In presenting to Foch the baton of a Marshal of France, President Poincare recalled certain definitions he had often heard Foch reiterate:  “War is the department of moral force; battle, the struggle between two wills; victory, the moral superiority of the conqueror, the moral depression of the conquered.”

“This moral superiority,” said the President of the French Republic to the new Marshal of France, “you have tended like a sacred flame.”

Always, the tone of tribute to Foch is one of veneration for the greatness of his soul and his preeminent ability to represent and to lead his people.

“You are not,” President Poincare went on, “of those who let themselves be downcast by danger; neither are you of those whom victory dazzles.  You do not believe that we are near the end of our efforts and our sacrifices.  You guard against optimism as much as against depression.”

This he said to Foch, in the field, on August 23, 1918, when the fruits of victory though in sight were not yet within grasp.

Had the presentation been three months later, President Poincare would (I think) have spoken not differently; better even than before, he would have known that Foch is not “of those whom victory dazzles”; and not less clearly than before would he have perceived that Foch does not “believe that we are near the end of our efforts and our sacrifices.”

Foch may well feel that he has done his utmost for his country and for mankind, in the crisis for which he prepared himself and which he met with such superb faith in the triumph of Right; but he certainly does not feel that he has ushered in the millennium; he knows what other demands there are and will be upon the souls of men, on their devotion to their country, their perception of truth and honor, and their ardor and ability to serve humanity.  He knows that not France alone but every nation has need to-day and henceforth of leaders who will do just what he did:  personify the highest ideals of their people and prepare themselves to defend those ideals intelligently, unselfishly, devoutly.

He has established a new standard in leadership.  Far from culminating an old order, he has inaugurated a new—­an order which everyone may join who wills to serve.  Its motto is:  “Right is Might; believe in the power of Right; learn to uphold it; strengthen others, as they come in contact with you, to meet the enemies of Right and to vanquish them; never forget that the moving power of the world is soul, and the laws of the soul were made by God.”

Too deep a student of history, too keen an analyst of human nature to entertain any illusions about the enemy he has conquered but not converted, Foch knows that if what he has been privileged to do for France and for her allies is to have any lasting value, there must be a league of freedom-loving peoples as strong and as united to preserve peace as they were to win it; and that this league must be supported by a general morale not one whit less devoted to the end in view than was the morale which won the war.