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A rather serious disagreement with General Pershing.

Every one knows that the American troops, in the first rank as far as bravery is concerned, were first and foremost excellent soldiers in a state of mere improvisation. A few divisions had already gone into the line under the English and French commands. It could not be otherwise. As for the rest, whose training had to be completed, instructors had been taken from the Front in order to begin in America the military education which was finished in France under other officers. But this took time. And it was heartrending to see our men being mown down unceasingly while, under the command of their good leaders, large bodies of American troops remained idle, within earshot of the guns.

For me, the French Minister of War, who day by day saw our ranks grow thinner and thinner after sacrifices unmatched in history, was there any task more urgent than to hasten, as far as possible, the effects of the intervention of America? I had reviewed one of the latest British contingents, whose physical inferiority attested to the fact that our excellent allies, in their turn, were calling up all grades. Was I to be satisfied with theoretical discussions? That was not how I understood my duty.

So I laid siege to General Pershing with all my might (President Wilson was then in America), only to obtain evasive replies. Pershing, with his tight-lipped smile, kept putting things off. I had no doubt but that Foch, on his side, was doing his utmost. It was often the theme of our talks together. But I must own I considered the General-in-Chief somewhat too easily resigned to Pershing’s refusals, and this sometimes brought an edge into the concluding moments of our conversations.

With or without Foch’s approval, I did not cease importuning the American Commander-in-Chief to send into action, in our ranks, the first American regiments that were considered sufficiently trained, so as to relieve us as much as possible at the sharpest pinch of such a crisis of man-power as our armies had never known before. General Pershing certainly asked nothing better than to help us, since that was the very thing that he had crossed the seas for. But he owed it to the romantic side of America’s intervention to form a self-contained American Army, a duty I never failed to acknowledge.

His Government, his country, his Army even, kept him in suspense. Public opinion, on the other side of the ocean, imagined that officers could be improvised as well as soldiers, while I was looking above everything else to the final success of the decisive trial. General Pershing, in a friendly but obstinate fashion, was asking me to wait until he was in possession of an army complete in every part, and I went on insisting, in a state of nervous exasperation, while my country’s fate was every moment at stake on the battlefields, which had already drunk the best blood of France. And the more I insisted the more the American general resisted. So much so that we often parted with smiles that on both sides concealed gnashings of teeth.

Is it very astonishing that I began to wonder how much assistance the Commander-in-Chief was to me in this matter? In principle the Generalissimo could not possibly hold any opinion different from mine.

On May 4, 1918, I sent M. Jusserand, French Ambassador at Washington, a telegram in which I informed him of the text of the agreement reached at the Abbeville Conference between the Allied Powers.

The text may be summarized thus:

The War Council considers that there is good reason to form as soon as possible an American army that shall be subject to the direct authority of its chief and which shall fight under its own flag.

But, while bearing in mind this necessity, priority of transport shall be given to infantry and machine-gun units, which will complete their training by beginning their service with the French and British Armies, with the reservation that the said infantry and machine-gun units shall eventually be withdrawn from the French and British Armies in order to form, with their own artillery and services, divisions or army corps, according to the wish of the Commander-in-Chief of the American expeditionary forces, who shall, however, first consult with the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies in France.

During the month of May priority shall be given to the transport of the infantry and machine-gun units of six divisions. All supplementary tonnage shall be used for the transport of the other troops, the shipment of which will be decided by the chief of the American Expeditionary Corps.

In June the same programme will be carried out, provided that the British Government furnish the necessary transport for 130,000 men in May and 150,000 in June. The first six divisions are to go to the British armies. The troops transported in June will be used as General Pershing shall decide.

If the English are able to transport in June, a further contingent of 150,000 men this contingent shall be made up of infantry and machine-guns. At the beginning of June the situation shall be examined afresh.

Such is—in brief—the text of the Abbeville Conference decisions of May 2, 1918.^[1]

Is it necessary to note that this programme was inspired by General Foch’s own ideas? At the Abbeville Conference the Commander-in-Chief of our armies had read the following declaration, the text of which I communicated to M. Jusserand:

I have been chosen as Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies, by the Governments of the United States of America, of France, and of Great Britain. In this capacity it is impossible for me, at the most perilous crisis of the greatest battle of the War, to admit that I have not the right to speak out concerning the conditions of the American Army’s arrival in France.

This is why, fully sensible of the very heavy responsibility devolving upon me, at the moment when the greatest German offensive is simultaneously threatening Paris and our communications with Great Britain through Calais and Boulogne, I consider it very necessary that each Government in its turn should shoulder that share of responsibility which necessarily falls to it.

To my mind, it is absolutely essential that there should arrive each month in France from America, at least during the months of May, June, and July, 120,000 soldiers, priority being given to infantry and machine-gunners. I consider even that, if the available amount of tonnage will, as we have been given to understand, permit, it would be highly desirable that these numbers should be increased. For the greater the numbers of American infantry that can make their appearance quickly on the battlefields^[2] the speedier and the more decisive will be the success of the Allied armies.

It must, in fact, be realized that the last enemy offensive was such as to bring about losses in infantry and in machine-gunners out of all comparison with those sustained in the War during the last three years. The infantry losses in the British Army have exceeded, in unforeseen proportions, anything it had known before. The French have had the same experience in proportion to their share in this battle, and in the ensuing weeks it is inevitable that the infantry losses will be increasingly heavier. Infantry and machine-gunners, then, are what we must replace without loss of time, more especially as the resources of the German depots in infantry and machine-gunners are estimated at 500,000 or 600,000 men, while the British depots are practically empty, and the French depots will remain without resources until next August.

I most definitely request the War Council, composed of the Allied Governments, to come to a decision on this point, and to be good enough to submit it to the President of the United States.

It is not that I do not give full weight to the observations of General Pershing, who very rightly wishes to bring to France as soon as possible all the complementary services which will allow him, before long, to complete the establishment of the great American Army of which he is the chief, and which we desire most ardently to see in being. But, while pointing out that my request could only cause a few weeks’ delay, I am obliged by my imperative duty as a soldier and as General-in-Chief to urge that, when the greatest German army is developing the greatest offensive of the present war before Amiens and before Ypres, such a slight delay cannot be taken into consideration when the result of the War itself may hang on a possible enemy success in front of these two objectives.

After the enormous losses it has sustained with magnificent valour the British Army has just seen ten of its divisions suppressed, and merely to fill their place is not sufficient definitely to arrest the progress of the German armies. It is new forces of infantry and machine-gunners that we need without the least delay. And if it is taken into account that the American troops, on landing, will need a rapid supplementary training it will be understood how much more urgent the decision in question thereby becomes.

[Signed] Foch

To which I added:

I thought it inadvisable to send the text of this to President Wilson for fear of offending General Pershing. ... But M. Jusserand is requested to take it as his brief.

The reader will here clearly see that I was UNRESERVEDLY IN AGREEMENT ON ALL POINTS with General Foch. Yet this is the question with regard to which the Mémorial finds what it calls A SERIOUS DISAGREEMENT.

On the same day, May 4, 1918, I sent another telegram to M. Jusserand:

Mr Balfour informs me that he would be glad if I would communicate General Foch’s declaration to President Wilson. You are therefore requested to communicate it in the name of the French as well as of the British Government.

On May 8, 1918, I sent the following telegram to M. Tardieu, High Commissioner of the French Republic at New York:

The question is of the greatest importance for the result of the War through the decisive intervention of the American troops, which on no account should be exposed to such an adventure as that of the Fifth British Army under General Gough.^[3]

The question was of such high importance that I conceived the idea of sending quietly, under colour of an “inspection of our instructors in America, one of our best generals to explain the elements of the problem, from the purely technical point of view, to President Wilson.”

I added:

It has been very correctly pointed out to me that the arguments of General Pershing are all of a political nature, while those of General Foch, to which no reply has been given, are exclusively military. I think we should take care not to be too insistent with President Wilson, who has certainly all the necessary ripeness of judgment for deciding usefully when he knows all the aspects of the problem.

Your instructions are to listen to everything around you, without, of course, disguising your own opinion, but only disclosing it with all due discretion. It is for the President of the American Republic to speak the final word when the hour arrives.

The general I was sending to America could not speak English. He was, however, accompanied by Colonel Fagalde, a very able officer, and especially suited to act as interpreter in connexion with the particular questions at issue.

On May 9 I telegraphed to M. Jusserand:

You are fully justified in complaining that the measures taken by the Abbeville Conference are inadequate. The truth of the matter is that the Conference was merely one long struggle between Mr Lloyd George, myself, and General Pershing, who stubbornly upheld the thesis of the speedy arrival of the complementary services, alleging that what the American people and the Washington Government desired above everything was the formation of a great American Army.

After General Pershing had agreed that infantry troops and machine-gun units should come over before everything else in June, he obstinately refused to make the same concession for July, and all we could obtain was that at the beginning of June this question should again be brought up for discussion.

On the 17th I dispatched a telegram to Mr Lloyd George:

The plans made at Abbeville must be revised with a view to the dispatch of a very large number of American infantrymen and machine-gunners within the shortest possible time, to which President Wilson and Mr Baker^[4] are willing to agree. I need not tell you that General Foch, whom I consulted yesterday with regard to this, is most urgent that this meeting of the War Council should take place as soon as possible, for the counter-attacks he is planning will of necessity be very limited as long as he is short of effectives.

On May 20, 1918, I sent a fresh telegram to Mr Lloyd George:

It transpires from our dispatches from M. Jusserand, to whose reports added weight is given by his conversations with Lord Reading, that President Wilson is entirely on our side in this matter. When M. Jusserand asked him to increase the number of infantry and machine-gunners the President replied that he would do so willingly, were it not for one of the Abbeville decisions to which he felt bound to adhere. Mr Baker said practically the same thing to M. Jusserand.^[5]

Finally, General Pershing (perhaps at the suggestion of Washington) did me the honour of calling upon me to inform me that he feared he had been misunderstood at the Abbeville Conference, that he had an open mind and would be only too glad to yield to the arguments which had been put before him, pleading extreme urgency.

I answered him that I relied on the next meeting of the War Council to obtain a contingent of 100,000 American soldiers in June, quite apart from July. His answer was that he was quite ready to agree with me with regard to this number and that there was no need for a sitting at Versailles to decide this. I naturally refused to give up the Versailles Conference.

He then said that he would go and see General Foch and that they could easily come to an agreement. Which has, in fact, taken place.

On June 1, 1918, the meeting of the War Council took place at Versailles.

And on June 7 I telegraphed to M. Jusserand:

We have nothing to hide from the American Government. With regard to the necessity for them to organize their military forces in armies, no one understands that necessity better than I do, and the President may rest assured that we shall do everything in our power to facilitate this.... Our previous communications arose from two causes which are only too easy to understand: first, our urgent need of combatants; second, the great advantage, in view of the critical circumstances, of finishing the practical training of the American formations under fire before creating the staffs.^[6]

I have set out as clearly as possible the details concerning the “serious disagreement” that arose between Marshal Foch and myself in connexion with the immediate or postponed use of the American forces. The strange part about this “serious disagreement” was that we were IN ABSOLUTE AGREEMENT ON ALL POINTS.

How was it possible then to evolve out of this agreement a disagreement that alarmed not only General Foch himself but M. Poincaré as well? Nothing easier. We agreed on fundamentals, but disagreed as to methods of procedure, which neither General Foch nor M. Poincaré wished to carry too far. In other words, I went so far as to demand that the Commander-in-Chief should give an order to the American General—which both the Commander-in-Chief and M. Poincaré were opposed to doing.^[7]

We were all three, General Foch, M. Poincaré, and I, of opinion that we were in urgent need of effectives to replace the men who were falling day by day on the battlefield. But General Foch and M. Poincaré wished the opinion to remain merely an opinion, whereas I was trying to transform it into action in some form. My two opponents did not care to be brought up against the stubbornness of General Pershing, which might easily cause a rupture. In other words, they would have it that I wanted too much, to which I replied that they did not want enough. Foch refused to give an order to his subordinate, alleging always that his authority as Commander-in-Chief amounted to the power, not to give commands, but simply to suggest. And M. Poincaré challenged my right to give Foch an order in this matter or even to advise him with too much insistence. What was the result of all this fuss over a matter about which, at bottom, all the Allies were unanimous but a sudden slackening of resolution in two of the chiefs who were actually charged with the duty of commanding?

The problem lay in the single fact that we had already been fighting for a long time when the first American contingents, which were of necessity inexperienced, joined us. The true function of the American allies was first and foremost to help us to make up for lost time by joining the fray as they arrived, whereas the natural vanity of the great democracy inclined her to throw in her full power for the supreme victory on the last battlefield. A problem of the time and moment the solution of which could decide, and did dramatically decide, the outcome—less by the actual quality of the fighting than by the coming into play of a military strength capable of adaptation of sustained effort, and even of indefinite growth.

We had sent over to America very strong missions of officer-instructors. The sending out of General Berthelot (at the end of May 1918) to the French military training camps in America, on a special mission of inspection, had a happy effect all round. All the officer-instructors were excellent, the work of training was being carried on in the utmost harmony, warlike enthusiasm was universal. General Berthelot paid a tribute to Colonel House, whose keen, enlightened intelligence was of such assistance in the task of the mission.

Just one black spot: the fanatical determination of the great chiefs of the American Army to delay the arrival of the star-spangled banner on the battlefield. The slow organization of the great American Army was costing us, and our allies too, seas of blood, but it was destined, so they kept telling us, to solve the whole mass of military problems at one stroke. Thus it happened that the War was practically over when the Argonne proved to those handsome, gallant soldiers of valiant America that death-defying courage was not enough to win a strategical success.

I had warned them beforehand.^[8] But their fierce super-patriotism refused to listen, and they wanted nothing less than a heaven-born strategical coup that should enable them to begin and to end the War spectacularly with one stroke. Had that miracle happened I should be ready to believe that public opinion would have forced the Senate to vote for the Treaty.

In his Final Report (pp. 39 and 40) General Pershing states that General Pétain put French troops under his orders for the battle of Saint-Mihiel. From this he could see that we were not sparing of confidence in his abilities as a commander.

The day came at length (September 1918) when our comrades (with French guns) arrived at Saint-Mihiel hot on the heels of the departing Germans. The rejoicings that followed were indescribable. Our people had packed all the children and happy mothers from the town into a heterogeneous collection of motor-cars and lorries, amid flowers and foliage and dainties to eat, with song, laughter, and kisses, the merry cries of France found once more in the handclasp of America. Why must this happy procession, with its glorious enthusiasm, end in the final wretched casting up of debit and credit balances?

Before coming to the question of my “disagreement” with Marshal Foch, I ought to say that he had established a certain number of points:

1.Thanks to his intelligent, friendly, and even affectionate mode of collaboration, he got from the foreign armies placed under his orders the very utmost effort they were capable of.^[9]

2.The American Army was an “excellent” army, and full of spirit.

3.But it was “inexperienced and raw, and had to learn in a few months or even a few weeks what had taken us several years.”

The American Army being such in October 1918, what, according to the Marshal, were the respective attitudes of the French Minister of War and the Generalissimo of the Allied armies?

As for the General, it seemed to him, so he tells us, “unfair and unreasonable not to take into account, in his dealings with that army, this lack of experience, and to treat it as if it had already been fighting beside us for a very long time.”

How then was he to treat it? By employing gentleness, patience,^[10] and persuasion, in preference to severity and violence.^[11]

With regard to myself, Marshal Foch alleges that I was of opinion that different methods ought to be adopted.

M. Clemenceau taxed General Pershing with trying before anything else to form an autonomous army with a numerous and imposing staff, acting by itself without paying sufficient heed to the others. He taxed the Marshal with being far too patient, far too accommodating with General Pershing.

Soft words, declared M. Clemenceau, having led to nothing, the time had come to speak out, to have a rumpus, to appeal to President Wilson himself over Pershing’s head, and ask him to intervene and force the General’s hand.

And the Mémorial relates that on October 21, 1918, I addressed an “urgent” letter to the Marshal in which I informed him of my anxiety. “That letter, an admirable effort of composition, by the way,” states the Marshal, “did not make me change my course by a hair’s breadth.... I took absolutely no notice of it whatever.”

Foch answered me by assuring me once again that “the method that consisted in making a smash^[12] was completely useless.”

And he ended his letter with these words:

We must acknowledge the effort put forth by the American Army. After attacking at Saint-Mihiel on the 12th of September it made a fresh attack in the Argonne on the 26th. Between the 26th of September and the 20th of October its losses in action were 54,158 men, IN RETURN FOR VERY INSIGNIFICANT GAINS on a narrow front, it is true, but over particularly difficult ground and confronted with most strenuous resistance on the part of the enemy.

Three weeks later came the Armistice. Was I wrong to be in a hurry?

In conclusion the Marshal declares:

“I am happy to think that I remained friends with Pershing.”^[13] But really and truly France wanted something more from the splendid American fighters than a parade of military friendship between the two leaders.

Perhaps it would be as well to relate here the story of that “urgent” letter and the circumstances in which it was first withheld and then dispatched.

On October 11, 1918, then—a month, be it said again, before the Armistice—I abandoned the “persuasive way.” On that day, accompanied by M. Jeanneney, Under-Secretary of State attached to the Cabinet, I betook myself to the Élysée to show the President of the Republic the draft of the letter I intended to send Foch, in order to bring about a decision concerning the inaction of the American troops, so prejudicial to the Allied armies, while the battle was actually raging. The letter was certainly pretty strongly worded—it was the hundreds of thousands of dead, the superhuman efforts made for years by our glorious soldiers, that dictated it. It was “harsh” both to Pershing, who did not want to obey, and to Foch, who did not want to command.

M. Poincaré read the letter, and formally advised me not to send it.

“I don’t believe that things can ever be kept secret,” he said. “If that letter is sent its contents will become known to the Marshal’s entourage, and without a doubt to Pershing’s as well. It might easily mean seriously wounded susceptibilities. At all events, I think that some of its phrases ought to be softened.”

How could anyone give expression to such a fear when, in May, Foch’s letter, not less trenchant than this of mine, had been read by Pershing, and had convinced Wilson—and had not hurt anybody’s feelings in the slightest?

It was impossible for me not to be aware that the Marshal was in constant communication with the President of the Republic. Nothing could be more legitimate and proper, if only the two persons concerned had been possessed by less exalted notions of their own personality. It was only too easy for them to join forces in order to oppose my action.

I took back my letter, I altered it, I toned it down, and, as I was leaving for the Front, I asked M. Jeanneney to go again the next day to the Élysée and to give M. Poincaré the new draft, in which his observations had been taken into account.

Next day, therefore, M. Jeanneney went back to the Élysée, and fulfilled his errand, and that same evening M. Poincaré sent him a very long letter, in which he said in substance:

I maintain my point of view. This letter must not be written. It is not impossible that it may provoke the Marshal’s resignation.

If, contrary to my advice, M. Clemenceau thinks it his duty to send this letter it will have to be still more toned down. It is still too harsh with regard to the Americans and still too harsh with regard to Foch. For instance, M. Clemenceau says to the Marshal, “It is our country’s command that you shall command.” If that was said to me I should resign.

And, furthermore, is it M. Clemenceau’s business to concern himself with what Marshal Foch does as Commander-in-Chief of the American Army? In that capacity is not Marshal Foch responsible rather to the American Government?

So now the dreadful secret is out at last!

General Foch had asked me to have him nominated Commander-in-Chief of the Allied armies, and, having obtained this title, I discovered that what he understood by sole command was an administrative council of THREE for the exchange of arguments. I would very much like to know at what moment the sole command had deprived me of part of my authority over the French military command. There were allies certainly who had the right to say their say in exactly the same way as I had, and, in the event of disagreement, there was always the Supreme Council to fall back on. But here the beauty of the thing was that every one was in agreement, even General Foch, even M. Poincaré; the only difficulty was that these two individuals refused (at the most critical moment of the War) to exercise the authority conferred on the Generalissimo at Doullens. But, above all, what extraordinary behaviour on the part of this head of the French Government who wonders if the French Generalissimo is not responsible “RATHER” to the American Government—presumably in opposition—in a controversy in which the life and death of France are at stake!

During the fighting Foch ruled the combatants as he had done at the Marne and at the Yser. In council he relied on arguments like a lawyer. In the American dispute we were all in agreement, and as the question was a purely military one it was for him to give the authoritative word. Not at all. Pershing persisted in not acting, and Foch in not commanding. And so, to help our soldiers, I had to take it upon myself to say the decisive word to the chief whose will seemed paralysed, with whom I was in agreement at all points, except that it was for the General-in-Chief to translate his personal opinion into definite and systematic orders.

That was the situation summed up in my apostrophe: “Commander, it is our country’s command that you shall command.” This might be the decisive word, the word of salvation to bring Foch back to the grim reality. But it frightened M. Poincaré, who refused his consent, yet had no advice to give me. I might just go on watching our soldiers fall.

Later, long after the War, when I at last read—I had refused to read it before, and I am not sorry for my refusal—M. Poincaré’s letter to M. Jeanneney, I was to learn that the new theory of the President, which withdrew the Marshal from my authority, consisted merely in depriving me, in virtue of the sole command, of part of my authority over Marshal Foch.

Had I not actually seen the document I could not have believed it. At the height of the War the President of the Republic actually furnishes the commander of the Allied armies with arguments to encourage him to resist his immediate chief, the Prime Minister and Minister of War. He explains to the simple mind of the soldier, unversed in legal intricacies, that the Allied Governments, when they gave him powers over their troops, partly withdrew him from the authority of the Prime Minister and Minister of War.

The dispute turned simply on what action ought to follow from the establishment of the sole command. General Pershing would not alter his way of working. Marshal Foch, from whom Poincaré could not take away a jot of his definite right to command Pershing, would not command, and M. Poincaré, who would not admit my right to command Foch to command, would have it that we must all three remain eyeing one another in helpless deadlock, a poor result from the final organization of an effective command that was meant to ensure victory, but merely forced us to leave our soldiers unsupported. That was what we were driven to give our minds to when meanwhile the blood of our soldiers was flowing in torrents while two million men who had come over expressly to help them were compelled to wait until our war magnificoes should be pleased to think better.

Then by way of conclusion after that strange statement of doctrine^[14] these words, which are Poincaré at his purest and most unadulterated:

The chief thing seems to me to be that we should be in agreement with the Marshal regarding the necessity for rapid organization, and that we should ask him to give us a regular report of what he does in this respect and the progress he achieves.^[15] If at the end of a few weeks^[16] things remained as they were we could then have recourse to extreme measures, but as there is a possibility that with somewhat thin-skinned foreigners such measures might spoil everything, we must, in my opinion, have recourse to them ONLY IF THE SITUATION BECOMES REALLY DESPERATE.

I am quoting the actual words. The argument ran like this: The measures you propose might spoil everything. Therefore they must only be employed if the situation becomes REALLY DESPERATE. At that rate we might have waited until the defeatist campaigns had utterly gangrened minds that were already turning septic before making up our minds to lay hands on the traitors. This timidity is surely responsible for the shedding of too much blood.

On October 14 I came back in the morning from the Front, where our men were falling, falling. M. Jeanneney said to me, “M. Poincaré still advises you not to write to the Marshal. Here is the letter he has written to me.”

Furiously, I freely confess, I thrust the letter away, writing and signing a note on the cover to the effect that I refused to take cognizance of it. This showed what my feelings were at being invited to exercise this excessive patience while the fate of France hung in the balance. There was just one thing the good President did not sufficiently take into account, and that was that while he weighed and arranged his ifs our soldiers were lying in heaps on the field, while their American comrades quivered with impatience as they waited for the days that were to bring them glory.

I sent my letter to the Marshal. There is no mention of it in the Mémorial. It would have thrown a searchlight upon the whole matter.

What does Marshal Foch do on receipt of my message? The head of the State had taken care to inform him that constitutionally, as Commander-in-Chief of the American Army, he was “RATHER” under the orders of Mr Wilson. My letter—he says so himself—“did not make him change his course by a hair’s-breadth.”

“I took absolutely no notice of it whatever,” he says.

And yet there must be some explanation for all these wretched incoherencies.

Here there comes in a vital question for the history of the War: how, in fact, did Marshal Foch make use of the sole command? To-day everybody still speaks with enthusiasm of this marvellous engine of victory. But even to this very day no actual demonstration in the shape of facts has followed the talk. And yet this is the very question which the future will seek to have answered.

I have already said, without any reserve whatever, that in the bitter fighting on the Yser the Marshal showed himself a hero. Not for worlds would I say the least word to belittle that magnificent élan which carried him through that trial, one of the most arduous of the whole War. And I have paid my homage to him for this with all my heart.

How far he really was a supreme leader may be a disagreeable question for a man who was not averse from being occasionally compared to Napoleon. It is a question that will have to be solved by the historian, and I cannot do better than leave it to judges untouched by the passions and prejudices of to-day. Nevertheless, I have a right to state that the civilian Academy’s military testimonial, presented to him by M. Poincaré within the sacred precincts of the Palais Mazarin, has no more positive value than an old song. Some day, we shall require competent judges who will arrive at a decision from actual evidence, instead of lyrical outbursts of panegyric. Qualified historians will then be able to draw conclusions and give judgment with full knowledge.

Marshal Foch, without previous warning, opened his trenches against his own comrades, though one of them has Verdun to his credit, by declaring roundly, without a word of proof, that we could have brought the War to an end in 1917. What can we not prove with ifs enough? This kind of argument is the great standby of men who are hunting for a red herring. If he thought he could thus divert criticism from his own strategy he was mistaken.

“The sole command,” he would say, “is JUST A PHRASE. In 1917 we had tried it with Nivelle, and it hadn’t worked. You have to know how to lead the Allies. You must not command them. You must deal with some differently from others.... That is the sole command: YOU DON’T GIVE ORDERS, YOU MAKE SUGGESTIONS.”

The Marshal thus teaches us that the sole command is not exercised by a general-in-chief in relation to his equals like a drill-sergeant dealing with a squad of recruits. We knew that already. Why, then, was there so much fuss to get hold of a decisive authority which, when the hour had actually come, must needs, it seems, peter out in finicking, spineless verbiage? Why all that fuss for nothing? The Marshal does not give orders: he makes suggestions. “For they would have thrown off the yoke if I had made them feel it.”^[17]

Who could believe that it is a professional soldier who shows so openly this total failure to grasp the meaning of the supreme command? Where shall we be when, following this wonderful example, officers give up commanding in order to suggest their military views to their subordinates? It seems a dream.

I asked myself what fogs of obfuscation could have awakened in the mind of the sole commander such mistrust of his own authority. What we were looking for was swiftness in bringing all the various military moves into direct correlation by the co-ordinating action of a single supreme will, while our sole commander claimed to obtain better results by simple attempts at persuasion.

I have no doubt that the Marshal was sincere when he said he was obsessed with the desire to please every one. For a chief this is not always a suitable quality. It is even the very opposite of what is aimed at in military command. The Marshal knew perfectly well that all differences between him and me would eventually be settled. But Sir Douglas Haig reacted violently at times. President Wilson would disquiet an interlocutor by a smile like a benevolent wolf. Mr Lloyd George was by no means the bleating lamb of the fables. It was the dangers that might arise from these quarters against which presumably the Generalissimo meant to guard himself, especially as the terms of the agreement provided, in case of difference of opinion, for an appeal by the Allied general to his own Government. I am far from blaming the Commander-in-Chief for taking all necessary precautions to humour his new subordinates. All Foch’s predecessors in history had made this discovery, and won universal approval. Yet in the long run it was imperative that a superior will should rise above all shilly-shallying. Otherwise the unity of command was merely an extra parade of impotence meant to appease simple minds, and did not even work when it was a question of getting one or two American divisions to join up with Allied divisions.

However legitimate they might be, these preoccupations of the Commander-in-Chief ought not to have changed either the form or the substance of his military orders to the new subordinates put at his disposal in order to speed up the execution of movements that had been slowed down through his art of suggestion. He would thus have been spared the awkwardness of casting aside by his own act the superior power that had been entrusted to him, to say nothing of the awkwardness of sometimes seeming to be more ready to agree with Mr Lloyd George than with his own Government, as happened in the so-called Villa Romaine affair.

As I never ceased to urge the “sole commander” to give General Pershing the order to put at his disposal one of the American divisions that were ready to go into the front line, he finally told me that he had given a written order to General Pershing, and that the latter had formally refused to obey.^[18] I got a very disagreeable impression from this, but dared not press the matter further than the Commander-in-Chief desired. I have read in a newspaper that Foch went so far as to say that nobody had disobeyed. That is not what he told me of General Pershing. Before forming an opinion we should have to know to what extent he had commanded—I carefully do not say suggested.

As far as I am concerned, how could I consider myself to blame for energetically demanding the implementing of the agreement that the High Command had set up in order to increase the co-ordination of our forces in the field? I did my very best to make everything easy for the organization of the Americans. I do not in the least deny that in a terrible emergency I endeavoured to obtain from them the utmost possible total of military output, and that, thanks to the higher authorities, I failed. But was that an idea for which I have to defend myself? General Foch, to avoid replying to that question, prudently abstains from asking it. But I ask it, and asked it must be, since it is the whole matter at issue between Pershing, Foch, and myself.

The Marshal had the power to command. On his own admission he preferred to “suggest.”^[19] Hence the conflict. I was all the more against it as, in my opinion, the Germans, as soon as they felt the shock of the American arrival in the field, were bound to realize that all hope of winning the War was thenceforth lost for them.

There was great haste and great hustle, therefore, in my asking Foch, and even Pershing direct, to send the first American divisions into battle among our own men as they became fit to take their part in the fighting.

In short, the “serious disagreement” between Foch and myself as to the best way of making use of the American forces amounted to a perfect accordance of our views as to utilizing the contingents by putting them in the firing-line as they completed their military training. There was not, there could not be, any discussion on the main point. The Marshal could not but ask for contingents. We have seen from his own declaration to the Allied Governments that he was perfectly aware of the difficulties that brought us into conflict with General Pershing, and that he did not shrink from setting out his point of view in trenchant fashion so long as he was not called upon for action.

Why did the Marshal not publish my letter as I am publishing the document in which, in excellent language, he expresses his own point of view? Why did he boast of taking no notice of my letter at the very moment when he was trying to act upon it after a fashion? Why did the President of the Republic take so much trouble to persuade me not to write it, for fear that some indiscretion might bring it to President Wilson’s knowledge, when Mr Lloyd George and Lord Balfour (so reasonable) had asked me to bring Foch’s memorandum, in which he said the same thing that I did, to the knowledge of that same President Wilson, who gave it his approval?

All this because, while General Pershing shut himself up in a passive resistance, Marshal Foch, requested by me to give an order to his subordinate, feared, if he were not obeyed, to find himself embroiled with the American Government. He preferred to make difficulties with me, against whom he would have M. Poincaré’s support, as he had later in the matter of the Rhineland. Meanwhile, there were the soldiers, Marshal!

The trouble was that too often the ideal cannot square itself with the reality. It is a question of adjusting both to each other. And the attempt is not always successful. Knowing that France received more than two million American soldiers, we find it astonishing that it was not a perfectly easy matter to form the first American Army and at the same time to furnish a sufficient number of effectives for the battlefields, where our heroic soldiers were calling for them so urgently. Alas! Marshal Foch, who knew so well how to take the command at the Yser without possessing it as yet, could not manage to exercise it in this formidable emergency, when it had been specifically given him.

[1] It must be said that, without consulting France and without even informing Washington, Lord Milner and General Pershing had previously concluded an agreement for the month of May and the month of June to the exclusive advantage of England, who, it is true, had urgent need of effectives. The Abbeville Conference replaced this agreement by the text quoted here.

[2] The italics are mine.

[3] A very serious point which is merely hinted at here. It was essential, at all costs, to avoid a defeat for the first appearance of the American Army on the scene. An important reason for combining old and young troops on the battlefield. I was incurring a heavy responsibility if some ill-understood or badly executed manœuvre had disastrous consequences.

[4] The American Minister of War.

[5] He did not know that the Abbeville decision was a minimum, beyond which General Pershing had refused to go.

[6] General Pershing had still to wait several weeks before seeing his dream of a great autonomous American Army realized. I could but applaud, for its hour had come, and on July 27, 1918, I telegraphed to the American commander:

“Heartiest congratulations on the creation of the first American Army. History awaits you. You will not fail it.

“G. Clemenceau”

[7] I shall mention M. Poincaré as seldom as possible. But when I am defending myself against Marshal Foch, who in attacking me uses the President of the Republic as a shield, I must needs reply to both my adversaries at once.

[8] All the representatives of the higher American military authorities openly inclined to the views of Pershing—General Bliss being the one exception. They wanted an American Army. They had it. Anyone who saw, as I saw, the hopeless congestion at Thiaucourt will bear witness that they may congratulate themselves on not having had it sooner.

[9] Nothing like giving oneself first-rate testimonials!

[10] Less than a month before the Armistice! Patience means time. Indeed, indeed, there are hours that call for action.

[11] The so-called “violence” consisted in insisting on being obeyed in making military use of a military force to achieve military aims the actual necessity of which, to say nothing of their value, Marshal Foch never denied.

[12] Where does he get that I risked “making a smash” by asking the Supreme Command to exercise its authority to obtain the very thing it was the first to advocate, which was a leg-up for the Allied troops. Foch, in fact, refused to give Pershing orders to send him soldiers. This was on October 21, 1918. There had already been a similar case of a difference of opinion between Foch and Haig, and, Foch himself having appealed to me to settle the contest, I was fortunate enough to get the Englishman to give way. Here is what General Mordacq (Le Commandement unique, p. 144) says about it:

“In the beginning of June, when he wanted to transfer certain English reserves—as he had the perfect right to do—to send them to the French front, General Foch came up against the uncompromising opposition of General Haig. To avoid a clash—a particularly delicate thing in such circumstances—he reported the matter to M. Clemenceau, who on the 7th of June brought together in his room at the War Ministry Lord Milner and Field-Marshal Haig, as well as General Foch and General Wilson. Our allies did their best to show that the recent offensive of the Germans on the French front (on the Chemin des Dames) was merely a demonstration and that they would carry out the main attack, the logical attack, the strategical attack, on the English front, either in order to separate the British Army from the French Army or else to seize Dunkirk, Calais, and Boulogne, and thus cut off the British armies from England.”

The point at issue was, as may be seen, of a similar nature. Only on that occasion, sobered by the collapse of the Chemin des Dames, Foch did not hesitate to appeal to me, without waiting for me to take the initiative.

[13] Foch boasts of having remained on friendly terms with Pershing because he softened his command to the point of non-interference. I think I may say that I obtained the required result without alienating General Pershing’s friendship. The American Commander-in-Chief no doubt found it quite as trying as we did to see his fine army inactive on the very edge of the fight. In any case, he had the courage to say yes or no, and could not in his heart blame those whom he saw doing their best to protect the interest of the common cause. At the very moment when Foch was ridiculously denouncing me to the American people General Pershing was not backward in manifesting ample tokens of his esteem for me, which I am happy to reciprocate in the highest degree.

When I went to America to defend France against the accusation of militarism General Pershing, in New York, publicly came to greet me in a friendly way, at the great meeting in the Metropolitan Opera House. Later he came from Indianapolis to Chicago to ride in uniform with General Dawes in my carriage, because something, I don’t quite know what, was feared from a municipality and populace that, while courteous, contained certain sections with German sympathies. And when the American Legion, quite recently, did me the great honour of visiting me in Paris, General Pershing made a point of joining his comrades in order to come and salute me. Surely no clearer proof is needed? And besides, even if my temperament had betrayed me at the height of the crisis into expressing myself too violently, was it for a Frenchman (whether a general or a civilian) to denounce me?

[14] Strange because one may wonder that this thesis—which, by the way, does not bear five minutes’ close examination—should be upheld by the President of the French Republic. Lawyers give us these surprises. Nothing is simpler than the solution of the problem anticipated in the terms laid down at Doullens. The general who felt he should not or could not obey the Commander-in-Chief was to appeal to his own Government, which would give the final decision.

[15] A marvellous lesson of action in the direst peril!

[16] Once more—this was one month before the Armistice!

[17] It was in order to change this state of affairs, by conferring upon him the supreme command, that he was given the right to speak as a chief. Well, here he was, renouncing this priceless right, about which so much fuss had been made, at the essential moment for exercising it, in the very hour when swiftness in execution demanded military obedience under the strictest régime of inflexible authority.

[18] I have taken the liberty of consulting General Pershing on this point, and he replied that he had no recollection of it.

[19] “There was a practically impenetrable barrier between the High Command and the executants, general directives were only transmitted in fragments, and a certain army commander, who was the most actively engaged, only learned those of Marshal Foch by reading M. Louis Madelin in the Revue des Deux Mondes.”—Comment finit la guerre, by General Mangin.