Meanwhile, on March 26 at Doullens, General Foch had been entrusted with the mission of co-ordinating the efforts of the Allied armies. Petain therefore had only to carry out on the lines of the directives issued by Foch those operations which had been assigned to the French armies. He withstood the German attacks of May 27, June 9 and July 15, and as a tactical counter to the enemy's offensives, he planned in a note of June 24 new tactics of elastic defence under which the second line trench system became the main position of resistance.
It was now the moment to pass to the counter-offensive. On June 27 Foch had asked Petain to draw up a directive for an offensive. This was the directive No. 5, July 1. The operation itself as originally planned was to consist of a move by General Mangin's army on Soissons. On June 14 Foch had ordered prep arations to be made for an offensive against this town. On June 16 Petain issued the same order to General Fayolle, the com mander of the army group. On June 20 Mangin, who was en trusted with its execution, drew up the plan of action, which consisted of preliminary operations which were to be followed by the occupation of the heights in front of the town. This plan was approved on June 27 and the first phase was carried out between June 28 and July 3. The preliminary successes led Mangin to think that the action could be further developed. On July 7 Petain and Foch discussed this point ; and next day Petain sent Fayolle a letter in which he expressed approval of Mangin's plans. But on July 9 Foch conceived the idea of an action on a
larger scale in which two other armies should take part. With this end in view Petain on July 12 issued to the army group com manders instructions which were approved by Foch on July 13. On July 14 Foch went to see Pétain, and an agreement was reached between them as to the time when the offensive should be launched. This was planned for the i8th.
Petain, under similar conditions, prepared the great offensives of Aug. 8 and Sept. 25, 1918 and he was also responsible for push ing the Germans back to the Ardennes. On Nov. 21 Petain received at the hands of the president of the republic at Metz the baton of Marechal de France ; he was also the recipient of many high honours from the Allied Governments. He subse quently held the position of vice-president of the Conseil Sup& rieur de la Guerre; and it was in this capacity that he went to Morocco in the summer of 1925 to supervise the arrival and employment of the reinforcements which were sent out to carry on the campaign against Abdel Krim.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—"Le Marechal Petain" in L'Illustration (Nov. 3o, 1918) ; De Civrieux, L'Offensive de 1917 (1919) ; P. La Verite sur l'Offensive du 16 avril 1917, Special no. of La (Nov. 1919), and Comment j'ai nomme Foch et Petain (1923) ; Sir C. E. Callwell, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, His Life and Diaries, Vol. I. (1927) ; B. H. Liddell Hart, Reputations See also WORLD WAR. (H. BO