"Pétain never gave me the idea of a General whose personality or genius could lead huge armies to victory in a war where, at the right moment, a crashing attack was essential to defeat your formidable enemy. He was an able man and a good soldier. But he was essentially a Fabius Cunctator. He was careful and cautious even to the confines of timidity. His métier after the 1917 mutinies was that of a head nurse in a home for cases of shell-shock. ... Pétain did it well and successfully. There is no other French General who could have done it as well. ... Nevertheless, Foch's summing-up of him to Poincaré will be acknowledged by those who knew him as accurate and fair: “As second in command, carrying out orders, Pétain is perfect, but he shrinks from responsibility, and is not fitted for a Commander-in-Chief.” Both Poincaré and Clemenceau constantly complained of his pessimism. He was inclined to dwell on the gloomiest possibilities of a situation. Poincaré, in his Diary, said that in the German offensive Pétain was “defeatist.” He would have made an ineffective Commander-in-Chief for Allied Armies confronted with the problems of 1918."