FLYING FISH 162 FOCH FLYING FISH, the name given to more than one fish which, having ex- tended fins, leaps from the water and, after a more or less lengthened flight, drops into it again. The fins seem to act as parachutes rather than as wings. The common flying fish is ExocseUis volitans. It belongs to the family Esocidse. An- other closely allied species is E. exilieiis, the greater flying fish. Both have straggled to the North Atlantic waters. They are abundant in the Mediterranean. FLYING SQUIRBEL, a name given to such of the Sciuridge (squirrels) as have the skin of the sides very much extended between the fore and hind legs, so as, to a certain extent, to sustain the animal in the air when taking long leaps. Sciuopterus vokins is the only European species. FOCH, FERDINAND, French general and supreme commander of the Allied forces operating against the Germans on the western front, in Belgium and France during the World War. He was born in Tarbes, 1851, the son of a minor departmental oflficial under Napo- leon III. Together with his two brothers he was educated in a local college, where he especially distinguished himself in geometry and the higher mathematics. Already at a very early age he was pre- paring himself for an army career. Leav- ing college, he entered the Ecole Poly- technique, from which he gi'aduated as an artilleryman. When the Franco- Prussian War broke out he was only nineteen, but served as a second lieuten- ant with the army against the Prussians. At the age of twenty-six, when a captain of artillery, he was appointed instructor in strategy and general tactics at the Ecole de Guerre. Here he remained for five years, during which he established his reputation as little less than a genius as a teacher, a reputation which had spread so far and high that several years later, when he had reached the rank of brigadier-general, Clemenceau, who was then Premier, had him sent back to the ficole de Guerre as a director. It was not so much his ability to im- part information to the students that distinguished the teaching career of Gen- eral Foch, but rather the spirit with which he permeated the whole institu- tion. He was the very reverse of a dry tactician. He taught rather the art of war than its science; or, rather, he emphasized the human side of it. War, as he taught its principles, was not only a study of explosives and engineering, but the capacity to understand the psy- '"bology of the human brain under stress of the excitement of actual military oper- ations. In his courses intuition played quite as important a part as mathemat- ics. Briefly, he considered morale the most important element in successful warfare. How to inspire this, he taught quite as much by personal demonstration as by precept. This feature of his mode of instruction was more evident in his personal teaching than in his two books, "The Principles of War" and "The Con- duct of War," both of which works have been translated into practically all Euro- pean languages. When the Germans invaded France, in August, 1914, thus beginning the five years' military operations on the western MARSHAL FERDINAND FOCH front, General Foch was in command of the Ninth Army. His remarkable achieve- ments following, which gradually brought him to the highest rank on the side of the Allied forces, are historical, rather than biographical. His masterful defeat of the Germans under General von Bil- low, on Sept. 8, 1914, known as "The Affair of the Marshes of St. Gond," wherein the Allies registered the firs* check to the oncoming invaders, was but the beginning of a series of such achieve- ments. In May, 1917, General Foch succeeded General Petain as Chief of Staff of the French Army. On March 28, 1918, it was announced that the Allies had finally agreed to amalgamate their forces on the
