In the East, another result of the German offensive in France was the change in the Commander-in-Chief. General Guillaumat was very highly thought of in France, and rightly so. In Macedonia he had, as I have said, restored the shaken discipline of the French troops and had entirely reorganized them, but in the extremely critical situation in which Paris found itself in view of the German advance in May, it was decided to entrust him with the defence of the Capital, and consequently on June 8, he quietly departed from Salonica and was succeeded by General Franchet d’Espérey. The loss of the Chemin des Dames, where the latter had commanded an army, had not exactly caused him to fall into disgrace, because the defeat does not appear to have been due to any fault of his own, but it rendered him less highly considered than he had been before, and consequently he was sent to take command at Salonica, where it was not believed that important operations would ever take place again. General Franchet d’Espérey is a man of high historical and literary as well as military culture, he has travelled a great deal abroad and belongs to an aristocratic family; he is somewhat brusque in his manner, impulsive and sometimes dominated by the last incident which had happened and had put him in a good or bad humour with everybody. When he was in a good humour, he was gay, _bon camarade_, and one could tell him or ask him anything, whereas when something had gone amiss he was irritable and difficult to deal with. For General Mombelli he had great sympathy, and even when our Commander had occasion to complain energetically about some deficiency in the services for which we were dependent on the C.A.A.--and occasions were not lacking--he always accepted his remarks in a friendly spirit and did everything that was possible to satisfy him. He did not enter into discussions on the various questions submitted to him and often made remarks that were not absolutely accurate, basing his opinion on something that he had read or heard without going into the matter thoroughly. But as a strategist he showed in Macedonia qualities of the highest rank, and he commanded with success the extremely mixed team of the Armèe d’Orient. General Guillaumat deserves credit for having thought out the Macedonian offensive, basing it on Voivod Michich’s old plan of 1916, for the part which concerned him; General d’Espérey perfected the plan, completed it, and then carried it out.