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INTERESTING AND PERTINENT TOPICS OF THE DAY FOCHS NAME AS GREAT AS JOFFRES Since yesterday writes a leading French critic the name of Foch has suddenly throughout the entire world become as great as that of Joffre And the entire world including all of Germany that really knows the facts undoubtedly agrees with him himHour Hour by hour as the great allied victory between the Aisne and the Manic develops France realizes more the genius of the man who has brought It about and bow sound was the action of the allies in deciding in spite of their long hesitation to place the fate of the whole of their armies and their own priceless future in the hands of this one great soldier soldierFor For dreary heartbreaking months murmurs of Why doesnt Foch attack were frequently heard With Foch alone however was the knowledge of all the real facts of the situation Several of these facts might have caused a panic had they been al ¬ lowed to l eeome generally known and only the future will reveal to the world how critical almost desperate was the allied position at more than one juncture junctureGen Gen Foch knew that in spite of all appearances the only possible chance was to wait To every in Iiatient minister who while abating none of his confidence in the generalissimo yet failed to see the facts truly as did the great soldier who was strong enough to refrain from all attempts at advertisement Foch answered Attendez atteu lcz wait wait waitThe The Germans with characteristic psychological blundering mistook Fochs patient logic for inherent weakness France their muddleheaded and always overrated intelligence system told them was down and out and had no longer men to fight for her nor generals to lead them German scorn of France based on bought and poorly paid for intelligence was one of the great factors Foch relied on to lead them into the fatal blunder which beginning last week landed the flower of their armies in the des ¬ perately critical situation in which they find them ¬ selves now nowWhen When Gouraud in the Champagne abandoned Mor onvillers heights before the Germans even reached them the ouriishing Germans believed the French really were helpless and their triumph at hand When rerthelots army gave ground in front of Kpernay the German commanders shook hands with jne another and the kaiser came out to see the triumph of his anus Then to the enemys un ¬ utterable amazement Fochs moment came Gouraud had merely played the trick of a clever jiu jitsu student in the Champagne From his real positions behind he had the German masses under terrible fire and his gunners who knowing every inch of the ground and every yard of the distance heaped the abandoned French lilies with German dead deadISertlielot ISertlielot also gave ground before Euernay but when the enemy already shouting victory hurled themselves against the French commanders Italian French and American forces they found a wall of resistance that said Thus far and no farther The arrival of liberal reinforcements in the shape of several divisions of wellseasoned Brit ¬ ish troops relieved Iterthclot of all immediate anxi ¬ ety Having now got the enemy fatally entangled in the depth of their own salient far from the possi ¬ bility of effective help from the north and with thousands of them involved in the dangerous adven ¬ ture south of the Marne while Gouraud In the Champagne was holding cheerfully like a wall of brass Foch suddenly made his tremendous and long foreseen thrust iuto the exposed flank of the mad ¬ dened bull between Soissons and ChateauThierry ChateauThierryGerman German amazement at this inexplicable lightning stroke from a direction from which they were firmly convinced no danger could come was only equaled by the disorIer into which they were thrown by this triple destruction of all their tremendous and scien ¬ tifically thought out plan planThat That was only the beginning of Fochs triumph over the men who claim to be the greatest military leaders in the world How great that triumph will be lKfore the present battle is over can only be gauged for a moment by the degree of his success in preventing the Germans from extricating their defeated and demoralized armies from the critical situation in which he placed them between the Marne and the Aisne AisneFochs Fochs great attack against the flank of the Ger ¬ main salient is being compared in many quarters to the offensive by which Manoury in 1014 with his socalled taxicab army drove von Kluck back across the Marne The two offensives only superficially l car comparison Manourys offensive that sound critic General Lacroix points out was the prelude to a strategic reestablislnueut conceived and carried out by Joffre the result of which drove the German lines back to the north of the Aisuc In the pres ¬ ent battle Fochs flank attack has developed into a principal operation operationAlready Already says General Lacroix it has forced the enemy while putting up a most active resist ¬ ance to abandon little by little the terrain of his recent offensive in order to concentrate on a new line of resistance There are yet some severe struggles to conic but the initiative of operations has changed bauds and that is the capital point Foch willed it be knew how to take advantage of the opportunity and he will never let go his grip
