But if any one, indulging in the fantastic extravagancies of youth, had
ventured to forecast, then, even a tithe of what they have been called
to do for France, he would have been set down as madder than March
hares know how to be.




V

LEARNING TO BE A ROUGH RIDER

When Ferdinand Foch graduated, third in his class, from the artillery
school at Fontainebleau, instead of seeking to use what influence he
might have commanded to get an appointment in some garrison where the
town life or social life was gay for young officers, he asked to be
sent back to Tarbes.

No one, to my knowledge, has advanced an explanation for this move.

To so earnest and ambitious a student of military art (Foch will not
permit us to speak of it as "military science") sentimental reasons
alone would never have been allowed to control so important a choice.

That he always ardently loved the Pyrenean country, we know. But to a
young officer of such indomitable purpose as his was, even then, it
would have been inconceivable that he should elect to spend his first
years out of school in any other place than that one where he saw the
maximum opportunity for development.