Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 133, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 June 1915 — GETS HIS REVENGE [ARTICLE]

GETS HIS REVENGE

Aged French General Waits 44 Years for Day. Since 1870 General Maunoury, Recently Decorated by King George, Has Worked and Planned for Revenge on Germans.

Paris. —“I owe to you the attainment of the aim towards which all my efforts, all my energy have been strained for forty-four years past—revenge for 1870." This message from the order of the day in which General Maunoury thanked his troops for their victorious participation in the battle of the Marne, explains the whole life of the veteran upon whom King George has conferred the order of St. Michael and St. George.

In a war which hag clamored for the qualities of youth, a general upon the retired list, sixty-seven years of age, might well have imagined that his hopes of active employment were vain, that the most he could expect would be some post as organizer in the depots well to the rear of the zone of operations.General Maunoury was called from his flowers and his firming in the Loir et Cher in August, and came to Paris in the hope of obtaining some command in the field where he would be able to work directly for the “revanche.”

At the outset of the war all the general officers belonged to the active army, and for a time General Maunoury had to content himself with the useful, if less satisfying, work of inspecting depots and the organization of reserves. It was not long, however, before he was given the command of an army formed at Verdun, at the head of which he took part in the early and disastrous fighting along the Belgian frontier. During the retreat he fought a series of actions with the greatest brilliance, while at the same time reorganizing and completing his force. General Maunoury was ordered to Paris to undertake the task of organizing and commanding tte army destined, in the event of things turning out badly on the Marne, to act in the defense of Paris.

The appointment was flattering, but to General Maunoury ft aroused many cruel memories, for he had begun his military career in the army of Paris in 1870 and, as artillery officer, had known the bitterness of defeat in the series of battles which was fought in the neighborhood of the capital. "That bitterness he wiped out in sig- j oai manner at the head of the army of Paris which at the critical moment swung on to the German right along the Ourcq, and withstanding the most terrible battering for days, finally precipitated the general retreat of the enemy back to the Aisne. General Maunpury comes from a famfly which has been noted for its sei vice to the countryside of the Loir I

et Cher and to the greater country, 1 France. Perhaps his most striking characteristic is quiet modesty, his unassuming nature. He is a type of the officer bred of the desire for revenge. For that he has worked; it was that idea which gave to his teachings their stength; it was that idea which gave to his spirit the force required of it during the battle of the Ourcq. From the Ourcq General Maunoury and his army have moved up to the Aisne. ~lt was there that I had the honor of visiting him. Like many another army commander I have been privileged to meet along the French front, General Maunoury has refused to admit that a general’s place is in the study poring over maps, receiving reports, conducting war as though it were nothing but a game of chess. He declined to believe that the tele- » phones, wireless, the aeroplanes, and modern shell fire have in any way belittled the importance of men, and he made a point of making at least one visit a day to the front trenches, where his cheery smile and cheering words never f Ailed to increase the respect and admiration in which he is held by his officers and men. ’ It was during one of those visits that a bullet found him with his eye at a peephole' and temporarily deprived France of his service.