New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915: April-September, 1915Various
History
New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915: April-September, 1915
Various
World War, 1914-1918
The Germans looked upon it with appreciative eyes and cultured minds.
But it did not please them. They were still very angry. Its destruction
was a necessity of war. It could not be destroyed by artillery because
it was half underground and screened by the giant trees. But it could be
destroyed by picks and axes. A squad of soldiers was detailed to the
job. They did it thoroughly. The gardener took me there to see. Not a
scrap of the mosaic remained. The fountain was smashed to bits. A
headless Venus and a smashed and battered Adonis were lying prone upon
the ground.
The visitors to the château and environs afterward joined their comrades
in firing the town. Night had come. Also across the bridge waited the
hundred and fifty thousand reinforcements come from Lunéville. The five
hundred of the two thousand inhabitants who remained were herded to the
upper end of the town near the station. That portion was not to be
destroyed because the German General would make his headquarters there.
The inhabitants were to be given a treat. They were to witness the
entrance of the hundred and fifty thousand--the power and might of
Germany was to be exhibited to them. So while the flames leaped high
from the burning city, reddening the sky for miles, while old men
prayed, while women wept, while little children whimpered, the sound of
martial music was heard down the street near the bridge. The infantry
packed in close formation, the red light from the fire shining on their
helmets, were doing the goose step up the main street to the
station--the great German army had entered the city of Gerbéviller with
the honors of war.
General Foch, the Man of Ypres
An Account of France's New Master of War
[From THE NEW YORK TIMES, April, 1915.]
"Find out the weak point of your enemy and deliver your blow there,"
said the Commander of the Twentieth French Army Corps at Nancy at a
staff banquet in 1913.
"But suppose, General," said an artillery officer, "that the enemy has
no weak point?"
"If the enemy has no weak point," returned the commander, with a gleam
of the eye and an aggressive tilt of the chin, "make one."
The commander was Foch--Ferdinand Foch--who has suddenly flashed before
the world as the greatest leader in the French Army after Joffre, and
who in that remark at Nancy gave the index to the basic quality of his
character as a General. General Foch is today in command of the northern
armies of France, besides being the chief Lieutenant and confidant of
Joffre. Joffre conceives; Foch, master tactician, executes. He finds the
weak point; if there is no weak point, he creates or seeks to create
one.
When King George of England was at the front in France recently he
conferred the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath--the highest military
distinction in the form of an order within the gift of the British
Crown--on two Frenchmen. Joffre was one. The other was Foch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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