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Draped completely in long streamers of black were the high walls and soaring towers of the Cathėdrale de Notre Dame. Thus, with a deed, the Catholic Church received the most illustrious and possibly the most devout of her warrior sons, the sole generalissimo who ever commanded ten million men in arms, the great and humble Catholic who reviewed his victory thus: "Without claiming the intervention of a miracle, I say that when, at a moment in history, a clear view is given to a man and he finds later that that clear view has determined movements of enormous consequences in the conduct of a formidable war−then I hold that that clear view, which I think I had in 1918, comes from a Providential Force in the hands of which one is an instrument, and that the victorious decision descends from on high, from a Will which is superior and divine."
The final deed by which France would honor her "Little Warrior"* was to inter him in the only vacant sarcophagus left among those sarcophagi which are ranged about the gigantic, glistening red stone urn in which the Emperor Napoleon sleeps−bathed in purple light which filters through the Dome des Invalides.
Of all the word-tributes paid to Ferdinand Foch last week−and the few speeches of French statesmen were almost incredibly Spartan and brief−perhaps the most significant was uttered by a certain Mile. Breton, telephone operator to Foch from 1924 until last week. As she came to sit at her little switchboard, in the gate keeper's lodge of the Marshal's residence, Mile. Breton said:
"During the 48 months of the War, I was with him. Hour by hour I experienced alternating doubt, hope and then the great joy of Triumph. But as for him, he never doubted. I still hear, and will always hear his voice−crisp and yet always the same, a voice which not only commanded, but gave comfort. Now he has gone, but I have returned to my work today as usual because I thought it the best homage I could give him and felt that he would have been pleased with me for doing so."
Vengeance to Foch. "However highly President von Hindenburg may esteem Foch as a military man, the German people simply would not understand why he should pay tribute to the man who at Compiegne so deeply humiliated the German Armistice Commission. It is not his qualities of a soldier that we question but the manner in which he 'rubbed in' his authority."
Thus last week the Private Secretary of Old Paul von Hindenburg explained to correspondents why Der Alte Feldmarschall sent only the frostiest expression of official regret through German Ambassador at Paris, Dr. Leopold von Hoesch. Meanwhile German news organs indignantly recalled how Victor Foch had "rubbed it in." Facts are that when Herr Matthias Erzberger entered the Allied Generalissimo's staff car at the head of the German Armistice Commission to sue for peace, he was pointedly ignored by Foch who remarked to his staff: "Who are these gentlemen? What do they want?"
"We are the German plenipotentiaries," said Herr Erzberger humbly, "we have come to receive your propositions for an armistice."
"I do not make propositions!" snapped the Marshal, and only after the Germans had been made to eat a great deal more crow did the negotiants finally come to terms.