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When the Germans had finally withdrawn Ferdinand Foch exclaimed: "Now my son and my son-in-law [killed in the War] are avenged!"
Catholic Foch & Atheist Clemenceau. Spruce, sword-handy professors at the French War College were first to detect the military genius of Student Foch, quick to realize that he possessed a unique "geometric brain," keen, strong, supple, above all superbly balanced. Eight years after graduation he was welcomed into the faculty, achieved popularity and reputation in a few swift years, produced those master manuals of the new warfare, The Principles of War and The Conduct of War, and presently was gazetted Lieutenant Colonel without ever having commanded on a field of battle. With a future of promise unsurpassed before him, suddenly he was booted out of the War College during the Anti-Clerical strife of 1901, because he was a devout Roman Catholic.
Sped six years. The new Prime Minister was that savage atheist M. Georges Clemenceau, well called "The Tiger." One day Catholic Foch was bidden to luncheon by Atheist Clemenceau. They merely chatted until the General reached the point of raising and sipping his demitasse, when The Tiger suddenly flashed, "You are the new Director of the War College! I have just signed your appointment."
"I fear, M. le President,"* smiled Catholic Foch, continuing to sip his coffee, "that you do not know of all my family connections. I have a brother who is a Jesuit."
"Damn your Jesuit brother!" roared Clemenceau, "I say you are M. le Di-recteur de I'École Supérieure de Guerre, and all the Jesuits in creation can't alter that fact!"
Years afterwards during the War, a trembling orderly faced the Tiger, who had dashed out from Paris to confer with Generalissimo Foch. "He is at Mass, M. le President," stammered the orderly. "Shall I tell him you are here?"
"No! No! Don't disturb him," said Atheist Clemenceau. "It has always succeeded well with him−the Mass. I will wait."
Paradoxically Tiger and Generalissimo became estranged in the very dawn of victory. Foch, knowing that the Germans were about to sue for an armistice, asked Clemenceau what were the political terms on which the Allied statesmen desired to conclude peace. In effect the Tiger replied that Foch should mind his own business, conclude a purely military Armistice, and keep his nose out of the Peace Conference. Stung to the quick of pride, the Generalissimo obeyed these instructions literally, and, having concluded the Armistice, washed his hands of the Peace with these icy words to Clemenceau, "M. Le President, my work is finished. Yours begins."
Came the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. Foch seemed to divine, by intuition, that President Woodrow Wilson's pledge that the U.S. would guarantee French security was wasted breath. After the U.S. Senate refused to ratify the Treaty, Marshal Foch declared with concentrated scorn in an authorized interview:
"Clemenceau reminds me of Wilhelm II. The Kaiser lost the War, the Tiger the Peace. His apologies will have little success in France. He will cry and be sentimental like all old people."