"On Armistice Day, November 11,1918, the German armies had marched homeward in good order. "They fought well," said Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Generalissimo of the Allies, speaking in soldierly mood: "let them keep their weapons."
But he demanded that the French frontier should henceforth be the Rhine.
Germany might be disarmed; her mili- tary system shivered in frag- ments; her fortresses dis- mantled; Germany might be im- poverished; she might be loaded with measureless indemnities; she might become a prey to in- ternal feuds; but all this would pass in 10 years or in 20. But the Rhine, the broad, deep, swift- flowing Rhine, once held and fortified by the French army, would be a barrier and a shield behind which France could dwell and breathe for generations. "