Marshal Ferdinand Foch (French pronunciation: [fɔʃ]), GCB, OM, DSO (2 October 1851 – 20 March 1929), was a French soldier, military theorist, and First World War hero credited with possessing "the most original and subtle mind in the French army" in the early 20th century.

Foch's prestige soared as a result of the 1914 victory at the Marne for which he was widely credited as the chief actor while commanding the French Ninth Army. This led to his promotion to Marshal of France and ultimately "Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies" in 1918, at which time he played a decisive role in halting a renewed German advance on Paris in the Second Battle of the Marne.

Postwar historians took a less sanguine view of Foch's talents as commander, particularly as that idea took root that his military doctrines had set the stage for the futile and costly offensives of 1914 in which French armies suffered devastating losses. The efficacy of Foch's tactical ideas are debated—the Ninth Army's counterattacks at the Marne generally failed, but his sector resisted determined German attacks while holding the pivot on which the neighbouring French and British forces depended in rolling back the German line. One of his battlefield reports from the Marne—"Hard pressed on my right; center is yielding; impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent, I shall attack!"—won fame as a symbol both of Foch's battlefield leadership and of French determination to resist the invader at any cost.

Quentin Theodore Roosevelt (November 19, 1897 – July 14, 1918) was the youngest and favorite son of President Theodore Roosevelt. Family and friends agreed that Quentin had many of his father's positive qualities and few of the negative ones. Inspired by his father and siblings, he joined the United States Army Air Service where he became a pursuit pilot during World War I. Extremely popular with his fellow pilots and known for being daring, he was killed in aerial combat over France on Bastille Day (July 14), 1918.

Quentin was the youngest child of Theodore Roosevelt's household, which included half-sister Alice, sister Ethel, and brothers Theodore, Jr., Kermit, and Archibald "Archie".

Quentin was only three years old when his father became president, and he grew up in the White House. By far the favorite of all of President Roosevelt's children, Quentin was also the most rambunctious. He was nicknamed "Quentyquee" and "Quinikins" by his father. He shared T.R.'s physical, intellectual, and linguistic characteristics.

Georges Benjamin Clemenceau (French pronunciation: [ʒɔʁʒ bɛ̃ʒamɛ̃ klemɑ̃so]; (28 September 1841 – 24 November 1929) was a French journalist, physician, and statesman.

Clemenceau served as the Prime Minister of France from 1906 to 1909, and again from 1917 to 1920. Leading France for most of the final year of World War I, he was one of the principal architects of the Treaty of Versailles at the Paris Peace Conference in the aftermath of the war. Nicknamed "Le Tigre" (The Tiger), he took a very harsh position against defeated Germany and argued for the payment of reparations.

Clemenceau was a son of the Vendée, born at Mouilleron-en-Pareds. In Revolutionary times, the Vendée had been a hotbed of monarchist sympathies. By his birth, its people were fiercely republican. The region was remote from Paris, rural and poor. His mother Sophie Eucharie Gautreau (1817–1903) was of Huguenot descent. His father Benjamin Clemenceau (1810–1897) came from a long line of physicians, but he lived off his lands and investments and did not practice medicine. The father had a reputation as an atheist and a political activist; he was arrested and briefly held in 1851 and again in 1858. He instilled in his son a love of learning, devotion to the Revolution, and a hatred of Catholicism.

World War I (WWI), which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939 (World War II), and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (based on the Triple Entente of the United Kingdom, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy; but, as Austria–Hungary had taken the offensive against the agreement, Italy did not enter into the war). These alliances both reorganised (Italy fought for the Allies), and expanded as more nations entered the war. Ultimately more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of enormous increases in lethality of weapons, thanks to new technology, without corresponding improvements in protection or mobility. It was the sixth-deadliest conflict in world history, subsequently paving the way for various political changes such as revolutions in the nations involved.

Aristide Briand (French: [aʁistid bʁiɑ̃]; 28 March 1862 – 7 March 1932) was a French statesman who served eleven terms as Prime Minister of France during the French Third Republic and was a co-laureate of the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize.

He was born in Nantes, Loire-Atlantique of a petty bourgeois family. He attended the Nantes Lycée, where, in 1877, he developed a close friendship with Jules Verne. He studied law, and soon went into politics, associating himself with the most advanced movements, writing articles for the anarchist journal Le Peuple, and directing the Lanterne for some time. From this he passed to the Petite République, leaving it to found L'Humanité, in collaboration with Jean Jaurès.

At the same time he was prominent in the movement for the formation of trade unions, and at the congress of working men at Nantes in 1894 he secured the adoption of the labor union idea against the adherents of Jules Guesde. From that time, Briand was one of the leaders of the French Socialist Party. In 1902, after several unsuccessful attempts, he was elected deputy. He declared himself a strong partisan of the union of the Left in what was known as the Bloc, in order to check the reactionary Deputies of the Right.