exactly defined and there was neither a crisis nor an intermingling of forces such as those of the Ypres period. Moreover, the general headquarters of the two commanders-in-chief, Joffre and French, were now fixed, and the two armies made their liaison between St. Omer and Chantilly rather than through the local headquarters of Foch, who was no longer assistant commander-in-chief, but a subordinate.
In 1916 Foch's group of armies supplied the French element in the battle of the Somme. Towards the close of that battle, his reputation underwent a temporary eclipse, motived no doubt largely by the disappointment felt both in England and in France as to the results; but also and perhaps more by somewhat obscure domestic intrigues within the French staff. At that time the movement for Joffre's supersession had come to a head, and, it is said, his adherents within the headquarters sought to maintain him in power by suggesting that Foch, the most likely candidate for the place, was broken down in health. Though this did not prevent the removal of Joffre, it excluded Foch from the succession. Gen. Nivelle was appointed commander-in-chief, and a certain control by him over the British forces was agreed to by Mr. Lloyd George's Government, then newly in office. Foch was relieved of his command and sent first to the Swiss frontier to report on the possibilities of attack and defence in that quarter and then to Italy to negotiate with the Comando Supremo as to aid from France in case of a disaster to Cadorna's forces. But on May 15 1917, after the tragic failure of Nivelle's offensive and the supersession of that general by Pétain, M. Painlevé called Foch to Paris as chief of the general staff of the French army. But in this capacity his influence only became really effective after the accession to power of the Clemenceau Ministry in November. From that point to the events of March 1918, the evolution of Foch's authority was rapid. He was first, as adviser to Clemenceau and as a soldier whose counsels carried more weight than those of any other, a powerful indirect influence in the inter-Allied discussions as to the plan of campaign for 1918. Then as French member of the “Executive Committee,” a sort of board of inter-Allied command founded in Jan. 1918, he took his place almost as de jure president of that body. Lastly, the storm of the German offensive broke on the British V. Army on March 21, and although Haig and Pétain managed by cordial coöperation to reconstruct the broken line and check the German advance, the situation remained so critical that the last step was taken. On March 27 Foch by general consent was nominated to coördinate the operations of the British and French in France. On April 14 the title and authority of commander-in-chief was granted to him by the two Governments concerned, and on April 15, April 17 and May 1 respectively by the Belgian, American and Italian Governments.
On Aug. 6 1918 Foch was made a marshal of France. In the interval the Germans had renewed their offensives four times, and more than once there had been a crisis as grave as that of March which Haig and Pétain had had to face, notably on May 27. But these crises had been surmounted, and towards the end of June, with his resources greatly augmented through the emergency measures taken by the American Government, the British sea transport authorities and Gen. Pershing in France, he could begin preparations for his counter-offensive. The story of the battles in Champagne in which the last German offensive and the first Entente counter-offensive coincided (July 15-18), of the battles on the Somme area about Amiens (Aug. 8) and Bapaume-Peronne (Aug. 21), and of the simultaneous offensives of the Americans on the Meuse-Argonne front, the British on the Cambrai-St. Quentin front, and the Belgian, British and French under King Albert in Flanders (Sept. 26-28) is told elsewhere (see also the article Tactics). From Sept. 26 to the Armistice the whole front from the sea to Verdun was one continuous battlefield, controlled by one commander-in-chief. An extension of this battlefield into Lorraine, where the final blow was to be delivered on Nov. 14, was only prevented by the capitulation of the enemy.
After the war Marshal Foch received the highest honours from his own country and from the Allies. In one of his frequent visits to London he was created a field-marshal in the British Army, and he was also awarded the O.M. He became a member of the Académie Française in 1919. He had a great reception in the United States on his visit in 1921.
Various biographical sketches of Marshal Foch have appeared, for the names of which the reader is referred to any good subject index. The history of the single-command idea will be found in detail in M. Mermeix's Les Crises de Commandement and Le Commandement unique (part I.) and that of the internal politics of the French headquarters in the same, and in J. de Pierrefen's G. Q. G., Secteur I. (2 vols.), Paris 1920. The story of his final campaign, from the point of view of Foch's headquarters, is given in Louis Madelin's La Bataille de France and R. Recouly's La Bataille de Foch.
- (C. F. A.)
FOGAZZARO, ANTONIO (1842-1911), Italian novelist and poet (see 10.590), published in 1910 his last novel, Leila, a sequel to Il Santo. He died at Vicenza March 7 1911. Ultime, a volume of his latest writings, appeared in 1913.
A collection of records and memorials of the poet was published in two volumes in 1913-4. See also Eugenio Donadoni, Fogazzaro as Man and Writer (1913); L. Gennari, Fogazzaro (1918); and A. F. Crispoliti, Antonio Fogazzaro; Discorso commemorativo (1911).
FOOD SUPPLY.—During the World War of 1914-8 practically
all the belligerent and neutral countries of Europe experienced
a shortage in the supply of food and other necessaries. The
shortage was traceable to three distinct causes: first, the diversion
of productive power to destruction or to making the means
of destruction; second, the increased rate of consumption of
those who were fighting or were undertaking harder physical
labour than usual in the production of munitions; third, the
deliberate blockades which with varying success the belligerents
directed against one another and against neutrals. The blockades
had as one feature a destruction of shipping which is perhaps
sufficiently important to be reckoned as a fourth cause of shortage,
additional to the other three. These causes of reduced supply
or increased demand applied more or less to all useful artsicles;
they naturally produced their most sensible effects in the case
of necessary articles and above all in that of food. There, the
failure of the ordinary channels of supply to meet the demand
sooner or later became in every European country so serious as to
call for direct intervention by the Government and to make
“food control” one of the features of the war. Every country
had its succession of food controllers.
The degree of the food shortage and the methods available or adopted for dealing with it naturally varied from one country to another. In all of them it may be said that the food controller had three main problems to consider, namely, the maintenance of supplies, the regulation of prices, and the control of consumption by distribution and rationing. The three problems are naturally connected. A solution of the first of them so complete as to keep supplies up to or above the pre-war standard would prevent the other two from arising at all or at least in any serious form; this happened with bread-stuffs in the United Kingdom. On the other hand an attempt to fix prices without controlling supplies would lead either to a disappearance of supplies or to their distribution in an unjust and wasteful manner. While the problems are thus connected, the third of them—distribution and rationing—can to some extent be described separately and is so described under the heading of Rationing. The present article will deal mainly with the action taken in respect to supplies and prices and will touch on distribution and rationing only to indicate points of contact. No attempt can be made here to describe, even in outline, food control in all countries. All that can be attempted is to give some account of what was necessary and what was accomplished in the United Kingdom, and to mention the salient points of similarity or difference in the experience of other countries.
For the first two years of the war questions of food control attained little prominence in the United Kingdom. The cutting off of the Central European sources of sugar supply led to the anticipation of a considerable shortage of that particular food, and a Royal Commission was established in Aug. 1914, which undertook on Government account the purchase and importation of all supplies from that time onwards. A special organization
