Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill A YOUNG SOLDIER OF A LOST CAUSE THERE is nothing to record of Ferdinand Foch's first soldiering except that from the depot of the Fourth Regiment of Infantry, in his home city of Saint-fitienne, he was sent to Chalon-sur- Saone, and there was discharged in January, 1871, after the capitulation of Paris, He did not distinguish himself in any way. He was just one of a multitude of youths who rushed to the colors when France called, and did what they could in a time of sad confusion, when a weak government had paralyzed the effectiveness of the army—of the nation! Whatever blows Ferdinand Foch struck in 1870 were without weight in helping to avert France's catastrophe. But he was like hundreds of thousands of other young Frenchmen similarly powerless in this: In the anguish he M suffered because of what he could not do to save France from humiliation were laid the foundations of all that he has contributed to the glory of new France. At the time when his Fall term should have been beginning at Saint Clement's College, Metz was under siege by the German army, and its garrison and inhabitants were suffering horribly from hunger and disease; Paris was surrounded; the German headquarters were at Versailles; and the imperial standards so dear to young Foch because of the great Napoleon were forever lowered when the white flag was hoisted at Sedan and an Emperor with a whole army passed into captivity. How much the young soldier-student of the Saone comprehended then of the needlessness of the shame and surrender of those inglorious days we do not know. He cannot have been sufficiently versed in military understanding to realize how much of the defeat France suffered was due to her failure to fight on, at this juncture and that, when a stiffer resistance would have tu...