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Foreign News: Chief of Staff

2 minute read
TIME

Every morning when the late great Marshal Ferdinand Foch reached his fusty little office in the top of the Invalides, he would lean his umbrella in the corner, adjust his spectacles, tap the barometer on his office wall, then call as he sat down at his desk “Et maintenant, ou est mon Weygand?” Loyal, capable General Max Weygand, member of the superior War Council, was always there. Despite the fact that he had been Chief Assistant, almost a second son to Marshal Foch since the outbreak of the war, General Weygand never dreamed of sitting down in the marshal’s presence, never called him by his first name. Marshal Foch was appreciative:

“When I am no longer here,” said he on his deathbed, “If a military peril menaces France, call on Weygand and you can be tranquil.”

Without waiting for emergency, President Doumergue called on Weygand last week, appointed him Chief of the French Army General Staff, actual head of the army. The promotion of Weygand, strict disciplinarian, frank militarist, was popular with all but Liberals and Socialists. Wrote the Socialist Le Peuple:

“His appointment is a provocation to the working class of the Republic. He is the standard bearer of all the hopes of the reactionaries and the clericals. Put in power by the Right, by the Fascisti and by the Jesuits* he will as Chief of Staff do the work of the Right.”

Even the Socialists had no criticism of General Weygand’s ability. Irked at sneering suggestions that he was a mere “Yes Man” to the Marshal, in 1920 he begged and obtained a chance to go to Poland, direct Poland’s defense against Soviet invasion. On his arrival Russian troops were only 12½ mi. from Warsaw. Five months later the last defeated Soviet troops were in full retreat. In Paris, proud as a father, Marshal Foch gleefully applauded his success.

*Marshal Foch’s brother, Father Germain Foch, is a Jesuit priest, the Marshal himself was Jesuit trained.

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