CHAPTER XTHE GENERAL HIMSELF
If youtalk with the American soldiers, as I did both in their rest billets and their camps, you will find they have the clearest and most definite understanding as to their business in Europe. It is to win the war. I never met a man who had the slightest doubt or hesitation about it. They know it will happen. They say to you: “Why, the general himself says so. ‘Germany can and must be beaten.’ The general himself said that.”
“The general himself,” of course, means General Pershing. He is to the American soldier what Foch is to the Frenchpoilu, the supreme authority who can not be mistaken. And to the Frenchpoilu, and to the French public at large, General Pershing, perhaps next to General Foch, is the commanding figure of the war. This in spite of the fact that they know nothing whatever of him as a fighting man. They believe in him, and in my opinion their faith is going to be justified.
“Character,” said General Pershing, “other things being equal, will decide the last battle.”
The basis of my confidence in General Pershing is that he has character, strong, original, dynamic. Every word and gesture reveals personality. He is absolutelystraightforward and sincere, and his manner is simple and natural. Yet underneath that quiet simplicity you can easily perceive a will of steel and a capacity for great sternness. His first appearance won Paris completely, and before he has had time to fight a battle he has become a military hero in the eyes of the French.
I saw General Pershing first in the reception room of the beautiful Louis XVI mansion in the Rue de Varennes which has been loaned him for a town house when he goes to Paris. That is seldom. Most of the time he lives in a picturesque town in eastern France, which is the general headquarters of our army. The name of the town is almost never spoken. It is simply alluded to as G. H. Q. (General headquarters.)
Since the advent of the American forces in France there has been a much closer co-operation among the allies, a co-operation which reached its natural climax in the appointment of General Foch as generalissimo of the allied armies. France has long desired this arrangement, President Wilson desired it and so did Premier Lloyd George. General Pershing, in his swift, clear-minded judgment, declared it inevitable. But difficulties stood in the way of its accomplishment, and it was not until after several meetings of the allied war council at Versailles that the thing began to seem remotely possible.
In the interest of stronger co-operation and as commander-in-chief of the American army, General Pershing has been a constant attendant of the allied warcouncils. In a ten-minute interval between luncheon and departure for an afternoon session of the council, I had my first conversation with him. As he came into the room it occurred to me instantly that here was the very embodiment of the American army. The composite, the perfect type. No wonder the French like him. Helooksright.
No Greek of old Sparta was ever a more perfect physical specimen. At fifty-four, General Pershing is as straight and slender of waist as when he left West Point. He is tall, powerful of frame, without an ounce of fat anywhere on his body, and as hard as bronze. His eyes are keen and young, although his hair is gray. His face is marked with a few deep, scar-like lines, for tragedy has entered his life, as all the world knows. The lines do not suggest age, however. General Pershing looks younger than his years, much younger than most of his published photographs. His voice is that of a young man, and he speaks crisply, without ever hesitating for a word.
There is not a particle of pose about Pershing. He has been called cold, but I did not find him so. When I told him that I had a son in the army he became decidedly cordial. What was the boy’s name? His regiment? When did he reach France? Had I seen him? The commander-in-chief of the American army, on his way to an allied council with men who have the fate of civilization in their hands, had time to ask questions about an enlisted man. Lincoln used to do things like that.
Weeks later I was the guest, with several other correspondents, of the intelligence department of the army in a motor journey into our war zone. Our passes were for three days only and three districts were to be visited. One stopping place was the town alluded to as G. H. Q., the heart of the American expeditionary force in France. We were to meet the commander-in-chief informally, but there was to be no interview. The prospect was pleasing, but not particularly exciting, and in that it matched up pretty well with the rest of the trip. When the intelligence department invites correspondents, especially women correspondents, to a party you can be sure that it is a very staid and conservative affair.
We traveled by train from Paris to our first point, a big camp where our engineers had done some wonders of construction, and which was now a completely equipped school, where thousands of soldiers were being trained in bombing, trench mortar work and other skilled branches. At the station we were met by a handsome and diplomatic young intelligence officer in a big limousine. Under his chaperonage we were to see as much of the war zone as was considered good for us. The second day brought us to G. H. Q. and General Pershing.
Then was I glad that I had seen him in the palace in the Rue de Varennes. Because now I knew something about him. I knew he liked candor and straight talk. I knew also that with an inflexible will he possessed a reasonable mind. You can argue with a manlike that. I did argue with General Pershing on the subject of what women correspondents ought to be permitted to see and to know. I told him what I wanted to take back to the mothers of American soldiers.
I can not repeat our conversation, because it was confidential. I will simply say that General Pershing proved the reasonableness of his mind by greatly extending our facilities on that trip, and turning our prim little party into an experience wholly worth while from the reporter’s point of view. Later I shall go into details about that trip up the line. This chapter is concerned with General Pershing.
In the plain bare room, which is the commander’s private headquarters, and in which the great campaigns which our men will fight are being planned, General Pershing appears even more dynamic and forceful than in his luxurious Parisian home. I have seen generals who wore their uniforms as if they were business clothes, but not so General Pershing. If he wore business clothes he would contrive to make them look like a uniform. His uniform is the most immaculate, the most correct, the most military thing in the way of garments that I have ever beheld. His boots look as though he never wore the same pair a second time. Yet there is nothing stiff or rigid in his appearance. He puts his clothes on a perfect masculine figure, that is all. He holds himself like an absolutely fit and athletic man.
General Pershing exalts health. He takes daily coldbaths, one of his young aides told me, and often in the dead of winter runs and exercises in the open air clad only in a thin bathrobe. To bring every man in the army up to his physical standard is the commander’s expressed ambition. To make them supremely healthy, efficient fighting men, and to return them to their mothers morally as well as physically sound, is General Pershing’s conception of his responsibility as head of the American army.
It is always interesting to know how we appear in the eyes of strangers, and an article published in a well-known French magazine shows the strong appeal that General Pershing has made to the imagination of our allies. According to the French writer, there are two men in the American commander-in-chief, one of them Anglo-Saxon, the other a Frenchman. In 1749 the ancestors of General Pershing emigrated from Alsace to America, and Alsace in the eyes of all Frenchmen is and always will be France.
If by rare favor you are received by General Pershing in his Paris home you meet the Anglo-Saxon, says the reporter. There his coldness is positively British. “Tall, slender as a sublieutenant, well set up in his khaki brown uniform, four stars on the shoulders and on the collar the golden eagle of his supreme rank. General Pershing receives you in a manner courteous but glacial. He is entirely the official, conscious of his great responsibilities, and determined to keep silence concerning official matters. His blue eyes are clear and cold, even hard. Above his strong jaw, indicativeof implacable energy, his lips, saber-straight, wear no smile.
“Do not attempt to get from him any details of his mission in France, or try to induce him to give you any personal souvenirs or anecdotes of his tour of the French front. His aide-de-camp and interpreter has an invariable reply to all such questions: ‘The general has nothing to say.’ Above all, never venture to ask a question concerning his private life, his joys or sorrows. Immediately the look in his cold eyes becomes hostile. Before the question is fairly out the answer comes: ‘The general does not think that would interest the public.’
“But if by happy circumstance you are privileged to enter the small circle of General Pershing’s friends, what a delightful metamorphosis! The man reveals himself simple, charming, pliant, spontaneous. He is the Frenchman, cordial and communicative, ready to lend himself to that juvenile gaiety which so much amuses the Anglo-Saxon. The blue eyes that we have seen flash so coldly are now at once mischievous and tender. His features are animated, his smile ready.
“Everything interests him, science, art, literature. Music he loves almost as well as paintings, and he tells you with what new pleasure every time he visited the Paris of pre-war days he went each day to the Louvre galleries. Above all, he tells you how profoundly happy he is to be in the war on our side. Certainly that joy is rooted in the satisfaction of a soldier fulfilling his duty, but General Pershing is more than asoldier. He is an idealist called to accomplish a high mission, to serve an unselfish cause, to help humanity to a secure and happy future.”
General Pershing never appeared a bigger man than when he offered to brigade the American forces in with the English and the French, and himself take the subordinate position of a commander without a real command. The offer was made and accepted in the dark and panic-ridden early days of the March German offensive, when it looked as though the allied lines might be broken, and all the man power available had to be mobilized.
That danger is happily past. The Germans have struck and the blow has proved utterly futile. The Americans are to be allowed to fight under their own flag and their own officers. They will get full credit for what they do. But the French and English will never forget that General Pershing was unselfishly willing, when necessary, to forego both for himself and the American army every particle of credit, letting the honors go to the allies. From a man of that character great fighting, splendid victories may be expected. Under such a commander our sons are well secured.