allemand doit se transformer avant que l'on accorde à son gouvernement la même confiance qu' aux Etats coalisés.

La Suisse est dans une situation particulière. Les traités de 1815 lui ont conféré la neutralité perpétuelle. Si cette neutralité subsiste, elle parait incompatible avec l'obligation de fournir des contingents militaires à la Ligue et de prendre les armes dans les cas d'exécution d'Etats délinquants. Le gouvernement belge vient de se libérer, aussitôt après être rentré à Bruxelles, de la neutralité dite garantie que les traités de 1831 et 1839 lui avaient imposée. Elle la rejette comme une entrave et une injure. Rien ne l'empèchera donc d'entrer dans la Ligue, et elle en fera certainement partie. Mais on ne sait encore quelle conduite suivra la Confédération helvétique. Le Conseil fédéral ni aucune des Assemblées fédérales ou cantonales n'ont encore discuté la question. Il sera

pourtant très important que la Suisse se prononce en faveur de l'un ou l'autre système, car sa situation géographique au cœur de l'Europe obligera la future Ligue à prendre telle ou telle disposition suivant que le territoire helvétique restera complètement neutralisé ou sera compris dans le domaine de la Ligue.

En somme, la masse du public français, aussi bien dans les assemblées politiques que dans la foule, est contraire à toute combinaison qui tendrait, ne fût-ce qu'en apparence, à l'établissement d'un grand consortium politique international. Par contre elle se montre favorable à tout système qui favorisera la limitation des armements sans désarmer la nation. Si l'on désire la gagner à ce qu'on appelle depuis quelques années la Société des Nations, il importe de commencer par la conclusion d'un traité entre les Etats coalisés contre l'Allemagne, en évitant d'appeler aux premières délibérations relatives à ce sujet les ennemis et les neutres. Les Français ont remarqué avec plaisir que, dans ses dernières déclarations sur le sujet qui lui est si cher, le président Wilson a employé les mots " Association" et "League" au lieu de Society."

Pratiquement la procédure à suivre serait la suivante. Il ne serait pas question de la Société des Nations dans les préliminaires de paix, ou bien il y serait simplement

mentionné que les Etats contractants se réservent d'en fixer les conditions essentielles dans le traité de paix. Ces conditions essentielles seraient en effet insérées dans le traité de paix entre les belligérants. Mais toute l'organisation de détail serait discutée et arrêtée dans une grande Conférence ultérieure où seraient admis les nonbelligérants. Comme il serait imprudent de la part des Etats alliés et associés contre l'Allemagne d'attendre l'heureuse clôture des travaux de cette Conférence pour se garantir mutuellement contre de futures agressions, ils signeraient entre eux, en même temps que le traité de paix, une convention constituant une espèce d'assurance mutuelle contre les risques de guerre. Ils auraient ainsi le loisir d'examiner si l'organisation plus vaste élaborée par les représentants de presque tous les peuples civilisés, présente des garanties suffisantes de fonctionnement régulier. De l'avis de beaucoup de personnes d'expérience, il conviendrait que la grande Conférence ellemême limitât ses ambitions et réservât pour des réunions périodiques ultérieures la solution de questions particulièrement délicates. On arriverait par étapes au but

final.

C'est ainsi qu'on a procédé pour toutes les Unions et Commissions internationales qui fonctionnent à la satisfaction générale, par exemple l'Union postale universelle, l'Union télégraphique, les deux Unions pour la protection de la propriété littéraire et artistique et de la propriété industrielle, la Commission européenne du Danube, l'Office central des transports de marchandises par chemin de fer, etc. Pour aucune d'elles on n'est arrivé du premier coup à une organisation complète. C'est peu à peu que les rouages se sont perfectionnés, que les règlements se sont codifiés, que les adhésions sont venues. Il en sera de même pour la Société des Nations. Plus on voudra aller vite, plus on soulèvera d'objections et de résistances. L'expérience seule convaincra les récalcitrants et les hésitants. Il faudra se féliciter si, en 1919, les Etats coalisés contre la Germanie réussissent à conclure entre eux une Ligue durable, et à poser, avec les non-belligérants, les premières bases d'une Société des Nations. AUGUSTE GAUVAIN.

Art. 13.-THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF MARSHAL FOCH.

It is surprising how little has been written even yet about the character and the work of Marshal Foch during the war. His lectures at the Ecole de Guerre had given him a reputation outside France long before 1914. Published in book form, they had been much discussed in Germany, where his criticisms of von Moltke and Prince Frederick Charles for their conduct of the war of 1870 had provoked warm dissent; Foch had maintained that only the mental and moral paralysis of the French leaders had saved the Prussian Command from paying a heavy penalty for its faults of carelessness and over-confidence. In 1914 Foch distinguished himself first at the defence of the Grand Couronné at Nancy, where the Germans, pushing on hotly after breaking the French offensive in Lorraine, were finally held up and the French eastern defences saved. On that episode in Marshal Foch's career little or nothing has ever been written in this country. At the first battle of the Marne he commanded the Ninth Army, with Franchet d'Espérey, afterwards victor in the Balkans, commanding the Fifth Army on his left. For three days-Sept. 6, 7, and 8-he was hard pressed by the repeated attacks of von Buelow and von Hausen; and it was then that, with the serene calm which all authorities agree in attributing to him, he remarked that, if the enemy were assailing him so violently, it could only be because he needed compensation for his failures on other parts of the field. (Bah! C'est qu'ailleurs ses affaires vont mal et qu'il cherche une compensation.') At the finish he counter-attacked with his left, fell on the flank of the Saxons and the Prussian Guard and drove them violently back-one of the great strokes of the battle. Then he commanded on the Yser, led the French troops on the Somme in 1916, and after the unfortunate offensive of April 16, 1917, which led to the dismissal of General Nivelle, he became Chief of Staff.

For all this time the record of contemporary history about him is extremely meagre. On March 26, 1918, he took command of all the Western front. Of his methods and plans as Generalissimo he has told us no more and

6

no less than he told the journalists whom he occasionally received at Headquarters—that is, nothing at all. He is, as the French said of Marshal Joffre, un silencieux.' But there is the campaign which he waged from March 26 to Nov. 11, the day of the signing of the armistice; and there are the lectures which he gave to his officers on the art of war and the principles on which it should be waged. Here are theory and practice ready to our hand. A comparison should do something to elucidate for us both the war and Marshal Foch.

man.

Of the personal qualities of Marshal Foch we know a little. The stories that are told of him indicate the M. Clemenceau is sponsor for the statement that, when the Allies were being driven back at the end of March, Marshal Foch declared, Before Amiens, in Amiens, and behind Amiens I will go on fighting'; and there is that other story, less well authenticated, how, to a general who in a desperate situation declared that nothing was left but to be killed, Marshal Foch replied, No: first we must resist.' General Canonge, himself a former lecturer at the Ecole de Guerre, who recently published a remarkable study of the first Battle of the Marne, describes Foch as inaccessible to discouragement,' 'calm and always confident,' and praises his great knowledge, his power of envisaging a situation, his readiness to take a decision'-a quality which Napoleon ranked very high-'his virility of mind and his unshakeable and infectious confidence.' In his lectures Marshal Foch insists that one of the necessary qualifications for a leader of men is that he should be able to inspire his subordinates and his army with his own spirit of confidence and resolution. The official notification published when he was promoted to one of the highest ranks in the Legion of Honour adds its own characterisation. It attributes to him 'remarkable coolness (sangfroid) and skill in manœuvre, supported by an energy and tenacity equal to every test.'

Marshal Foch's conception of war is permeated through and through by the view that it is a moral struggle, a conflict of opposing wills. In the laconic message which he addressed to his troops on the Marne on Sept. 8, 1914, he said: 'Every man must be convinced that success will belong to him who holds out longest.'

The most revealing thing that he has himself said about the victorious German offensives in the spring of 1918 and the Allied recovery was that, after all the blows which they had suffered, the Allies still found in themselves the moral energy to make a fresh start. In his lectures he quotes with approval the dictum of Joseph de Maistre: A battle lost is a battle that one believes is lost, for a battle is not lost from material causes.' Good, comments Marshal Foch; then it is lost from moral causes. But, if so, it is by moral causes also that it is won; and we may amplify the aphorism and say, 'A battle won is a battle in which a man refuses to admit that he is beaten.' At bottom it is this conception of war that brought the Allies victoriously through. Regarded separately, each of the German offensives of last spring was triumphant up to a certain point, but they were themselves only moments in a prolonged battle in which Marshal Foch and the Allies, refusing to admit that they were beaten, carried off the victory.

Marshal Foch puts his theory compactly into definitions. War is a matter of moral force. Battle is the struggle between two opposing wills. Victory means moral superiority in the conqueror, moral depression in the conquered. In another passage he has the idea at its simplest: Victoire égale volonté.' From this basis we can leap straight to one of the two main causes which led to the undoing of the Germans in the final campaign. The great von Moltke once wrote that a general must estimate wisely what he sees and divine what he does not see; must take two elements into his calculations the one known, his own will, the other unknown, the will of his opponent. It was one of the two cardinal errors of the Germans in the spring and summer of 1918 that they thought only of one of these two elements, their own will to victory, and ignored the possibility that the Allies might have such moral reserves of will and tenacity as would inspire them to refuse to admit that they were beaten men.

His idea of victory and defeat as products of moral forces leads Marshal Foch to his conception of the Commander as responsible for the result of a battle or a war. Perhaps one should say the 'Command' rather than the 'Commander,' for clearly, in modern times, it is not Vol. 231.-No. 458.

R