Backgammon at Louveciennes

Two old men sat solemnly playing backgammon, last week, in the warm sitting room of a small house at Louveciennes. Several correspondents hovered irritably around the placid players, not quite daring to interrupt. From the bottom of profane hearts they cursed Old Dr. Turner for the maddening deliberation of his moves. Why didn't he lose, or win? A pox on backgammon! They wanted to interview the other venerable player, the grizzled yet roly-poly one, the man with the shrewd smiling eyes, the Marshal of France, Joseph Joffre, 76, famed hero of the Battle of the Marne.

"Ha, Tuffier!" cried the Marshal at last.

"Hmmm-mm-mp!" hummed Old Dr. Tuffier, admitting defeat.

Then at last the correspondents could interview Good "Papa" Joffre, could ask him a cruel, embarrassing question--the kind that even newsmen hate to put.

Someone, in short, had to ask the old Marshal whether he knew that a local celebration of the Victory of the Marne had been held at Meaux, without allusion of any kind to Joseph Joffre. The celebrants, all too obviously, were of that school which has grown to consider "Papa" Joffre an amiable old dunderhead who squandered his men's blood as a housewife squanders dishwater. Someone--a little ashamed of himself--put the question.

While the old Marshal pondered Mme. Joffre, sitting beside him in a rocking chair, was observed to rock more vigorously. Her husband, with half closed eyes perhaps fixed on things far away, seemed to reflect as ponderously as had Old Dr. Tuffier over backgammon. Suddenly Mme. Joffre stopped her quick rocking, sat up bristling, spoke: "I wonder--I just wonder--how many people would claim they lost the Battle of Marne, if he had lost it!"

"No matter, my dear!" said "Papa" Joffre, "No matter--Frenchmen won the Battle of the Marne. It is enough that the French Army saved France. The individual part need not.be considered."

Almost timidly someone changed the subject, asked about the famed memoirs.

"Yes, I have finished them," said "Papa" Joffre contentedly, "Only the other day I finished signing--initialing--the last of the 800 pages. I have signed each one. So there can be no mistake when I am dead, and they are published. I give the documents, the facts. Others may form their own opinions from them."

"Have you written anything in it about the American army?"

"Mais certainment! But nothing controversial," with a smile, "And now, gentlemen, please, no more questions. I do not excite myself. I take precautions. I find at seventy-six that I must be careful. So I play backgammon. . . ."