[On 25 March 1918 there was] a Conference held at Pétain's Headquarters, Clemenceau, Loucheur, Pétain and Foch being also present. Pétain took a very pessimistic view... Foch, who seems to have spoken with energy and determination, took a different view of the situation. He thought the danger of the German push to break in between the French and British in the direction of Amiens was so formidable that risks must be taken in other directions. In his opinion, even more divisions must, if possible, be thrown in, and, by a great effort, this might be done more quickly than Pétain thought possible. It is in an emergency that the real quality of a man comes out. In front of this grave crisis both Pétain and Haig were bewildered and incapable of the action which a desperate situation demanded, but Foch rose to the occasion with the might of a giant. That accounts for the complete change which Milner found in the attitude of both Commanders-in-Chief towards this great old General. They were now anxious to retrace the fatal steps they had conjointly taken on the Versailles decision and to secure the help of Foch to extricate them from the dilemma in which their repudiation of his supremacy had landed the Allied Armies.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "[On 25 March 1918 there was] a Conference held at Pétain's Headquarters, Clemenceau, Loucheur, Pétain and Foch being also present. Pétain took a very pessimistic view... Foch, who seems to have spoken with energy and determination, took a different view of the situation. He thought the danger of the German push to break in between the French and British in the direction of Amiens was so formidable that risks must be taken in other directions. In his opinion, even more divisions must, if possible, be thrown in, and, by a great effort, this might be done more quickly than Pétain thought possible. It is in an emergency that the real quality of a man comes out. In front of this grave crisis both Pétain and Haig were bewildered and incapable of the action which a desperate situation demanded, but Foch rose to the occasion with the might of a giant. That accounts for the complete change which Milner found in the attitude of both Commanders-in-Chief towards this great old General. They were now anxious to retrace the fatal steps they had conjointly taken on the Versailles decision and to secure the help of Foch to extricate them from the dilemma in which their repudiation of his supremacy had landed the Allied Armies." in the context of "David Lloyd George, War Memoirs, Volume II (1938), pp. 1737-1738" to mean that wisdom is timeless.