them the restraining effect of Government would ever be felt the Unionist Party. The supbound in any circumstances to posed leader of the Unionists, help Poland or any one else? Mr Bonar Law, must enjoy If it did, all the anarchists in the closest confidence of his our midst would set up a howl, revered leader, Mr George. would threaten to down tools, Does he dare to argue with and would if they could bring him, or is he content to take the whole Empire to a prema- the master's orders, like the ture end. But if, in the phrase rest of the Cabinet? And dear to our demagogues, the does he ever condescend to contingency should arise, a arise, a meet the party which he is orafty answer to a plain ques- said to lead, and upon whose tion delivered in the House of allegiance he is supposed to Commons would discard in an depend? These are some of instant the whole burden of the doubts which we should responsibility. At the same like to see resolved. Our time, the commercial bargain desire, we are sure, will not goes on apace. Each party be gratified. Mr Bonar Law undertakes to refrain from will go on answering questions, propaganda,-a one-sided armore or less inaudibly and rangement surely, since Eng- rarely intelligibly, so long as land has never shown any Mr George keeps the office of desire to convert the Russians Prime Minister. And it will from or to any opinion, and since be the fault of the Unionists it is exceedingly unlikely that themselves if they do not then the fanatical Lenin regards it find a representative leader of any consequence to keep who will more wisely guide his pledged word. And so we the interests of England than are to exchange prisoners and any one of Mr George's colpromote commercial facilities leagues has been able to guide as though no outrages had them.

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BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.

No. MCCLIX.

SEPTEMBER 1920.

VOL, CCVIII.

AT THE SUPREME WAR COUNCIL.

BY CAPTAIN PETER WRIGHT,
(Late Assistant Secretary, Supreme War Council).

A WELL-KNOWN military obtained his information from writer and a combatant in the innermost circles of the the great war, Major Grasset, French General Staff: some has lately made a collection of expressions, some phrases ring extracts from the two great very like those of Foch himworks of Foch, written more self: the resemblance can than twenty years ago, which hardly be fortuitous. But if are rather too voluminous for not from Fooh himself, then the ordinary reader, though the information must come even before the war ourious from the small group of inquirers, without the least direct interest in military affairs, had been attracted by books which treat war from such a philosophical height. These short extracts, published by Major Grasset in book form, reveal the fiery disposition and calculating brain which Foch always points out as the mark of a military leader. But prefaced to these extracts is a short study of the life of Foch. Now this is of unusual interest, because Major Grasset, from the text itself, has evidently VOL, CCVIII.—NO. MCCLIX,

officers who have always been immediately next to him while he was in any position of high command, for there are some faets, and especially some dates, which can only be known to this group. And as some of this information is new, and throws a new light on some of the great events in which our armies took part, and especially the battle of St Quentin, it is of the highest interest. Having been at the Supreme War Council during the winter 1917-1918 as assist

T

ant secretary, I can tell at first hand and with numerical precision the events of that period which he relates at secondhand and vaguely.

The world knows Fooh only at the height of his achievement, when he drove the Germans before him and would have destroyed them altogether had not his final and fatal blow been stopped by the armistice; it knows him at the moment of success, when his position was at its highest, but it knows little of him in adversity when he himself was at his greatest. This preface of Major Grasset's book tells us something, but not enough, of those earlier battles in which he rose, between 4th August and 4th October 1914, from the command of a corps to the command of an army group, and that the most important, and found himself, in the third month of the war, commanding the generals who had commanded him during the first month. During this first period of the war he was far greater than in the last, when the eyes of all the world were fixed on him, when he took all the trioks, but held all the cards. During the first period he held no cards at all, but won all the same. Then, as later, the words of the greatest of ancient historians, used by him of the man he admired most, are applicable to Foch. "He gave proof of a power of penetration that was natural, wonderful, and infallible. When any crisis arose, however little he expected it, and

without any examination, & view of the situation, far superior to that of any one else, sprang from him at ence, and he predicted the subsequent course of events with no less certainty. His exposition of his own plans was most lucid: his criticism of other men's schemes consummate: and however incalculable the result might seem, he always knew what would succeed and what would not. In a word, uniting the deepest intellectual grasp with a lightning rapidity of decision, he was the model man of action."

Major Grasset gives us only a slight sketch of his earlier feats.

At the Trouée de Charmes in Lorraine, August 24, 1914, he and Dubail defended the line of the Meurthe against odds at least ten times as great. On the last day of August he was put at the head of the 9th Army by Marshal Joffre. This army was to hold the French centre in the first battle of the Marne, and it was against the centre that the main shock of the Germans was to be expected. Fooh had 70,000 men: Von Bulow and Von Hausen, who attacked him (or rather, who faced him, for he attacked them at once as soon as they came by came within his within his reach on September 6), had 300,000 men. Thus the plan of the battle hung on whether Fooh could hold these odds, while Maunoury and Lord French enveloped the German right: if the Germans could have