And the main features of the answers to that query were these: 

Foch is the “greatest strategist in Europe and the humblest,” in the words of Joffre.

Foch is the hero of the Marne, the man who perceived on Sept. 9 that there must be a gap between the Prussian Guard and the Saxon Army, and who gathered enough artillery to crush the guard in the St. Gond marshes and forced both the Prussians and the Saxons, now separated, to retreat.

Foch is the man of Ypres, the commander who was in general control of the successful fight made by the French and the British, aided by the Belgians, to prevent the Germans from breaking through to Calais.

Foch, in short, is one of the military geniuses of the war, so record observers at the front.  He is a General who has something of the Napoleonic in his composition; the dramatic in war is for him—­secrecy and suddenness, gigantic and daring movements; fiery, yet coldly calculated attacks; vast strategic conceptions carried out by swift, unfaltering tactics.  Foch has a tendency to the impetuous, but he is impetuous scientifically.  He has, however, taken all in all, much more of the dash and nervousness and warmth of the Southern Latin than has Joffre—­cool, cautious, taciturn Joffre.  Yet both men are from the south of France.  They were born within a few miles of one another, within three months of one another, Foch being born on Oct. 2, 1851, and Joffre on Jan. 12, 1852.

Most writers who have dealt with Foch agree on this as one of his paramount characteristics—­the Napoleonic mode of military thought.  When Foch was director of the Ecole de Guerre, where he had much to do with shaping the military views of many of the men who are now commanding units of the French Armies, he was considered to be possessed of almost an obsession on the subject of Napoleon.  He studied Napoleon’s campaigns, and restudied them.  He went back much further, however, in his choice of a master, and gave intense application to the campaigns of Caesar.  Napoleon and Caesar—­these were the minds from which the mind of the Marne and Ypres has learned some of its lessons of success.

Here Foch invites comparison with another of the dominant figures of the war—­General French.  For French is described by his biographer as “a worshipper of Napoleon,” regarding him as the world’s greatest strategist, and in following out and studying Napoleon’s campaigns French personally covered and studied much of the ground in Belgium over which he has been fighting.  French is a year younger than Foch.  They are old friends, as are French and Joffre, and Joffre and Foch.

The inclination of Foch to something of the Napoleonic is shown beyond the realm of strategy and tactics.  Foch is credited with knowing the French soldier, his heart, his mind, his capabilities, and the method of getting the most out of those capabilities, in a way reminiscent of the winner of Jena.  And Foch knows not only the privates, but the officers.  When he went to the front he visited each commander; the Colonels he called by name; the corps commanders, without exception, had attended his lectures at the Ecole de Guerre.