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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of They Shall Not Pass, by Frank H. Simonds
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: They Shall Not Pass
+
+Author: Frank H. Simonds
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2009 [EBook #28171]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEY SHALL NOT PASS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeannie Howse and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
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+
+
+
+
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+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THEY SHALL NOT PASS
+
+
+
+
+THEY
+SHALL NOT PASS
+
+
+BY
+FRANK H. SIMONDS
+AUTHOR OF "THE GREAT WAR"
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+GARDEN CITY     NEW YORK
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+1916
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright, 1916, by_
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+
+_All rights reserved, including that of
+translation into foreign languages,
+including the Scandinavian_
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1916, THE TRIBUNE ASS'N.
+
+
+
+
+Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to the New York _Tribune_ for
+permission to reprint these articles in book form.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PAGE
+
+  I. MY TRIP TO VERDUN--GENERAL PÉTAIN FACE TO FACE             3
+
+     The men who hold the line--what their faces told of the
+     past and the future of France.
+
+  II. MY TRIP TO VERDUN--A DYING, SHELL-RIDDEN CITY            43
+
+     The Vauban Citadel, in the shelter of which falling
+     shells cannot find you--houses and blocks that are
+     vanishing hourly--"but William will not come"--war
+     that is invisible--a luncheon underground with a toast
+     to America--the last courtesy from a general and a
+     host--nothing that was not beautiful.
+
+III. BATTLE OF VERDUN ANOTHER GETTYSBURG                       72
+
+     Failure of Crown Prince likened by French to "high tide"
+     of confederacy.
+
+ IV. VERDUN, THE DOOR THAT LEADS NOWHERE                       95
+
+     The battle and the topography of the battlefield--an
+     analysis of the attack and defence.
+
+  V. IN SIGHT OF THE PROMISED LAND--ON THE LORRAINE
+     BATTLEFIELD                                              116
+
+
+
+
+THEY SHALL NOT PASS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+MY TRIP TO VERDUN--GENERAL PÉTAIN FACE TO FACE
+
+    THE MEN WHO HOLD THE LINE--WHAT THEIR FACES TOLD OF THE PAST
+    AND THE FUTURE OF FRANCE
+
+
+My road to Verdun ran through the Elysée Palace, and it was to the
+courtesy and interest of the President of the French Republic that I
+owed my opportunity to see the battle for the Meuse city at close
+range. Already through the kindness of the French General Staff I had
+seen the Lorraine and Marne battlegrounds and had been guided over
+these fields by officers who had shared in the opening battles that
+saved France. But Verdun was more difficult; there is little time for
+caring for the wandering correspondent when a decisive contest is
+going forward, and quite naturally the General Staff turned a deaf ear
+to my request.
+
+Through the kindness of one of the many Frenchmen who gave time and
+effort to make my pilgrimage a success I was at last able to see M.
+Poincaré. Like our own American President, the French Chief Magistrate
+is never interviewed, and I mention this audience simply because it
+was one more and in a sense the final proof for me of the
+friendliness, the courtesy, the interest that the American will find
+to-day in France. I had gone to Paris, my ears filled with the
+warnings of those who told me that it was hard to be an American in
+Europe, in France, in the present hour. I had gone expecting, or at
+least fearing, that I should find it so.
+
+Instead, from peasant to President I found only kindness, only
+gratitude, only a profound appreciation for all that Americans had
+individually done for France in the hour of her great trial. These
+things and one thing more I found: a very intense desire that
+Americans should be able to see for themselves; the Frenchman will not
+talk to you of what France has done, is doing; he shrinks from
+anything that might suggest the imitation of the German method of
+propaganda. In so far as it is humanly possible he would have you see
+the thing for yourself and testify out of your own mouth.
+
+Thus it came about that all my difficulties vanished when I had been
+permitted to express to the President my desire to see Verdun and to
+go back to America--I was sailing within the week--able to report what
+I had seen with my own eyes of the decisive battle still going forward
+around the Lorraine city. Without further delay, discussion, it was
+promised that I should go to Verdun by motor, that I should go cared
+for by the French military authorities and that I should be permitted
+to see all that one could see at the moment of the contest.
+
+We left Paris in the early afternoon; my companions were M. Henri
+Ponsot, chief of the Press Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
+and M. Hugues le Roux, a distinguished Frenchman of letters well known
+to many Americans. To start for the battlefield from a busy, peaceful
+city, to run for miles through suburbs as quiet and lacking in martial
+aspect as the regions beyond the Harlem, at home, was a thing that
+seemed almost unreal; but only for a brief moment, for war has come
+very near to Paris, and one may not travel far in Eastern France
+without seeing its signs.
+
+In less than an hour we were passing the rear of the line held by the
+British at the Battle of the Marne, and barely sixty minutes after we
+had passed out through the Vincennes gate we met at Courtacon the
+first of the ruined villages that for two hundred miles line the
+roadways that lead from the capital to Lorraine and Champagne.
+Suddenly in the midst of a peaceful countryside, after passing a
+score of undisturbed villages, villages so like one to another, you
+come to one upon which the storm has burst, and instead of snug
+houses, smiling faces, the air of contentment and happiness that was
+France, there is only a heap of ruins, houses with their roofs gone,
+their walls torn by shell fire, villages abandoned partially or
+wholly, contemporary Pompeiis, overtaken by the Vesuvius of Krupp.
+
+Coincidentally there appear along the roadside, in the fields, among
+the plough furrows, on every side, the crosses that mark the graves of
+those who died for France--or for Germany. Along the slope you may
+mark the passage of a charge by these crosses; those who fell were
+buried as they lay, French and Germans with equal care. Indeed, there
+is a certain pride visible in all that the French do for their dead
+foes. Alongside a hamlet wantonly burned, burned by careful labor and
+with German thoroughness; in villages where you will be told of
+nameless atrocities and shameful killings, you will see the German
+graves, marked by neat crosses, surrounded by sod embankments, marked
+with plaques of black and white; the French are marked by plaques of
+red, white and blue, and the latter invariably decorated with a flag
+and flowers.
+
+Once you have seen these graves by the roadside going east you will
+hardly go a mile in two hundred which has not its graves. From the
+environs of Meaux, a scant twenty miles from Paris, to the frontier at
+the Seille, beyond Nancy, there are graves and more graves, now
+scattered, now crowded together where men fought hand to hand. Passing
+them in a swift-moving auto, they seem to march by you; there is the
+illusion of an army advancing on the hillside, until at last, beyond
+Nancy, where the fighting was so terrible, about little villages such
+as Corbessaux, you come to the great common graves, where a hundred or
+two hundred men have been gathered, where the trenches now levelled
+are but long graves, and you read, "Here rest 179 French soldiers," or
+across the road, "Here 196 Germans."
+
+Take a map of France and from a point just south of Paris draw a
+straight line to the Vosges; twenty or thirty miles to the north draw
+another. Between the two is the black district of the Marne and Nancy
+battles. It is the district of ruined villages, destroyed farms; it is
+the region where every hillside--so it will seem to the traveller--is
+marked by these pathetic crosses. It is a region in which the sense of
+death and destruction is abroad. Go forty miles north again and draw
+two more lines, and this is the region not of the death and
+destruction of yesterday, but of to-day; this is the front, where the
+graves are still in the making, the region of the Oise to the Meuse,
+from Noyon to Verdun.
+
+On this day our route led eastward through the villages which in
+September, 1914, woke from at least a century of oblivion, from the
+forgetting that followed Napoleon's last campaign in France to a
+splendid but terrible ten days: Courtacon, Sézanne, La-Fère
+Champenoise, Vitry-le-François, the region where Franchet d'Esperey
+and Foch fought, where the "Miracle of the Marne" was performed. Mile
+after mile the countryside files by, the never-changing impression of
+a huge cemetery, the hugest in the world, the stricken villages, now
+and then striving to begin again, a red roof here and there telling of
+the first counter offensive of peace, of construction made against the
+whirlwind that had come and gone.
+
+Always, too, nothing but old men and women, these and children,
+working in the broad fields, still partially cultivated, but no longer
+the fields of that perfectly cared for France of the other peace days.
+Women and children at the plough, old men bent double by age still
+spending such strength as is left in the tasks that war has set for
+them. This is the France behind the front, and, aside from the ruined
+villages and graves, the France that stretches from the Pyrenees to
+the Marne, a France from which youth and manhood are gone, in which
+age and childhood remain with the women. Yet in this land we were
+passing how much of the youth and manhood of France and Germany was
+buried in the graves the crosses demonstrated at every kilometre.
+
+But a hundred miles east of Paris there begins a new world. The
+graves, the shell-cursed villages, remain, but this is no longer the
+France of the Marne fighting and of the war of two years ago. At
+Vitry-le-François you pass almost without warning into the region
+which is the back of the front to-day, the base of all the line of
+fire from Rheims to the Meuse, and suddenly along the road appear the
+canvas guideposts which bear the terse warning, "Verdun." You pass
+suddenly from ancient to contemporary history, from the killing of
+other years to the killing that is of to-day--the killing and the
+wounding--and along the hills where there are still graves there begin
+to appear Red Cross tents and signs, and ambulances pass you bearing
+the latest harvest.
+
+And now every village is a garrison town. For a hundred miles there
+have been only women and old men, but now there are only soldiers;
+they fill the streets; they crowd the doorways of the houses. The
+fields are filled with tents, with horses, with all the impedimenta of
+an army. The whole countryside is a place of arms. Every branch of
+French service is about you--Tunisians, Turcos, cavalry, the black,
+the brown, and the white--the men who yesterday or last week were in
+the first line, who rest and will return to-morrow or next day to
+fight again.
+
+Unmistakably, too, you feel that this is the business of war; you are
+in a factory, a machine shop; if the product is death and destruction,
+it is no less a matter of machinery, not of romance, of glamour. The
+back of the front is a place of work and of rest for more work, but
+of parade, of the brilliant, of the fascinating there is just nothing.
+Men with bright but plainly weary faces, not young men, but men of
+thirty and above, hard bitten by their experience, patently fit, fed,
+but somehow related to the ruins and the destruction around them, they
+are all about you, and wherever now you see a grave you will discover
+a knot of men standing before it talking soberly. Wherever you see the
+vestiges of an old trench, a hill that was fought for at this time
+twenty months ago, you will see new practice trenches and probably the
+recruits, the "Class of 1917," the boys that are waiting for the call,
+listening to an officer explaining to them what has been done here,
+the mistake or the good judgment revealed by the event. For France is
+training the youth that remains to her on the still recent
+battlefields and in the presence of those who died to keep the ground.
+
+Just as the darkness came we passed St. Dizier and entered at last
+upon the road to Verdun, the one road that is the life line of the
+city. For to understand the real problem of the defence of Verdun you
+must realize that there is lacking to the city any railroad. In
+September, 1914, the Germans took St. Mihiel and cut the railway
+coming north along the Meuse. On their retreat from the Marne the
+soldiers of the Crown Prince halted at Montfaucon and Varennes, and
+their cannon have commanded the Paris-Verdun-Metz Railroad ever since.
+Save for a crazy narrow-gauge line wandering along the hill slopes,
+climbing by impossible grades, Verdun is without rail communication.
+
+It was this that made the defence of the town next to impossible.
+Partially to remedy the defect the French had reconstructed a local
+highway running from St. Dizier by Bar-le-Duc to Verdun beyond the
+reach of German artillery. To-day an army of a quarter of a million of
+men, the enormous parks of heavy artillery and field guns--everything
+is supplied by this one road and by motor transport.
+
+Coming north from St. Dizier we entered this vast procession. Mile
+after mile the caravan stretched on, fifty miles with hardly a break
+of a hundred feet between trucks. Paris 'buses, turned into vehicles
+to bear fresh meat; new motor trucks built to carry thirty-five men
+and travelling in companies, regiments, brigades; wagons from the hood
+of which soldiers, bound to replace the killed and wounded of
+yesterday, looked down upon you, calmly but unsmilingly. From St.
+Dizier to Verdun the impression was of that of the machinery by which
+logs are carried to the saw in a mill. You felt unconsciously, yet
+unmistakably, that you were looking, not upon automobiles, not upon
+separate trucks, but upon some vast and intricate system of belts and
+benches that were steadily, swiftly, surely carrying all this vast
+material, carrying men and munitions and supplies, everything human
+and inanimate, to that vast grinding mill which was beyond the hills,
+the crushing machine which worked with equal remorselessness upon men
+and upon things.
+
+Now and again, too, over the hills came the Red Cross ambulances; they
+passed you returning from the front and bringing within their
+carefully closed walls the finished product, the fruits of the day's
+grinding, or a fraction thereof. And about the whole thing there was a
+sense of the mechanical rather than the human, something that
+suggested an automatic, a machine-driven, movement; it was as if an
+unseen system of belts and engines and levers guided, moved, propelled
+this long procession upward and ever toward the mysterious front where
+the knives or the axes or the grinding stones did their work.
+
+Night came down upon us along the road and brought a new impression.
+Mile on mile over the hills and round the curves, disappearing in the
+woods, reappearing on the distant summits of the hills, each showing a
+rear light that wagged crazily on the horizon, this huge caravan
+flowed onward, while in the villages and on the hillsides campfires
+flashed up and the faces or the figures of the soldiers could be seen
+now clearly and now dimly. But all else was subordinated to the line
+of moving transports. Somewhere far off at one end of the procession
+there was battle; somewhere down below at the other end there was
+peace. There all the resources, the life blood, the treasure in men
+and in riches of France were concentrating and collecting, were being
+fed into this motor fleet, which like baskets on ropes was carrying it
+forward to the end of the line and then bringing back what remained,
+or for the most part coming back empty, for more--for more lives and
+more treasure.
+
+It was full night when our car came down the curved grades into
+Bar-le-Duc, halted at the corner, where soldiers performed the work
+of traffic policemen and steadily guided the caravan toward the road
+marked by a canvas sign lighted within by a single candle and bearing
+the one word, "Verdun." All night, too, the rumble of the passing
+transport filled the air and the little hotel shook with the jar of
+the heavy trucks, for neither by day nor by night is there a halt in
+the motor transport, and the sound of this grinding is never low.
+
+It was little more than daylight when we took the road again, with a
+thirty-mile drive to Verdun before us. Almost immediately we turned
+into the Verdun route we met again the caravan of automobiles, of
+camions, as the French say. It still flowed on without break. Now,
+too, we entered the main road, the one road to Verdun, the road that
+had been built by the French army against just such an attack as was
+now in progress. The road was as wide as Fifth Avenue, as smooth as
+asphalt--a road that, when peace comes, if it ever does, will delight
+the motorist. Despite the traffic it had to bear, it was in perfect
+repair, and soldiers in uniform sat by the side breaking stone and
+preparing metal to keep it so.
+
+The character of the country had now changed. We were entering the
+region of the hills, between the Aisne and the Meuse, a country
+reminiscent of New England. Those hills are the barrier which beyond
+the Meuse, under the names of the Côte de Meuse, have been the scene
+of so much desperate fighting. The roads that sidled off to the east
+bore battle names, St. Mihiel, Troyon, and the road that we followed
+was still marked at every turn with the magic word "Verdun." Our
+immediate objective was Souilly, the obscure hill town twenty miles,
+perhaps, south of the front, from which Sarrail had defended Verdun in
+the Marne days and from which Pétain was now defending Verdun against
+a still more terrible attack.
+
+And in France to-day one speaks only of Verdun and Pétain. Soldiers
+have their day; Joffre, Castelnau, Foch, all retain much of the
+affection and admiration they have deserved, but at the moment it is
+the man who has held Verdun that France thinks of, and there was the
+promise for us that at Souilly we should see the man whose fame had
+filled the world in the recent great and terrible weeks. Upward and
+downward over the hills, through more ruined villages, more hospitals,
+more camps, our march took us until after a short hour we came to
+Souilly, general headquarters of the Army of Verdun, of Pétain, the
+centre of the world for the moment.
+
+Few towns have done less to prepare for greatness than Souilly. It
+boasts a single street three inches deep in the clay mud of the
+spring--a single street through which the Verdun route marches almost
+contemptuously, the same nest of stone and plaster houses, one story
+high, houses from which the owners had departed to make room for
+generals and staff officers. This and one thing more, the Mairie, the
+town hall, as usual the one pretentious edifice of the French hamlet,
+and before the stairway of this we stopped and got out.
+
+We were at headquarters. From this little building, devoted for
+perhaps a century to the business of governing the commune of Souilly,
+with its scant thousand of people, Pétain was defending Verdun and the
+fate of an army of 250,000 men at the least. In the upstairs room,
+where the town councillors had once debated parochial questions,
+Joffre and Castelnau and Pétain in the terrible days of the opening
+conflict had consulted, argued, decided--decided the fate of France,
+so the Germans had said, for they had made the fall of Verdun the
+assurance of French collapse.
+
+Unconsciously, too, you felt the change in the character of the
+population of this village. There were still the soldiers, the
+eternal gray-blue uniforms, but there were also men of a different
+type, men of authority. In the street your guides pointed out to you
+General Herr, the man who had designed and planned and accomplished
+the miracle of the motor transport that had saved Verdun--with the aid
+of the brave men fighting somewhere not far beyond the nearest hills.
+He had commanded at Verdun when the attack came, and without
+hesitation he had turned over his command to Pétain, his junior in
+service and rank before the war, given up the glory and become the
+superintendent of transport. Men spoke to you of the fine loyalty of
+that action with unconcealed admiration.
+
+And then out of the remoteness of Souilly there came a voice familiar
+to an American. Bunau-Varilla, the man of Panama, wearing the uniform
+of a commandant and the Croix de Guerre newly bestowed for some
+wonderful engineering achievement, stepped forward to ask for his
+friends and yours of the old "_Sun_ paper." I had seen him last in the
+_Sun_ office in the days when the war had just broken out and he was
+about to sail for home; in the days when the Marne was still unfought
+and he had breathed hope then as he spoke with confidence now.
+
+Presently there arrived the two officers whose duty it was to take me
+to Verdun, Captain Henri Bourdeaux, a man of letters known to all
+Frenchmen; Captain Madelin, an historian, already documented in the
+history of the war making under his own eyes. To these gentlemen and
+their colleagues who perform this task that can hardly be agreeable,
+who risk their lives and give over their time with unfailing courtesy
+and consideration that the American newspaper correspondent may see,
+may report, it is impossible to return sufficient thanks, and every
+American newspaper reader who finds on his breakfast table the
+journal that tells him of the progress of the war owes something to
+some officer.
+
+"Were we to see Verdun?" This was the first problem. I had been warned
+two days before that the bombardment was raging and that it was quite
+possible that it would be unsafe to go farther. But the news was
+reassuring; Verdun was tranquil. "And Pétain?" One could not yet say.
+
+Even as we spoke there was a stirring in the crowd, general saluting,
+and I caught a glimpse of the commander-in-chief as he went quickly up
+the staircase. For the rest we must wait. But not for very long; in a
+few minutes there came the welcome word that General Pétain would see
+us, would see the stray American correspondent.
+
+Since I saw Pétain in the little Mairie at Souilly I have seen many
+photographs of him, but none in any real measure give the true picture
+of the defender of Verdun. He saw us in his office, the bare upstairs
+room, two years ago the office of the Mayor of Souilly. Think of the
+Selectmen's office in any New England village and the picture will be
+accurate: a bare room, a desk, one chair, a telephone, nothing on the
+walls but two maps, one of the military zone, one of the actual front
+and positions of the Verdun fighting. A bleak room, barely heated by
+the most primitive of stoves. From the single window one looked down
+on the cheerless street along which lumbered the caravan of autos. On
+the pegs against the wall hung the General's hat and coat,
+weather-stained, faded, the clothes of a man who worked in all
+weathers. Of staff officers, of uniforms, of color there was just
+nothing; of war there was hardly a hint.
+
+At the door the commander-in-chief met us, shook hands, and murmured
+clearly and slowly, with incisive distinctness, the formal words of
+French greeting; he spoke no English. Instantly there was the
+suggestion of Kitchener, not of Kitchener as you see him in flesh, but
+in photographs, the same coldness, decision. The smile that
+accompanied the words of welcome vanished and the face was utterly
+motionless, expressionless. You saw a tall, broad-shouldered man, with
+every appearance of physical strength, a clear blue eye, looking
+straight forward and beyond.
+
+My French companion, M. Le Roux, spoke with Pétain. He had just come
+from Joffre and he told an interesting circumstance. Pétain listened.
+He said now and then "yes" or "no." Nothing more. Watching him
+narrowly you saw that occasionally his eyes twitched a little, the
+single sign of fatigue that the long strain of weeks of responsibility
+had brought.
+
+It was hard to believe, looking at this quiet, calm, silent man, that
+you were in the presence of the soldier who had won the Battle of
+Champagne, the man whom the war had surprised in the last of his
+fifties, a Colonel, a teacher of war rather than a soldier, a
+professor like Foch.
+
+No one of Napoleon's marshals had commanded as many men as obeyed this
+Frenchman, who was as lacking in the distinction of military
+circumstance as our own Grant. Napoleon had won all his famous
+victories with far fewer troops than were directed from the telephone
+on the table yonder.
+
+Every impression of modern war that comes to one actually in touch
+with it is a destruction of illusion: this thing is a thing of
+mechanism rather than of brilliance; perhaps Pétain has led a
+regiment, a brigade, or a division to the charge. You knew
+instinctively in seeing the man that you would go or come, as he said,
+but there was neither dash nor fire, nothing of the suggestion of
+élan; rather there was the suggestion of the commander of a great
+ocean liner, the man responsible for the lives, this time of hundreds
+of thousands, not scores, for the safety of France, not of a ship, but
+the man of machinery and the master of the wisdom of the tides and
+the weather, not the Ney, or the Murat, not the Napoleon of Arcola.
+The impression was of a strong man whose life was a life beaten upon
+by storms; the man on the bridge, to keep to the rather ridiculously
+inadequate figure, but not by any chance the man on horseback.
+
+My talk, our talk with Pétain was the matter of perhaps five minutes.
+The time was consumed by the words of M. Le Roux, who spoke very
+earnestly urging that more American correspondents be permitted to
+visit Verdun, and Pétain heard him patiently, but said just nothing.
+Once he had greeted us his face settled into that grim expression that
+never changed until he smiled his word of good wishes as we left. Yet
+I have since found that apart from one circumstance which I shall
+mention in a moment I have remembered those minutes most clearly of
+all of my Verdun experience. Just as the photograph does not reveal
+the face of the man, the word does not describe the sense of
+strength, of responsibility, that he gives.
+
+In a childish sort of way, exactly as one thinks of war as a matter of
+dash and color and motion, one thinks of the French general as the
+leader of a cavalry charge or of a forlorn hope of infantry. And the
+French soldier of this war has not been the man of charge or of
+dash--not that he has not charged as well as ever in his history, a
+little more bravely, perhaps, for machine guns are new and something
+worse than other wars have had. What the French soldier has done has
+been to stand, to hold, to die not in the onrush but on the spot.
+
+And Pétain in some curious way has fixed in my mind the impression of
+the new Frenchman, if there be a new one, or perhaps better of the
+French soldier of to-day, whether he wear the stars of the general or
+undecorated "horizon" blue of the Poilu. The look that I saw in his
+eyes, the calm, steady, utterly emotionless looking straight forward,
+I saw everywhere at the front and at the back of the front. It
+embodied for me an enduring impression of the spirit and the poise of
+the French soldier of the latest and most terrible of French
+struggles. And I confess that, more than all I saw and heard at the
+front and in Paris, the look of this man convinced me that Verdun
+would not fall, that France herself would not either weary or weaken.
+
+In Paris, where one may hear anything, there are those that will tell
+you that Joffre's work is done and that France waits for the man who
+will complete the task; that the strain of the terrible months has
+wearied the general who won the Battle of the Marne and saved France.
+They will tell you, perhaps, that Pétain is the man; they will
+certainly tell you that they hope that the man has been found in
+Pétain. As to the truth of all this I do not pretend to know. I did
+not see Joffre, but all that I have read of Joffre suggests that
+Pétain is of his sort, the same quiet, silent man, with a certain
+coldness of the North, a grimness of manner that is lacking in his
+chief.
+
+There was a Kitchener legend in Europe, and I do not think it survives
+save a little perhaps in corners of England. There was a legend of a
+man of ice and of iron, a man who made victory out of human material
+as a man makes a wall of mortar and stone, a man to whom his material
+was only mortar and stone, even though it were human. This legend has
+perished so far as Kitchener is concerned, gone with so much that
+England trusted and believed two years ago, but I find myself thinking
+now of Pétain as we all thought of Kitchener in his great day.
+
+If I were an officer I should not like to come to the defender of
+Verdun with the confession of failure. I think I should rather meet
+the Bavarians in the first line trenches, but I should like to know
+that when I was obeying orders I was carrying out a minor detail of
+something Pétain had planned; I should expect it to happen, the thing
+that he had arranged, and I should feel that those clear, steel-blue
+eyes had foreseen all that could occur, foreseen calmly and utterly,
+whether it entailed the death of one or a thousand men, of ten
+thousand men if necessary, and had willed that it should happen.
+
+I do not believe Napoleon's Old Guard would have followed Pétain as
+they followed Ney. I cannot fancy him in the Imperial uniform, and
+yet, now that war is a thing of machines, of telephones, of indirect
+fire and destruction from unseen weapons at remote ranges, now that
+the whole manner and circumstance of conflict have changed, it is but
+natural that the General should change, too. Patently Pétain is of the
+new, not the old, but no less patently he was the master of it.
+
+We left the little Mairie, entered our machines and slid out swiftly
+for the last miles, climbed and curved over the final hill and
+suddenly looked down on a deep, trenchlike valley marching from east
+to west and carrying the Paris-Verdun-Metz Railroad, no longer
+available for traffic. And as we coasted down the hill we heard the
+guns at last, not steadily, but only from time to time, a distant
+boom, a faint billowing up of musketry fire. Some three or four miles
+straight ahead there were the lines of fire beyond the brown hills
+that flanked the valley.
+
+At the bottom of the valley we turned east, moved on for a mile, and
+stopped abruptly. The guns were sounding more clearly, and suddenly
+there was a sense not of soldiers, but of an army. On one side of the
+road a column was coming toward us, a column of men who were leaving
+the trenches for a rest, the men who for the recent days had held the
+first line. Wearily but steadily they streamed by; the mud of the
+trenches covered their tunics; here and there a man had lost his steel
+helmet and wore a handkerchief about his head, probably to conceal a
+slight wound that but for the helmet had killed him.
+
+These men were smiling as they marched; they carried their full
+equipment and it rattled and tinkled; they carried their guns at all
+angles, they wore their uniforms in the strangest of disorders; they
+seemed almost like miners coming from the depths of the earth rather
+than soldiers returning from a decisive battle, from the hell of
+modern shell fire.
+
+But it was the line on the other side of the road that held the eye.
+Here were the troops that were going toward the fire, toward the
+trenches, that were marching to the sound of the guns, and as one saw
+them the artillery rumble took on a new distinctness.
+
+Involuntarily I searched the faces of these men as they passed. They
+were hardly ten feet from me. Platoon after platoon, company after
+company, whole regiments in columns of fours. And seeing the faces
+brought an instant shock; they all wore the same calm, steady,
+slightly weary expression, but there was in the whole line scarcely a
+young man. Here were men of the thirties, not the twenties; men still
+in the prime of strength, of health, but the fathers of families, the
+men of full manhood.
+
+Almost in a flash the fact came home. This was what all the graves
+along the road had meant. This was what the battlefields and the
+glories of the twenty months had spelled--France had sent her youth
+and it was spent; she was sending her manhood now.
+
+In the line no man smiled and no man straggled; the ranks were closed
+up and there were neither commands nor any visible sign of authority.
+These men who were marching to the sound of the guns had been there
+before. They knew precisely what it meant. Yet you could not but feel
+that as they went a little wearily, sadly, they marched willingly.
+They would not have it otherwise. Their faces were the faces of men
+who had taken the full measure of their own fate.
+
+You had a sense of the loathing, the horror, above all the sadness
+that was in their hearts that this thing, this war, this destruction
+had to be. They had come back here through all the waste of ruined
+villages and shell-torn hillsides; all the men that you saw would not
+measure the cost of a single hour of trench fighting if the real
+attack began. This these men knew, and the message of the artillery
+fire, which was only one of unknown terrors for you, was intelligible
+to the utmost to each of them.
+
+And yet with the weariness there was a certain resignation, a certain
+patience, a certain sense of comprehending sacrifice that more than
+all else is France to-day, the true France. This, and not the empty
+forts, not even the busy guns, was the wall that defended France, this
+line of men. If it broke there would come thundering down again out
+of the north all the tornado of destruction that had turned
+Northeastern France into a waste place and wrecked so much of the
+world's store of the beautiful and the inspiring.
+
+Somehow you felt that this was in the minds of all these men. They had
+willed to die that France might live. They were going to a death that
+sounded ever more clearly as they marched. This death had eaten up all
+that was young, most of what was young at the least, of France; it
+might yet consume France, and so these men marched to the sound of the
+guns, not to martial music, not with any suggestion of dash, of
+enthusiasm, but quietly, steadily, all with the same look upon their
+faces--the look of men who have seen death and are to see it again.
+Instinctively I thought of what Kipling had said to me in London:
+
+"Somewhere over there," he had said, "the thing will suddenly grip
+your throat and your heart; it will take hold of you as nothing in
+your life has ever done or ever will." And I know that I never shall
+forget those lines of quiet, patient, middle-aged men marching to the
+sound of the guns, leaving at their backs the countless graves that
+hold the youth of France, the men who had known the Marne, the Yser,
+Champagne, who had known death for nearly two years, night and day,
+almost constantly. Yet during the fifteen minutes I watched there was
+not one order, not one straggler; there was a sense of the regularity
+with which the blood flows through the human arteries in this tide,
+and it was the blood of France.
+
+So many people have asked me, I had asked myself, the question before
+I went to France: "Are they not weary of it? Will the French not give
+up from sheer exhaustion of strength?" I do not think so, now that I
+have seen the faces of these hundreds of men as they marched to the
+trenches beyond Verdun. France may bleed to death, but I do not think
+that while there are men there will be an end of the sacrifice. No
+pen or voice can express the horror that these men, that all
+Frenchmen, have of this war, of all war, the weariness. They hate it;
+you cannot mistake this; but France marches to the frontier in the
+spirit that men manned the walls against the barbarians in the other
+days; there is no other way; it must be.
+
+Over and over again there has come the invariable answer; it would
+have come from scores and hundreds of these men who passed so near me
+I could have touched their faded uniforms if I had asked--"It is for
+France, for civilization; it must be, for there is no other way; we
+shall die, but with us, with our sacrifice, perhaps this thing will
+end." You cannot put it in words quite, I do not think even any
+Frenchman has quite said it, but you can see it, you can feel it, you
+can understand it, when you see a regiment, a brigade, a division of
+these men of thirty, some perhaps of forty, going forward to the war
+they hate and will never quiet until that which they love is safe or
+they and all of their race are swallowed up in the storm that now was
+audibly beating beyond the human walls on the nearby hillsides.
+
+Presently we moved again, we slipped through the column, topped the
+last incline, shot under the crumbling gate of the Verdun fortress,
+and as we entered a shell burst just behind us and the roar drowned
+out all else in its sudden and paralyzing crash. It had fallen, so we
+learned a little later, just where we had been watching the passing
+troops; it had fallen among them and killed. But an hour or two later,
+when we repassed the point where it fell, men were still marching by.
+Other regiments of men were still marching to the sound of the guns,
+and those who had passed were already over the hills and beyond the
+river, filing into the trenches in time, so it turned out, to meet the
+new attack that came with the later afternoon.
+
+I went to Verdun to see the forts, the city, the hills, and the
+topography of a great battle; I went in the hope of describing with a
+little of clarity what the operation meant as a military affair. I
+say, and I shall hereafter try to describe this. But I shall never be
+able to describe this thing which was the true Verdun for me--these
+men, their faces, seen as one heard the shell fire and the musketry
+rolling, not steadily but intermittently, the men who had marched over
+the roads that are lined with graves, through villages that are
+destroyed, who had come of their own will and in calm determination
+and marched unhurryingly and yet unshrinkingly, the men who were no
+longer young, who had left behind them all that men hold dear in life,
+home, wives, children, because they knew that there was no other way.
+
+I can only say to all those who have asked me, "What of France?" this
+simple thing, that I do not believe the French will ever stop. I do
+not believe, as the Germans have said, that French courage is
+weakening, that French determination is abating. I do not believe the
+Kaiser himself would think this if he had seen these men's faces as
+they marched _toward_ his guns. I think he would feel as I felt, as
+one must feel, that these men went willingly, hating war with their
+whole soul, destitute of passion or anger. I never heard a passionate
+word in France, because there had entered into their minds, into the
+mind and heart of a whole race, the belief that what was at stake was
+the thing that for two thousand years of history had been France.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+MY TRIP TO VERDUN--A DYING, SHELL-RIDDEN CITY
+
+    THE VAUBAN CITADEL, IN THE SHELTER OF WHICH FALLING SHELLS
+    CANNOT FIND YOU--HOUSES AND BLOCKS THAT ARE VANISHING
+    HOURLY--"BUT WILLIAM WILL NOT COME"--WAR THAT IS INVISIBLE--A
+    LUNCHEON UNDERGROUND WITH A TOAST TO AMERICA--THE LAST
+    COURTESY FROM A GENERAL AND A HOST--NOTHING THAT WAS NOT
+    BEAUTIFUL
+
+
+The citadel of Verdun, the bulwark of the eastern frontier in ancient
+days, rises out of the meadows of the Meuse with something of the
+abruptness of the sky-scraper, and still preserves that aspect which
+led the writers of other wars to describe all forts as "frowning." It
+was built for Louis XIV by Vauban. He took a solid rock and blasted
+out redoubts and battlements. The generations that followed him dug
+into the living rock and created within it a whole city of catacombs,
+a vast labyrinth of passages and chambers and halls; even an elevator
+was added by the latest engineers, so that one can go from floor to
+floor, from the level of the meadow to the level of the summit of the
+rock, possibly a hundred feet above.
+
+By reason of the fact that many correspondents have visited this
+fortress since the war began the world has come to know of the
+underground life in Verdun, to think of the city as defended by some
+wonderful system of subterranean works; to think of Verdun, in fact,
+as a city or citadel that is defensible either by walls or by forts.
+But the truth is far different: even the old citadel is but a deserted
+cave; its massive walls of natural rock resist the shells as they
+would repulse an avalanche; but the guns that were once on its
+parapets are gone, the garrison is gone, gone far out on the trench
+lines beyond the hills. The Vauban citadel is now a place where bread
+is baked, where wounded men are occasionally brought, where live the
+soldiers and officers whose important but unromantic mission it is to
+keep the roads through the town open, to police the ashes of the city,
+to do what remains of the work that once fell to the lot of the civil
+authorities.
+
+To glide swiftly to the shelter of this rock from a region in which a
+falling shell has served to remind you of the real meaning of Verdun
+of the moment, to leave the automobile and plunge into the welcome
+obscurity of this cavern--this was perhaps the most comfortable
+personal incident of the day. The mere shadow of the rock gave a sense
+of security; to penetrate it was to pass to safety.
+
+Some moments of wandering by corridors and stairways into the very
+heart of the rock brought us to the quarters of our host, General
+Dubois; to his kind attention I was to owe all my good fortune in
+seeing his dying city; to him, at the end, I was to owe the ultimate
+evidence of courtesy, which I shall never forget.
+
+Unlike Pétain or Joffre, General Dubois is a little man, possibly a
+trifle older than either. A white-haired, bright-eyed, vigorous
+soldier, who made his real fame in Madagascar with Joffre and with
+Gallieni, and when the storm broke was sent to Verdun by these men,
+who knew him, to do the difficult work that there was to be performed
+behind the battle line. There is about General Dubois a suggestion of
+the old, as well as the new, of the French general. The private
+soldiers to whom he spoke as he went his rounds responded with a "Oui,
+mon Général" that had a note of affection as well as of discipline; he
+was rather as one fancied were the soldiers of the Revolution, of the
+Empire, of the Algerian days of Père Bugeaud whose memory is still
+green.
+
+Our salutations made, we returned through the winding corridors to
+inspect the bakeries, the water and light plant, the unsuspected
+resources of this rock. In one huge cavern we saw the men who provided
+30,000 men with bread each day, men working as the stokers in an ocean
+steamer labor amidst the glare of fires; we tasted the bread and found
+it good, as good as all French bread is, and that means a little
+better than all other bread.
+
+Then we slipped back into daylight and wandered along the face of the
+fortress. We inspected shell holes of yesterday and of last month; we
+inspected them as one inspects the best blossoms in a garden; we
+studied the angle at which they dropped; we measured the miniature
+avalanche that they brought with them. But always, so far, there was
+the subconscious sense of the rock between us and the enemy. I never
+before understood the full meaning of that phrase "a rock in a weary
+land."
+
+All this was but preliminary, however. Other automobiles arrived; the
+General entered one. I followed in the next and we set out to visit
+Verdun, to visit the ruins, or, rather, to see not a city that was
+dead, but a city that was visibly, hourly dying--a city that was
+vanishing by blocks and by squares--but was not yet fallen to the
+estate of Ypres or Arras; a city that in corners, where there were
+gardens behind the walls, still smiled; a city where some few brave
+old buildings still stood four square and solid, but only waiting what
+was to come.
+
+Before I visited Verdun I had seen many cities and towns which had
+been wholly or partially destroyed, either by shell fire or by the
+German soldiers in their great invasion before the Marne. One shelled
+town is much like another, and there is no thrill quite like that you
+experience when you see the first. But these towns had died nearly two
+years ago; indeed, in most the resurrection had begun: little red
+roofs were beginning to shine through the brown trees and stark
+ruins. Children played again in the squares. It was like the sense you
+have when you see an old peasant ploughing among the cross-marked
+graves of a hard-fought battle corner--the sense of a beginning as
+well as of death and destruction.
+
+But at Verdun it was utterly different. Of life, or people, of
+activity beginning again or surviving there was nothing. Some time in
+the recent past all the little people who lived in these houses had
+put upon wagons what could be quickly moved and had slipped out of
+their home, that was already under sentence of death. They were gone
+into the distance, and they had left behind them no stragglers. The
+city was empty save for a few soldiers who passed rapidly along the
+streets, as one marches in a heavy snowstorm.
+
+Yet Verdun was not wholly dead. Shell fire is the most inexplicable of
+all things that carry destruction. As you passed down one street the
+mark of destruction varied with each house. Here the blast had come
+and cut the building squarely; it had carried with it into ruin behind
+in the courtyard all that the house contained, but against the wall
+the telephone rested undisturbed; pictures--possibly even a looking
+glass--hung as the inhabitants had left it, hung as perhaps it had
+hung when the last woman had taken her ultimate hurried glance at her
+hat before she departed into the outer darkness.
+
+But the next house had lost only the front walls; it stood before you
+as if it had been opened for your inspection by the removal of the
+façade. Chairs, beds--all the domestic economy of the house--sagged
+visibly outward toward the street, or stood still firm, but open to
+the four winds. It was as if the scene were prepared for a stage and
+you sat before the footlights looking into the interior. Again, the
+next house and that beyond were utterly gone--side walls, front walls,
+everything swallowed up and vanished--the iron work twisted into
+heaps, the stone work crumbled to dust; the whole mass of ruin still
+smoked, for it was a shell of yesterday that had done this work.
+
+Down on the Riviera, where the mistral blows--all the pine trees lean
+away from the invariable track of this storm wind--you have the sense,
+even in the summer months, of a whole countryside bent by the gales.
+In the same fashion you felt in Verdun, felt rather than saw, a whole
+town not bent, but crumbled, crushed--and the line of fall was always
+apparent; you could tell the direction from which each storm of shells
+had come, you could almost feel that the storm was but suspended, not
+over, that at any moment it might begin again.
+
+Yet even in the midst of destruction there were enclaves of unshaken
+structures. On the Rue Mazel, "Main Street," the chief clothing store
+rose immune amid ashes on all sides. Its huge plate-glass window was
+not even cracked. And behind the window a little mannikin, one of the
+familiar images that wear clothes to tempt the purchaser, stood erect.
+A French soldier had crept in and raised the stiff arm of the mannikin
+to the salute, pushed back the hat to a rakish angle. The mannikin
+seemed alive and more than alive, the embodiment of the spirit of the
+place. Facing northward toward the German guns it seemed to respond to
+them with a "_morituri salutamus_." "The last civilian in Verdun," the
+soldiers called him, but his manner was rather that of the Poilu.
+
+We crossed the river and the canal and stopped by the ruin of what had
+once been a big factory or warehouse. We crawled through an open
+shell-made breach in the brick wall and stood in the interior. The
+ashes were still hot, and in corners there were smoking fires. Two
+days ago, at just this time, your guides told you, men had been
+working here; making bread, I think. At the same time we had come to
+the ruins--the same time of day, that is--the Germans had dropped a
+half-dozen incendiary shells into the building and it had burned in
+ten minutes. Most of the men who had been there then were still there,
+under the smoking mass of wreckage; the smell of burned human flesh
+was in the air.
+
+A few steps away there was a little house standing intact. On the
+floor there were stretched four rolls of white cloth. The General and
+those with him took off their hats as they entered. He opened one of
+the packages and you saw only a charred black mass, something that
+looked like a half-burned log taken from the fireplace. But two days
+ago it had been a man, and the metal disk of identification had
+already been found and had served to disclose the victim's name. These
+were the first bodies that had been removed from the ruins.
+
+Taking our cars again we drove back and stopped before the Mairie, and
+passing under the arch entered the courtyard. The building had fared
+better than most, but there were many shell marks. In the courtyard
+were four guns. Forty-six years before another German army had come
+down from the North, another whirlwind of artillery had struck the
+town and laid it in ashes, but even under the ashes the town had held
+out for three weeks. Afterward the Republic of France had given these
+guns to the people of Verdun in recognition of their heroism.
+
+In the courtyard I was presented to a man wearing the uniform and
+helmet of a fireman. He was the chief of the Verdun fire department.
+His mission, his perilous duty, it was to help extinguish the fires
+that flamed up after every shell. In all my life I have never seen a
+man at once so crushed and so patently courageous. He was not young,
+but his blue Lorraine eyes were still clear. Yet he looked at you, he
+looked out upon the world with undisguised amazement. For a generation
+his business had been to fight fires. He had protected his little town
+from conflagrations that might sometimes, perhaps once, possibly
+twice, have risen to the dignity of a "three alarm." For the rest he
+had dealt with blazes.
+
+Now out of the skies and the darkness and out of the daylight, too,
+fire had descended upon his town. Under an avalanche of incendiary
+shells, under a landslide of fire, his city was melting visibly into
+ashes. He had lived fire and dreamed fire for half a century, but now
+the world had turned to fire--his world--and he looked out upon it in
+dazed wonder. He could no longer fight this fire, restrain it, conquer
+it; he could only go out under the bursting shells and strive to
+minimize by some fraction the destruction; but it was only child's
+play, this work of his which had been a man's business. And there was
+no mistaking the fact that this world was now too much for him. He was
+a brave man; they told me of things he had done; but his little cosmos
+had gone to chaos utterly.
+
+We entered our cars again and went to another quarter of the city.
+Everywhere were ashes and ruin, but everywhere the sense of a
+destruction that was progressive, not complete: it still marched. It
+was as Arras had been, they told me, before the last wall had tumbled
+and the Artois capital had become nothing but a memory. We climbed the
+slope toward the cathedral and stopped in a little square still
+unscathed, the Place d'Armes, the most historic acre of the town.
+After a moment I realized what my friends were telling me. It was in
+this square that the Crown Prince was to receive the surrender of the
+town. Along the road we had climbed he was to lead his victorious army
+through the town and out the Porte de France beyond. In this square
+the Kaiser was to stand and review the army, to greet his victorious
+son. The scene as it had been arranged was almost rehearsed for you in
+the gestures of the French officers.
+
+"But William has not come," they said, "and he will not come now."
+This last was not spoken as a boast, but as a faith, a conviction.
+
+Still climbing we came to the cathedral. It is seated on the very top
+pinnacle of the rock of Verdun, suggesting the French cities of
+Provence. Its two towers, severe and lacking ornamentation, are the
+landmarks of the countryside for miles around. When I came back to
+America I read the story of an American correspondent whom the Germans
+had brought down from Berlin to see the destruction of Verdun. They
+had brought him to the edge of the hills and then thrown some
+incendiary shells into the town, the very shells that killed the men
+whose bodies I had seen. The black smoke and flames rushed up around
+these towers and then the Germans brought the correspondent over the
+hills and showed him the destruction of Verdun. He described it
+vividly and concluded that the condition of the town must be
+desperate.
+
+They are a wonderful people, these Germans, in their stage management.
+Of course this was precisely the thing that they desired that he
+should feel. They had sent their shells at the right moment, the whole
+performance had gone off like clockwork. Those poor blackened masses
+of humanity in the house below were the cost that was represented in
+the performance. And since there is much still left to burn in Verdun,
+the Germans may repeat this thing whenever they desire.
+
+But somewhere three or four miles from here, and between Verdun and
+the Germans, are many thousands of Frenchmen, with guns and cannon,
+and hearts of even finer metal. They cannot even know that Verdun is
+being shelled or is burning, and if it burns to ultimate ashes it will
+not affect them or their lines. This is the fallacy of all the talk of
+the destruction of Verdun city and the desperate condition of its
+defenders. The army left Verdun for the hills when the war began; the
+people left when the present drive began in February. Even the dogs
+and cats, which were seen by correspondents in earlier visits, have
+been rescued and sent away. Verdun is dead, it is almost as dead as
+are Arras and Ypres; but neither of these towns after a year and a
+half bombardment has fallen.
+
+The correspondent who was taken up on a hill by the Germans to see
+Verdun burn, after it had been carefully set on fire by shell fire,
+was discovered by French gunners and shelled. He went away taking with
+him an impression of a doomed city. This picture was duly transmitted
+to America. But two days later, when I visited the city, there was no
+evidence of desperation, because there was no one left to be
+desperate. Doubtless on occasion we shall have many more descriptions
+of the destruction of this town, descriptions meant to impress
+Americans or encourage Germans. The material for such fires is not
+exhausted. The cathedral on the top of the hill is hardly shell-marked
+at all, and it will make a famous display when it is fired as was
+Rheims, as were the churches of Champagne and Artois. But there is
+something novel in the thought of a city burned, not to make a Roman
+or even German holiday, but burned to make the world believe that the
+Battle of Verdun had been a German victory.
+
+For two hours we wandered about the town exploring and estimating the
+effect of heavy gunfire, for the Germans are too far from the city to
+use anything but heavy guns effectively. The impressions of such a
+visit are too numerous to recall. I shall mention but one more. Behind
+the cathedral are cloisters that the guide books mention; they inclose
+a courtyard that was once decorated with statues of saints. By some
+accident or miracle--there are always miracles in shelled towns--one
+of these images, perhaps that of the Madonna, has been lifted from its
+pedestal and thrown into the branches of a tree, which seems almost to
+hold it with outstretched arms.
+
+At length we left the town, going out by the Porte de France, which
+cuts the old Vauban ramparts, now as deserted as those of Paris,
+ramparts that had been covered with trees and were now strewn with the
+débris of the trees that had fallen under the shell fire. In all this
+time not a shell had fallen in Verdun; it was the first completely
+tranquil morning in weeks; but there was always the sense of impending
+destruction, there was always the sense of the approaching shell.
+There was an odd subconscious curiosity, and something more than
+curiosity, about the mental processes of some men, not far away, who
+were beside guns pointed toward you, guns which yesterday or the day
+before had sent their destruction to the very spot where you stood.
+
+Yet, oddly enough, in the town there was a wholly absurd sense of
+security, derived from the fact that there were still buildings
+between you and those guns. You saw that the buildings went to dust
+and ashes whenever the guns were fired; you saw that each explosion
+might turn a city block into ashes, and yet you were glad of the
+buildings and there was reassurance in their shadows. Now we travelled
+in the open country; we began to climb across the face of a bare hill,
+and it was the face that fronted the Germans.
+
+Presently the General's car stuck in the mud and we halted, for a
+minute perhaps; then we went on; we passed a dead horse lying in the
+road, then of a sudden came that same terrible grinding, metallic
+crash. I have never seen any description of a heavy shell explosion
+that fitted it. Behind us we could see the black smoke rising from the
+ground in a suburb through which we had just come. I saw three
+explosions. A moment later we were at the gate of Fort de la Chaume,
+and we were warned not to stop, but to hasten in, for the Germans,
+whenever they see cars at this point, suspect that Joffre has arrived,
+or President Poincaré, and act accordingly. We did not delay.
+
+Fort de la Chaume is one of the many fortifications built since the
+Franco-Prussian War and intended to defend the city. Like all the
+rest, it ceased to have value when the German artillery had shown at
+Liège and at Namur that it was the master of the fort. Then the French
+left their forts and went out to trenches beyond and took with them
+the heavy guns that the fort once boasted. To-day Fort de la Chaume is
+just an empty shell, as empty as the old Vauban citadel in the valley
+below. And what is true of this fort is true of all the other forts of
+that famous fortress of Verdun, which is no longer a fortress, but a
+sector in the trench line that runs from the North Sea to Switzerland.
+
+From the walls of the fort staff officers showed me the surrounding
+country. I looked down on the city of Verdun, hiding under the shadow
+of its cathedral. I looked across the level Meuse Valley, with its
+little river; I studied the wall of hills beyond. Somewhere in the
+tangle on the horizon was Douaumont, which the Germans held. Down the
+valley of the river in the haze was the town of Bras, which was
+French; beyond it the village of Vachereauville, which was German.
+Beyond the hills in the centre of the picture, but hidden by them,
+were Le Mort Homme and Hill 304.
+
+Verdun is like a lump of sugar in a finger bowl, and I was standing on
+the rim. It seemed utterly impossible that any one should even think
+of this town as a fortress or count its ashes as of meaning in the
+conflict.
+
+Somewhere in the background a French battery of heavy guns was firing,
+and the sound was clear; but it did not suggest war, rather a blasting
+operation. The German guns were still again. There was a faint
+billowing roll of gunfire across the river toward Douaumont, but very
+faint. As for trenches, soldiers, evidences of battle, they did not
+exist. I thought of Ralph Pulitzer's vivid story of riding to the
+Rheims front in a military aeroplane and seeing, of war, just
+nothing.
+
+The geography of the Verdun country unrolled before us with absolute
+clarity; the whole relation of hills and river and railroads was
+unmistakable. But despite the faint sound of musketry, the occasional
+roar of a French gun, I might have been in the Berkshires looking down
+on the Housatonic. Six miles to the north around Le Mort Homme that
+battle which has not stopped for two months was still going on. Around
+Douaumont the overture was just starting, the overture to a stiff
+fight in the afternoon, but of all the circumstances of battle that
+one has read of, that one still vaguely expects to see, there was not
+a sign. If it suited their fancy the Germans could turn the hill on
+which I stood into a crater of ruin, as they did with Fort Loncin at
+Liège. We were well within range, easy range; we lived because they
+had no object to serve by such shooting, but we were without even a
+hint of their whereabouts.
+
+I have already described the military geography of Verdun. I shall not
+attempt to repeat it here, but it is the invisibility of warfare,
+whether examined from the earth or the air, which impresses the
+civilian. If you go to the trenches you creep through tunnels and
+cavities until you are permitted to peer through a peephole, and you
+see yellow dirt some yards away. You may hear bullets over your head,
+you may hear shells passing, but what you see is a hillside with some
+slashings. That is the enemy. If you go to an observation post back of
+the trenches, then you will see a whole range of country, but not even
+the trenches of your own side.
+
+From the Grand Mont east of Nancy I watched some French batteries
+shell the German line. I didn't see the French guns, I didn't see the
+German trenches, I didn't see the French line. I did see some black
+smoke rising a little above the underbrush, and I was told that the
+shells were striking behind the German lines and that the gunners were
+searching for a German battery. But I might as well have been
+observing a gang of Italians at blasting operations in the Montclair
+Mountains. And the officer with me said: "Our children are just
+amusing themselves."
+
+From Fort de la Chaume we rode back to the citadel; and there I was
+the guest of the General and the officers of the town garrison; their
+guest because I was an American who came to see their town. I shall
+always remember that luncheon down in the very depths of this rock in
+a dimly lighted room. I sat at the General's right, and all around me
+were the men whose day's work it was to keep the roads open, the
+machinery running in the shell-cursed city. Every time they went out
+into daylight they knew that they might not return. For two months the
+storm had beaten about this rock, it had written its mark upon all
+these faces, and yet it had neither extinguished the light nor the
+laughter; the sense of strength and of calmness was inescapable, and
+never have I known such charming, such thoughtful hosts.
+
+When the champagne came the old General rose and made me a little
+speech. He spoke in English, with absolute correctness, but as one who
+spoke it with difficulty. He welcomed me as an American to Verdun, he
+thanked me for coming, he raised his glass to drink to my country and
+the hope that in the right time she would be standing with France--in
+the cause of civilization. Always in his heart, in his thought, in his
+speech, the Frenchman is thinking of that cause of civilization;
+always this is what the terrible conflict that is eating up all France
+means to him.
+
+Afterward we went out of this cavern into daylight, and the officers
+came and shook hands with me and said good-bye. One does not say _au
+revoir_ at the front; one says _bonne chance_--"good luck; it may and
+it may not--we hope not." We entered our cars and were about to start,
+when suddenly, with a blinding, stunning crash, a whole salvo landed
+in the meadow just beyond the road, we could not see where, because
+some houses hid the field. It was the most suddenly appalling crash I
+have ever heard.
+
+Instantly the General ordered our drivers to halt. He explained that
+it might be the beginning of a bombardment or only a single trial, a
+detail in the intermittent firing to cut the road that we were to
+take. We sat waiting for several moments and no more shots came. Then
+the General turned and gave an order to his car to follow, bade our
+drivers go fast, and climbed into my car and sat down. The wandering
+American correspondent was his guest. He could not protect him from
+the shell fire. He could not prevent it. But he could share the
+danger. He could share the risk, and so he rode with me the mile until
+we passed beyond the danger zone. There he gave me another _bonne
+chance_ and left me, went back to his shell-cursed town with its ruins
+and its agonies.
+
+I hope I shall see General Dubois again. I hope it will be on the day
+when he is made Governor of Strassburg.
+
+As we left Verdun the firing was increasing; it was rolling up like a
+rising gale; the infantry fire was becoming pronounced; the Germans
+were beginning an attack upon Le Mort Homme. Just before sunset we
+passed through the Argonne Forest and came out beyond. On a hill to
+the north against the sky the monument of Valmy stood out in clear
+relief, marking the hill where Kellerman had turned back another
+Prussian army. Then we slipped down into the Plain of Châlons, where
+other Frenchmen had met and conquered Attila. At dark we halted in
+Montmirail, where Napoleon won his last victory before his empire
+fell. The sound of the guns we had left behind was still in our ears
+and the meaning of these names in our minds. Presently my French
+companion said to me: "It is a long time, isn't it?" He meant all the
+years since the first storm came out of the north, and I think the
+same thought is in every Frenchman's mind. Then he told me his story.
+
+"I had two boys," he said; "one was taken from me years ago in an
+accident; he was killed and it was terrible. But the other I gave.
+
+"He was shot, my last boy, up near Verdun, in the beginning of the
+war. He did not die at once and I went to him. For twenty days I sat
+beside him in a cellar waiting for him to die. I bought the last
+coffin in the village, that he might be buried in it, and kept it
+under my bed. We talked many times before he died, and he told me all
+he knew of the fight, of the men about him and how they fell.
+
+"My name is finished, but I say to you now that in all that experience
+there was nothing that was not beautiful." And as far as I can analyze
+or put in words the impression that I have brought away from France,
+from the ruin and the suffering and the destruction, I think it is
+expressed in those words. I have seen nothing that was not beautiful,
+too, because through all the spirit of France shone clear and bright.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+BATTLE OF VERDUN ANOTHER GETTYSBURG
+
+    FAILURE OF CROWN PRINCE LIKENED BY FRENCH TO "HIGH TIDE" OF
+    CONFEDERACY
+
+
+"The parallel between Gettysburg in your Civil War and Verdun in the
+present contest is unmistakable and striking." This was said to me by
+General Delacroix, one of Joffre's predecessors as chief of the French
+General Staff and the distinguished military critic of the Paris
+_Temps_ now that because of age he has passed to the retired list.
+
+What General Delacroix meant was patent and must have already
+impressed many Americans. Our own Gettysburg was the final bid for
+decision of a South which had long been victorious on the battlefield,
+which still possessed the armies that seemed the better organized and
+the generals whose campaigns had been wonderfully successful. But it
+was the bid for decision of a Confederacy which was outnumbered in
+men, in resources, in the ultimate powers of endurance, and was
+already beginning to feel the growing pinch both in numbers and
+credit.
+
+At Gettysburg Lee made his final effort to destroy the army which he
+had frequently defeated but never eliminated. Victory meant the fall
+of Washington, the coming of despair to the North, an end of the Civil
+War, which would bring independence and the prize for which they had
+contended to the Confederates. And Lee failed at Gettysburg, not as
+Napoleon failed at Waterloo or as MacMahon failed at Sedan, but he
+failed, and his failure was the beginning of the end. The victory of
+Gettysburg put new heart, new assurance into the North; it broke the
+long illusion of an invincible Confederacy; it gave to Europe, to
+London, and to Paris, even more promptly than to Washington, the
+unmistakable message that the North was bound to win the Civil War.
+
+I mean in a moment to discuss the military aspects of this conflict
+about the Lorraine fortress, but before the military it is essential
+to grasp the moral consequences of Verdun to France, to the Allies, to
+Germany. Not since the Marne, not even then--because it was only after
+a long delay that France really knew what had happened in this
+struggle--has anything occurred that has so profoundly, so
+indescribably, heartened the French people as has the victory at
+Verdun. It is not too much to say that the victory has been the most
+immediately inspiring thing in French national life since the disaster
+at Sedan and that it has roused national confidence, hope, faith, as
+nothing else has since the present conflict began.
+
+In this sense rather than in the military sense Verdun was a decisive
+battle and its consequences of far-reaching character. France as a
+whole, from the moment when the attack began, understood the issue;
+the battle was fought in the open and the whole nation watched the
+communiqués day by day. It was accepted as a terrible if not a final
+test, and no Frenchman fails to recognize in all that he says the
+strength, the power, the military skill of Germany.
+
+And when the advance was checked, when after the first two weeks the
+battle flickered out as did the French offensive in Champagne and the
+former German drive about Ypres a year ago, France, which had held her
+breath and waited, hoped, read in the results at Verdun the promise of
+ultimate victory, felt that all that Germany had, all that she could
+produce, had been put to the test and had failed to accomplish the
+result for which Germany had striven--or any portion thereof.
+
+War is something beyond armies and tactics, beyond strategy and even
+military genius, and the real meaning of Verdun is not to be found in
+lines held or lost, not to be found even in the ashes of the old town
+that France and not Germany holds. It is to be found in the spirit of
+France, now that the great trial is over and the lines have held.
+
+It was Germany and not France that raised the issue of Verdun. The
+Germans believed, and all their published statements show this, that
+France was weary, disheartened, ready to quit, on fair terms. They
+believed that there was needed only a shining victory, a great moral
+demonstration of German strength to accomplish the end--to bring
+victorious peace. In this I think, and all with whom I talked in
+France felt, that the Germans were wrong, that France would have
+endured defeat and gone on. But conversely, the Germans knew, must
+have known, that to try and to fail was to rouse the whole heart of
+France, to destroy any pessimism, and this is precisely what the
+failure has done.
+
+The battle for Verdun was a battle for moral rather than military
+values, and the moral victory remains with the French. It was a
+deliberate and calculated effort to break the spirit of France, and it
+roused the spirit of France as perhaps nothing has raised the spirit
+of this people since Valmy, where other Frenchmen met and checked
+another German invasion, brought to a halt the army of Frederick the
+Great, which still preserved the prestige of its great captain who was
+dead, turned it back along the road that was presently to end at Jena.
+
+Beside the moral value of Verdun the military is just nothing. To
+appreciate its meaning you must understand what it has meant to the
+French, and you must understand it by recalling what Gettysburg meant
+to the North, invaded as is France, defeated at half a dozen struggles
+in Virginia as France has been defeated in the past months of this
+war. Gettysburg was and remains the decisive battle of our Civil War,
+although the conflict lasted for nearly two years more. For France
+Verdun is exactly the same thing. Having accepted the moral likeness,
+you may find much that is instructive and suggestive in the military,
+but this is of relatively minor importance.
+
+Now, on the military side it is necessary to know first of all that
+when the Germans began their gigantic attack upon Verdun the French
+high command decided not to defend the city. Joffre and those who with
+him direct the French armies were agreed that the city of Verdun was
+without military value comparable with the cost of defending it, and
+that the wisest and best thing to do was to draw back the lines to the
+hills above the city and west of the Meuse. Had their will prevailed
+there would have been no real battle at Verdun and the Germans would
+long ago have occupied the ashes of the town.
+
+Joffre's view was easily explicable, and it was hardly possible to
+quarrel with the military judgment it discloses. To the world Verdun
+is a great fortress, a second Gibraltar, encircled by great forts,
+furnished with huge guns, the gateway to Paris and the key to the
+French eastern frontier. And this is just what Verdun was until the
+coming of the present war, when the German and Austrian siege guns
+levelled the forts of Antwerp, of Maubeuge, of Liège. But after that
+Verdun ceased to be anything, because all fortresses lost their value
+with the revelation that they had failed to keep pace with the gun.
+
+After the Battle of the Marne, when the trench war began, the French
+took all their guns out of the forts of Verdun, pushed out before the
+forts, and Verdun became just a sector in the long trench line from
+the sea to Switzerland. It was defended by trenches, not forts. It was
+neither of more importance nor less than any other point in the line
+and it was a place of trenches, not of forts. The forts were empty and
+remain empty, monuments to the past of war, quite as useless as the
+walls of Rome would be against modern artillery.
+
+The decline of Verdun was even more complete. From the strongest point
+in French defence it became the weakest. When the Germans took St.
+Mihiel in September, 1914, they cut the north and south railroad that
+binds Verdun to the Paris-Nancy Railroad. When they retreated from the
+Marne they halted at Varennes and Montfaucon, and from these points
+they command the Paris-Verdun-Metz Railroad. Apart from a single
+narrow-gauge railroad of minor value, which wanders among the hills,
+climbing at prohibitive grades, Verdun is isolated from the rest of
+France. Consider what this means in modern war when the amount of
+ammunition consumed in a day almost staggers belief. Consider what it
+means when there are a quarter of a million men to be fed and
+munitioned in this sector.
+
+More than all this, when the lines came down to the trench condition
+Verdun was a salient, it was a narrow curve bulging out into the
+German front. It was precisely the same sort of military position as
+Ypres, which the Germans have twice before selected as the point for
+a great attack. In the Verdun sector the French are exposed to a
+converging fire; they are inside the German semicircle. Moreover, the
+salient is so narrow that the effect of converging fire is not to be
+exaggerated.
+
+When the French attacked the Germans in Champagne last fall they
+advanced on a wide front from a line parallel to the German line. As
+they pierced the first German lines they were exposed to the
+converging fire of the Germans, because they were pushing a wedge in.
+Ultimately they got one brigade through all the German lines, but it
+was destroyed beyond by this converging fire. But as the Germans
+advanced upon Verdun they were breaking down a salient and possessed
+the advantage they had had on the defensive in Champagne.
+
+Finally, one-half the French army of Verdun fought with its back to a
+deep river, connected with the other half only by bridges, some of
+which presently came under German fire, and there was every
+possibility that these troops might be cut off and captured if the
+German advance were pushed home far enough on the west bank of the
+Meuse and the German artillery was successful in interrupting the
+passage of the river. It was a perilous position and there were some
+days when the situation seemed critical.
+
+Accordingly, when the German drive at Verdun was at last disclosed in
+its real magnitude Joffre prepared to evacuate the town and the east
+bank of the river, to straighten his line and abolish the salient and
+give over to the Germans the wreck of Verdun. The position behind the
+river was next to impregnable; the lines would then be parallel; there
+would be no salient, and in the new position the French could
+concentrate their heavy artillery while the Germans were moving up the
+guns that they had fixed to the north of the old front.
+
+But at this point the French politician interfered. He recognized the
+wisdom of the merely military view of Joffre, but he saw also the
+moral value. He recognized that the French and the German public alike
+would not see Verdun as a mere point in a trench line and a point
+almost impossible to defend and destitute of military value. He saw
+that the French and German publics would think of Verdun as it had
+been thought of before the present war changed all the conditions of
+conflict. He recognized that the German people would be roused to new
+hope and confidence by the capture of a great fortress, and that the
+French would be equally depressed by losing what they believed was a
+great fortress.
+
+You had therefore in France for some hours, perhaps for several days,
+something that approximated a crisis growing out of the division of
+opinion between the civil and the military authorities, a division of
+opinion based upon two wholly different but not impossible equally
+correct appraisals. Joffre did not believe it was worth the men or the
+risk to hold a few square miles of French territory, since to
+evacuate would strengthen, not weaken, the line. The French
+politicians recognized that to lose Verdun was to suffer a moral
+defeat which would almost infallibly bring down the Ministry, might
+call into existence a new Committee of Public Safety, and would fire
+the German heart and depress the French.
+
+In the end the politicians had their way and Castelnau, Joffre's
+second in command, came over to their view and set out for Verdun to
+organize the defence for the position at the eleventh hour. He had
+with him Pétain, the man who had commanded the French army in the
+Battle of Champagne and henceforth commanded the army that was hurried
+to the Verdun sector. France now took up definitely the gage of battle
+as Germany had laid it down. Verdun now became a battle in the
+decisive sense of the word, although still on the moral side. Nothing
+is more preposterous than to believe that there ever was any chance of
+a German advance through Verdun to Paris. One has only to go to
+Verdun and see the country and the lines behind the city and miles
+back of the present front to realize how foolish such talk is.
+
+Meantime the German advance had been steady and considerable. All
+these attacks follow the same course--Ypres, Artois, Champagne,
+Dunajec. There is first the tremendous artillery concentration of the
+assailant; then the bombardment which abolishes the first and second
+line trenches of the defenders; then the infantry attack which takes
+these ruined trenches and almost invariably many thousands of
+prisoners and scores of guns. But now the situation changes. The
+assailant has passed beyond the effective range of his own heavy
+artillery, which cannot be immediately advanced because of its weight;
+he encounters a line of trenches that has not been levelled, he has
+come under the concentrated fire of his foe's heavy and light
+artillery without the support of his own heavy artillery, and all the
+advantage of surprise has gone.
+
+What happened at Verdun is what happened in the Champagne. The German
+advance was quite as successful--rather more successful than the
+French last September; it covered three or four miles on a
+considerable front, and it even reached Douaumont, one of the old
+forts and the fort which was placed on the highest hill in the
+environs of Verdun. Thousands of prisoners had been captured and many
+guns taken. But at this point the French resistance stiffened, as had
+the German last year. French reserves and artillery arrived. Pétain
+and Castelnau arrived. There was an end of the rapid advance and there
+began the pounding, grinding attack in which the advantage passed to
+the defender. It was just what happened at Neuve Chapelle so long ago
+when we first saw this kind of fighting exemplified completely.
+
+In the new attacks the Germans still gained ground, but they gained
+ground because the French withdrew from positions made untenable
+through the original German advance at other points. They
+consolidated their line, organized their new front. Ten days after the
+attack had begun it had ceased to be a question of Verdun, just as in
+a shorter time the French had realized last September that they could
+not break the German line in Champagne. But like the French in
+Champagne, like the British at Neuve Chapelle, the Germans persevered,
+and in consequence suffered colossal losses, exactly as the French and
+British had.
+
+To understand the German tactics you must recognize two things. The
+Germans had expected to take Verdun, and they had unquestionably known
+that the French military command did not intend at the outset to hold
+the town. They had advertised the coming victory far and wide over the
+world; they had staked much upon it. Moreover, in the first days, when
+they had taken much ground, when they had got Douaumont and could look
+down into Verdun, they had every reason to believe that they possessed
+the key to the city and that the French high command was slowly but
+steadily drawing back its lines and would presently evacuate the city.
+
+Knowing these things you can understand why the Germans were so
+confident. They did not invent stories of coming victory which they
+did not believe. They believed that Verdun was to fall because they
+knew, and the same thing was known and mentioned in London. I heard it
+there when the battle was in its earlier stages--that the French high
+command intended to evacuate Verdun. What they did not know and could
+not know was that the French politicians, perhaps one should say
+statesmen this time, had interfered, that the French high command had
+yielded and that Verdun was to be defended to the last ditch.
+
+When this decision was made the end of the real German advance was
+almost instantaneous. All that has happened since has been nothing but
+active trench war, violent fighting, desperate charge and counter
+charge, a material shortening of the French line at certain points,
+the abolition of minor salients, but of actual progress not the
+smallest. The advance stopped before lines on which Pétain elected to
+make his stand when he came with his army to defend Verdun. The
+Germans are still several miles outside of Verdun itself, and only at
+Douaumont have they touched the line of the exterior forts, which
+before the war were expected to defend the city.
+
+In Paris and elsewhere you will be told that Douaumont was occupied
+without resistance and that it was abandoned under orders before there
+had been a decision to hold Verdun. I do not pretend to know whether
+this is true or not, although I heard it on authority that was wholly
+credible, but the fact that the map discloses, that I saw for myself
+at Verdun, is that, save for Douaumont, none of the old forts have
+been taken and that the Germans have never been able to advance a foot
+from Douaumont or reach the other forts at any other point. And this
+is nothing more or less than the French experience at Champagne, the
+German experience about Ypres in 1915.
+
+In a later chapter I hope to discuss the situation at Verdun as I saw
+it on April 6th, and also the miracle of motor transport which played
+so great a part in the successful defence of the position. But the
+military details are wholly subordinate to the moral. All France was
+roused by a successful defence of a position attacked by Germany with
+the advertised purpose of breaking the spirit of the French people.
+The battle was fought in the plain daylight without the smallest
+concealment, and the least-informed reader of the official reports
+could grasp the issue which was the fate of the city of Verdun.
+
+The fact, known to a certain number of Frenchmen only, that the
+defence was improvised after the decision had been made to evacuate
+the whole salient, serves for them to increase the meaning of the
+victory as it increases the real extent of the French exploit. But
+this is a detail. The Germans openly, deliberately, after long
+preparation, announced their purpose, used every conceivable bit of
+strength they could bring to bear to take Verdun, and told their own
+people not merely that Verdun would fall, but at one moment that it
+had fallen. They did this with the firm conviction that it would
+fall--was falling.
+
+The French were steadily aware that Verdun might be lost. They knew
+from letters coming daily from the front how terrible the struggle
+was, and it is impossible to exaggerate the tension of the early days,
+although it was not a tension of panic or fear. Paris did not expect
+to see the invader, and there was nothing of this sort of moonshine
+abroad. But it was plain that the fall of the town would bring a
+tremendous wave of depression and if not despair yet a real reduction
+of hope. Instead, Verdun defended itself, the lines were maintained
+several miles on the other side of the town and all substantial
+advance came to an end in the first two weeks. The army itself, the
+military observers, were convinced that all danger was over as early
+as the second week in March, when correspondents of French newspapers
+were being taken to Verdun to see the situation and tell the people
+the facts.
+
+All over Northern France, and I was in many towns and cities, the
+"lift" that Verdun had brought was unmistakable and French confidence
+was everywhere evident. It showed itself in a spontaneous welcome to
+Alexander of Serbia in Paris, which, I am told, was the first thing of
+the sort in the war period. Frenchmen did not say that Verdun was the
+beginning of the end, and they did not forecast the prompt collapse of
+Germany. They did not even forecast the immediate end of the fighting
+about Verdun. They did not regard the victory as a Waterloo or a Sedan
+or any other foolish thing. But they did rather coolly and quite
+calmly appraise the thing and see in it the biggest German failure
+since the Marne, and a failure in a fight which the Germans had laid
+down all the conditions in advance and advertised the victory that
+they did not achieve as promising the collapse of French endurance and
+spirit.
+
+The Battle of Verdun was a battle for moral values, and the possession
+of the town itself was never of any real military value. Verdun
+commands nothing, and behind it lie well-prepared fortifications on
+dominating heights, positions that are ten times as easy to defend as
+those which the French have defended. It was not a battle for Paris,
+and there was never a prospect of the piercing of the French line;
+Germany was never as near a great military success as she was at Ypres
+after the first gas attack a year ago. The French army leaders judged
+the Verdun position as not worth the cost of defending. They were
+overruled by the politicians and they defended it successfully. But
+their first decision is the best evidence of the wholly illusory value
+that has been attached to the possession of Verdun itself.
+
+The politicians were unquestionably right as to the moral value, and
+it is possible if not probable that the relinquishment of the city
+voluntarily might have precipitated the fall of the Briand Ministry
+and the creation of a Committee of Public Safety--not to make peace,
+but to make war successfully. The will to defend Verdun came from the
+French people, it imposed itself upon the army and it resulted in a
+moral victory the consequences of which cannot be exaggerated and have
+given new heart and confidence to a people whose courage and
+determination must make an enduring impression on any one who sees
+France in the present terrible but glorious time.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+VERDUN, THE DOOR THAT LEADS NOWHERE
+
+    THE BATTLE AND THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE BATTLEFIELD--AN ANALYSIS
+    OF THE ATTACK AND DEFENCE
+
+
+In a preceding article I have endeavored to explain the tremendous
+moral "lift" that the successful defence of the city of Verdun has
+brought to France, a moral "lift" which has roused French confidence
+and expectation of ultimate victory to the highest point since the war
+began. I have also tried to demonstrate how utterly without value the
+fortress of Verdun was, because the forts were of no use in the
+present war, were as useless against German heavy artillery as those
+of Antwerp and Maubeuge, and had been evacuated by the French a full
+eighteen months before the present battle began. Finally I have
+indicated that so little military value was attached to Verdun by the
+French high command that it was prepared to evacuate the whole
+position, which is the most difficult to defend on the whole French
+front, and was only persuaded to give over his purpose by the
+arguments of the politicians, who believed that the moral effect of
+the evacuation would be disastrous to France and inspiriting to
+Germany.
+
+I now desire to describe at some length the actual topographical
+circumstances of Verdun and later I shall discuss the fashion in which
+an automobile transport system was improvised to meet the situation
+created by the interruption of traffic by German artillery fire along
+the two considerable railroad lines. It was this system which actually
+saved the town and is the real "miracle of Verdun," if one is to have
+miracles to explain what brave and skilful men do.
+
+I saw Verdun on April 6th. I went through the city, which was little
+more than a mass of ashes, with General Dubois, the military governor
+of the town itself, and with him I went to Fort de la Chaume, on one
+of the highest hills near Verdun, and from this vantage point had the
+whole countryside explained to me. The day on which I visited Verdun
+was the first completely quiet day in weeks, and I was thus fortunate
+in being able to see and to go about without the disturbing or
+hindering circumstances which are incident to a bombardment.
+
+The city of Verdun is situated at the bottom of the Meuse Valley on
+both sides of the river. But the main portion of the town is on the
+west bank and surrounds a low hill, crowned by the cathedral and old
+Vauban citadel. The town is surrounded by old ramparts, long ago
+deprived of military value and belonging, like the citadel, to
+eighteenth century warfare. The Valley of the Meuse is here several
+miles wide, as flat as your hand, and the river, which is small but
+fairly deep, a real obstacle since it cannot be forded, wanders back
+and forth from one side of the valley to the other. Below Verdun it is
+doubled, as a military obstacle, by the Canal de l'Est.
+
+If you put a lump of sugar in a finger bowl you will pretty fairly
+reproduce the Verdun topography. The lump of sugar will represent
+Verdun, the rim of the bowl the hills around the city, the interior of
+the bowl the little basin in which the city stands. This rim of hills,
+which rise some five or six hundred feet above the town itself, is
+broken on the west by a deep and fairly narrow trough which comes into
+the Meuse Valley and connects it some thirty miles to the west with
+the Plain of Châlons. If you should look down upon this region from an
+aeroplane this furrow would look like a very deep gutter cutting far
+into the tangle of hills.
+
+Now in the warfare of other centuries the value of the Verdun fortress
+was just this: the furrow which I have described is the one avenue
+available for an invading army coming from the east out of Metz or
+south from Luxemburg and aiming to get into the Plain of Châlons to
+the west. It is the way the Prussians came in 1792 and were defeated
+at Valmy, at the western entrance of the trough about thirty miles
+away. They took Verdun on their way--so did the Germans in 1870.
+
+Verdun in French hands closed this trough to the invaders.
+
+It closed it because the low hill which bears the town was strongly
+fortified and was surrounded by lower ground. Such artillery as was in
+existence was not of a sufficiently long range to place upon the hills
+about Verdun which we have described as the rim of the bowl. The town
+of Verdun was situated on both sides of the river and commanded all
+the bridges. It was, in fact, the stopple in the mouth of the
+bottle-neck passage leading into North Central France, the passage
+through which ran the main road and, later, the railway from the
+frontier nearest Paris to the capital.
+
+But when the modern developments of artillery came, then Verdun, the
+old fortress that Vauban built for Louis XIV, lost its value. It was
+commanded by the surrounding hills and the French moved out of the
+town and the Vauban fortifications and built on the surrounding hills,
+on the rim, to go back to our figure, the forts which were the defence
+of the town when the present war began, forts arranged quite like
+those of Liège or Antwerp and some four or five miles away from the
+town. But bear in mind these forts were designed, like the old
+fortress and fortifications of the eighteenth century, to bar the road
+from the Meuse and from Germany to the Plain of Châlons and the level
+country west of the Argonne. When the Germans came south through
+Belgium and got into the Plain of Châlons from the north they had
+turned the whole Verdun position and had got into the region it
+barred by another route; they had come in by the back door; Verdun
+was the front. Not only that, but they are there now and have been
+there ever since the first days of September, 1914.
+
+When one hears about Verdun as the gateway to Paris or anything else
+one hears about the Verdun of the past. It was not the door to Paris
+but the outer door to the region around Paris, to the Plains of
+Champagne and Châlons. But as the Germans are already in these plains
+the taking of Verdun now would not bring them nearer to Paris; they
+are only fifty miles away at Noyon, on the Oise, and they would be 160
+at Verdun if they took the city. If they took Verdun they would get
+control of the Paris-Metz Railway, and if they then drove the French
+away from the trough we have been describing they would get a short
+line into France, and a line coming from German territory directly,
+not passing through Belgium. But they would not be nearer to Paris.
+
+When the French saw, in the opening days of the war, that forts were
+of no permanent value against the German guns they left the forts on
+the hills above Verdun as they had abandoned the Vauban works and
+moved north for a few miles. Here they dug trenches, mounted their
+guns in concealed positions, and stood on the defensive, as they were
+standing elsewhere from Belgium to Switzerland. There was now no
+fortress of Verdun, and Verdun city was nothing but a point behind the
+lines of trenches, a point like Rheims, or Arras. The forts of the rim
+were equally of no more importance and were now empty of guns or
+garrisons. If the Germans, by a sudden attack, broke all the way
+through the French trenches here it would be quite as serious as if
+they broke through at other points, but no more so. There was no
+fortress of Verdun and the Verdun position commanded nothing.
+
+The Battle of Verdun, as it is disclosed to an observer who stands on
+Fort de la Chaume, a mile or two west and above Verdun and in the
+mouth of the trough we have described, was this: On the west bank of
+the Meuse, four or five miles northwest of the town, there is a steep
+ridge going east and west and perhaps 1,100 feet high. This is the
+crest of Charny, and it rises sharply from the flat valley and marches
+to the west without a break for some miles. On it are the old forts of
+the rim.
+
+Three or four miles still to the north is a line of hills which are
+separated from each other by deep ravines leading north and south. Two
+of these hills, Le Mort Homme (Dead Man's Hill) and Hill 304, have
+been steadily in the reports for many weeks. They are the present
+front of the French. Between one and two miles still to the north are
+other confused and tangled hills facing north, and it was here that
+the French lines ran when the great attack began in the third week of
+February. On this side the Germans have advanced rather less than two
+miles; they have not reached the Charny Ridge, which is the true and
+last line of defence of the Verdun position, and they have not
+captured the two hills to the north, which are the advanced position,
+now the first line.
+
+When I was in Paris before I went to Verdun there was a general belief
+that the French might ultimately abandon the two outer hills, Dead
+Man's and 304, and come back to the Charny Ridge, which is a wall
+running from the river west without a break for miles. Apparently this
+has not been found necessary, but what is worth noting is that if
+these hills were evacuated it would not mean the withdrawal from
+Verdun but only to the best line of defence (the last line, to be
+sure), which includes the town itself.
+
+Now, east of the river the situation is materially different. Between
+the Meuse and the level plateau, which appears in the dispatches from
+the front as the Woevre, is a long, narrow ridge, running from north
+to south for perhaps thirty-five or forty miles. This is the Côte de
+Meuse, or, translated, the Hills of the Meuse. The range is never more
+than ten miles wide and at many points less than half as wide. On the
+west it rises very sharply from the Meuse and on the east it breaks
+down quite as abruptly into the Woevre Plain. It cannot be effectively
+approached from the Woevre, because the Woevre is an exceedingly
+marshy plain, with much sub-surface water and in spring a mass of
+liquid clay.
+
+Now the French, when the German drive began, stood on this ridge some
+eight miles, rather less, perhaps, to the north of the town of Verdun;
+their line ran from the Meuse straight east along this ridge and then
+turned at right angles and came south along the eastern edge of the
+Meuse Hills and the shore of the Woevre Plain until it touched the
+river again at St. Mihiel, twenty miles to the south, where the
+Germans had broken through the Meuse Hills and reached the river. The
+German attack came south along the crest of this ridge because the
+German heavy artillery could not be brought over the Woevre.
+
+About halfway between the French front and Verdun, on a little crest
+somewhat higher than the main ridge, the French had erected a line of
+forts, just as they had on the Charny Ridge, Forts Douaumont and Vaux,
+familiar names now, were the forts most distant from Verdun. But the
+French here, as on the other side of the river, had come out of these
+forts, abandoned and dismantled them, and taken to trenches much to
+the north. It was upon these trenches that the main German attack
+fell, and in the first days the French were pushed back until their
+trench line followed the crests that bear the old forts, and at one
+point, at Douaumont, the Germans had actually got possession of one of
+the old forts; but the French trenches pass in front of this fort at a
+distance of but a few hundred yards.
+
+Now, in the first days of the battle the position of the French on
+the east bank of the Meuse was just this: the troops facing north were
+meeting and slowly yielding to a terrific drive coming south and
+southwest; the rest of the troops that faced east toward the Woevre
+were not attacked severely. But as the Germans came south, and when
+they took Douaumont, they were able to reach the bridges across the
+Meuse behind the French troops on the Meuse Hills and to destroy them
+by indirect fire, and these French troops, more than a hundred
+thousand probably, were fighting with their backs to a deep river and
+exposed to destruction in case their lines did not hold.
+
+In this situation Joffre proposed to take his troops behind the Meuse
+and on the hills to the west and above the city, leaving the city to
+the Germans. The French line would thus come north behind the Meuse
+from St. Mihiel and then turn west above Verdun, following either the
+Charny Ridge or else the Hills of Regret and Chaume, on either side
+of the trough, described above, which the road to Paris follows.
+
+If Verdun were a fortress actually; if either the old town or the
+circle of forts outside had been of value, Joffre would not have
+proposed this thing. But they were of no value. Verdun was once a
+fortress barring the way to the Plain of Châlons, but the Germans were
+in the plain, having come through Belgium by the back door, as it
+were. The forts outside the city on the rim of the basin had already
+been abandoned because they could have been destroyed by German heavy
+artillery, as were those of Liège and Antwerp. Verdun was just a
+position; but it was a difficult position to defend because of the
+river, which cut off one-half the army and could be crossed only by
+bridges, which were under indirect fire.
+
+If the French had come back to the Charny Ridge, or even to the Regret
+Hills south of the trough followed by the Paris-Metz road, they would
+have stood on hills of patent military value; the trough is a natural
+ditch in front. These hills are all trenched and prepared for defence.
+The French would merely have shortened their lines and taken an easy
+position to defend, instead of holding a bad position. But ultimately
+this would have meant the relinquishing of Verdun, the little town
+down in the valley below, now become a heap of ruins and having lost
+its military value thirty years earlier, when heavy artillery began
+its decisive success over the old fortifications.
+
+The French did not retire, because the civil government overruled the
+military; decided that the moral effect of the withdrawal from Verdun
+would be disastrous to the French and advantageous to the Germans.
+Instead of retiring, the French stood and held the hills beyond the
+Charny Ridge, Dead Man's and 304; they hold them still and seem
+determined to keep them. But remember that they can still retire to
+the Charny Ridge if they choose, and only then find their best line
+west of the Meuse, if they mean to hold on to the city of Verdun.
+
+On the other hand, east of the River Meuse the French are
+approximately in their last line. The hills and crests they hold upon
+the Meuse Hills are some three or four miles from Verdun, but if the
+French retired far they would begin to come down hill, with a deep
+river at their backs. In consequence, whenever you hear that the
+Germans have made some slight gain, taken a trench about Douaumont or
+Vaux, you are certain to hear at once that the French have counter
+attacked and retaken the lost ground.
+
+The essential thing to remember is that the defence of Verdun is not
+the defence of a position that has a great military value. The French
+would be better off, would lose fewer men and run smaller risk of
+considerable losses if they should quit the east bank of the Meuse and
+occupy the hills back of Verdun on the west bank. On the west bank the
+Germans have never made any material gain, and they have not come
+within reach of the hills that bear the old forts. But the French
+Government has decided that for political reason, for reasons that
+affect the moral, not the military, situation, Verdun must not be
+surrendered; hence the army is holding it at a cost of men less than
+the Germans are paying to take it, but at a far greater cost than
+would be necessary to hold the better positions west of the river.
+
+The Germans have not made any gain of importance in nearly two months.
+The French are very sure they will not come farther south. They are as
+confident as men could be. But if the Germans should come farther
+south and at last force the French to come back behind the river and
+to the hills above the town, they would only win a moral victory. The
+military situation would not be changed, unless they should also
+pierce the French lines on the west of the river, and this is
+absolutely unthinkable now.
+
+If you think of Verdun city as a fortress you will put yourself in the
+eighteenth century. It is just an abandoned town, mostly ashes and
+completely ruined by a useless bombardment after the main German
+advance had been checked. If you think of Verdun as a fortified
+position, like Liège, which, if it fell, would bring disaster, as did
+the fall of Liège, you are thinking in terms of the situation before
+the war. The forts of this position have all been abandoned and the
+French are fighting in trenches in all points save one outside this
+circle of forts. If you think of Verdun as the gateway to anything,
+you are thinking of something that doesn't exist. It was a gateway to
+Central France, to the Plain of Châlons, from the German frontier
+before the Germans came down into the Plain of Châlons from the north
+through Belgium.
+
+But if you think of Verdun as a place which has a great sentimental
+value for both the French and the Germans; if you think of it as a
+place which by reason of its importance in other days still preserves
+a value in the minds of the mass of the French and German publics, a
+town the taking of which would as a result of this wholly false
+appraisal be reckoned in Germany as a great victory, which would
+vastly encourage German masses and would be accepted in France as a
+great defeat which would equally depress the French public, you will
+think of the battle for Verdun as it is.
+
+If you go to Verdun you will see that the estimate that the world has
+placed upon it is illusory. You will see it is an abandoned town. You
+will see, as I did, that great and famous forts are without guns, and
+you will see, as I did, that the positions which the French have
+prepared behind the Meuse and above the town are vastly stronger than
+those which they have held successfully, in Lorraine or any other
+place where the attacks have been bitter, for nearly two years.
+
+There are no forts, fortifications, fortresses, in this war. There
+are just trenches, and the Verdun sector is no exception. Verdun is
+not surrounded; it is not invested. I went to the town from Bar-le-Duc
+in an automobile without difficulty, and I ran back to Paris by
+another road, through Châlons, with equal ease. The Germans have never
+got within three miles of the town on any side; to the west of the
+River Meuse they are not within six miles of it. They are not gaining,
+and have not been gaining for weeks; they are merely fighting a
+desperate trench campaign, and the French are fighting back, retaking
+trenches on the east of the river, because they are in their last line
+on this bank of the river, but paying less attention to German trench
+gains on the west because the Germans are still far from the Charny
+Ridge, their main position.
+
+If Verdun falls, that is, if the French are compelled under pressure
+or as a result of the cost of holding their present awkward position
+to go back behind the river, they will lose fifty or a hundred square
+miles of French territory, they will lose all the tremendous value of
+the moral "lift" which the successful defence has brought, but they
+will lose nothing else; and when the Germans have taken Verdun, the
+ashes, the ruins, they will stop, because there is no object or value
+in further attack. They are fighting for moral values, and the French
+politician has overruled the French soldier and compelled him to
+accept battle on unfavorable ground for this same moral value, but
+against his military judgment. He has done it successfully. He expects
+and France expects that he will continue to do it successfully, but in
+the wholly remote contingency that he failed (I can only say that it
+is a contingency no longer considered in France), a loss in moral
+advantage would be the only consequence.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+IN SIGHT OF THE PROMISED LAND--ON THE LORRAINE BATTLEFIELD
+
+
+In the third week of August, 1914, a French army crossed the frontier
+of Alsace-Lorraine and entered the Promised Land, toward which all
+Frenchmen had looked in hope and sadness for forty-four years. The
+long-forgotten communiqués of that early period of the war reported
+success after success, until at last it was announced that the
+victorious French armies had reached Sarrebourg and Morhange, and were
+astride the Strassburg-Metz Railroad. And then Berlin took up the cry,
+and France and the world learned of a great German victory and of the
+defeat and rout of the invading army. Even Paris conceded that the
+retreat had begun and the "army of liberation" was crowding back
+beyond the frontier and far within French territory.
+
+Then the curtain of the censorship fell and the world turned to the
+westward to watch the terrible battle for Paris. In the agony and
+glory of the Marne the struggle along the Moselle was forgotten; the
+Battle of Nancy, of Lorraine, was fought and won in the darkness, and
+when the safety of Paris was assured the world looked toward the
+Aisne, and then toward Flanders. So it came about that one of the
+greatest battles of the whole war, one of the most important of the
+French victories, the success that made the Marne possible, the rally
+and stand of the French armies about Nancy, escaped the fame it
+earned. Only in legend, in the romance of the Kaiser with his cavalry
+waiting on the hills to enter the Lorraine capital, did the battle
+live.
+
+When I went to France one of the hopes I had cherished was that I
+might be permitted to visit this battlefield, to see the ground on
+which a great battle had been fought, that was still unknown country,
+in the main, for those who have written on the war. The Lorraine field
+was the field on which France and Germany had planned for a generation
+to fight. Had the Germans respected the neutrality of Belgium, it is
+by Nancy, by the gap between the Vosges and the hills of the Meuse,
+that they must have broken into France. The Marne was a battlefield
+which was reached by chance and fought over by hazard, but every foot
+of the Lorraine country had been studied for the fight long years in
+advance. Here war followed the natural course, followed the plans of
+the general staff prepared years in advance. Indeed, I had treasured
+over years a plan of the Battle of Nancy, contained in a French book
+written years ago, which might serve as the basis for a history of
+what happened, as it was written as a prophecy of what was to come.
+
+When the Great General Staff was pleased to grant my request to see
+the battlefield of Nancy I was advised to travel by train to that
+town accompanied by an officer from the General Staff, and informed
+that I should there meet an officer of the garrison, who would conduct
+me to all points of interest and explain in detail the various phases
+of the conflict. Thus it fell out, and I have to thank Commandant
+Leroux for the courtesy and consideration which made this excursion
+successful.
+
+In peace time one goes from Paris to Nancy in five hours, and the
+distance is about that from New York to Boston, by Springfield. In war
+all is different, and the time almost doubled. Yet there are
+compensations. Think of the New York-Boston trip as bringing you
+beyond New Haven to the exact rear of battle, of battle but fifteen
+miles away, with the guns booming in the distance and the aeroplanes
+and balloons in full view. Think also of this same trip, which from
+Hartford to Worchester follows the line of a battle not yet two years
+old, a battle that has left its traces in ruined villages, in
+shattered houses. On either side of the railroad track the graves
+descend to meet the embankments; you can mark the advance and the
+retreat by the crosses which fill the fields. The gardens that touch
+the railroad and extend to the rear of houses in the little towns are
+filled with graves. Each enclosure has been fought for at the point of
+the bayonet, and every garden wall recalls the Château of Hougoumont,
+at Waterloo.
+
+All this was two years ago, but there is to-day, also. East of
+Bar-le-Duc the main line is cut by German shell fire now. From Fort
+Camp des Romains above St. Mihiel German guns sweep the railroad near
+Commercy, and one has to turn south by a long detour, as if one went
+to Boston by Fitchburg, travel south through the country of Jeanne
+d'Arc and return by Toul, whose forts look out upon the invaded land.
+Thus one comes to Nancy by night, and only by night, for twenty miles
+beyond there are Germans and a German cannon, which not so long ago
+sent a shell into the town and removed a whole city block beside the
+railroad station. It is the sight of this ruin as you enter the town
+which reminds you that you are at the front, but there are other
+reminders.
+
+As we ate our dinner in the café, facing the beautiful Place
+Stanislas, we were disturbed by a strange and curious drumming sound.
+Going out into the square, we saw an aeroplane, or rather its lights,
+red and green, like those of a ship. It was the first of several, the
+night patrol, rising slowly and steadily, and then sweeping off in a
+wide curve toward the enemy's line. They were the sentries of the air
+which were to guard us while we slept, for men do sentry-go in the air
+as well as on the earth about the capital of Lorraine. Then the
+searchlights on the hills began to play, sweeping the horizon toward
+that same mysterious region where beyond the darkness there is war.
+
+The next morning I woke with the sense of Fourth of July. Bang! Bang!
+Bang! Such a barking of cannon crackers I had never heard. Still
+drowsy, I pushed open the French windows and looked down on the
+square. There I beheld a hundred or more men, women, and children,
+their eyes fixed on something in the air above and behind the hotel.
+Still the incessant barking of guns, with the occasional boom of
+something more impressive. With difficulty I grasped the fact. I was
+in the midst of a Taube raid. Somewhere over my head, invisible to me
+because of the wall of my hotel, a German aeroplane was flying, and
+all the anti-aircraft guns were shooting at it. Was it carrying bombs?
+Should I presently see or feel the destruction following the descent
+of these?
+
+But the Taube turned away, the guns fired less and less frequently,
+the people in the streets drifted away, the children to school, the
+men to work, the women to wait. It was just a detail in their lives,
+as familiar as the incoming steamer to the commuters on the North
+River ferryboats. Some portion of war has been the day's history of
+Nancy for nearly two years now. The children do not carry gas masks to
+school with them as they do at Pont-à-Mousson, a dozen miles to the
+north, but women and children have been killed by German shells, by
+bombs, brought by Zeppelins and by aeroplanes. There is always
+excitement of sorts in the district of Nancy.
+
+After a breakfast, broken by the return of the aeroplanes we had seen
+departing the night before for the patrol, we entered our cars and set
+out for the front, for the near-front, for the lines a few miles
+behind the present trenches, where Nancy was saved but two years ago.
+Our route lay north along the valley of the Meurthe, a smiling broad
+valley, marching north and south and meeting in a few miles that of
+the Moselle coming east. It was easy to believe that one was riding
+through the valley of the Susquehanna, with spring and peace in the
+air. Toward the east a wall of hills shut out the view. This was the
+shoulder of the Grand Couronné, the wall against which German
+violence burst and broke in September, 1914.
+
+Presently we came to a long stretch of road walled in on the river
+side by brown canvas, exactly the sort of thing that is used at
+football games to shut out the non-paying public. But it had another
+purpose here. We were within the vision of the Germans, across the
+river, on the heights behind the forest, which outlined itself at the
+skyline; there were the Kaiser's troops and that forest was the
+Bois-le-Prêtre, the familiar incident in so many communiqués since the
+war began. Thanks to the canvas, it was possible for the French to
+move troops along this road without inviting German shells. Yet it was
+impossible to derive any large feeling of security from a canvas wall,
+which alone interposed between you and German heavy artillery.
+
+We passed through several villages and each was crowded with troops;
+cavalry, infantry, all the branches represented; it was still early
+and the soldiers were just beginning their day's work; war is so
+completely a business here. Transport wagons marched along the roads,
+companies of soldiers filed by. Interspersed with the soldiers were
+civilians, the women and children, for none of the villages are
+evacuated. Not even the occasional boom of a gun far off could give to
+this thing the character of real war. It recalled the days of my
+soldiering in the militia camp at Framingham in Massachusetts. It was
+simply impossible to believe that it was real. Even the faces of the
+soldiers were smiling. There was no such sense of terribleness, of
+strain and weariness as I later found about Verdun. The Lorraine front
+is now inactive, tranquil; it has been quiet so long that men have
+forgotten all the carnage and horror of the earlier time.
+
+We turned out of the valley and climbed abruptly up the hillside. In a
+moment we came into the centre of a tiny village and looked into a row
+of houses, whose roofs had been swept off by shell fire. Here and
+there a whole house was gone; next door the house was undisturbed and
+the women and children looked out of the doors. The village was St.
+Geneviève, and we were at the extreme front of the French in August,
+and against this hill burst the flood of German invasion. Leaving the
+car we walked out of the village, and at the end of the street a sign
+warned the wayfarer not to enter the fields, for which we were bound:
+"War--do not trespass." This was the burden of the warning.
+
+Once beyond this sign we came out suddenly upon an open plateau, upon
+trenches. Northward the slope descended to a valley at our feet. It
+was cut and seamed by trenches, and beyond the trenches stood the
+posts that carried the barbed-wire entanglements. Here and there,
+amidst the trenches, there were graves. I went down to the barbed-wire
+entanglements and examined them curiously. They at least were real.
+Once thousands of men had come up out of the little woods a quarter of
+a mile below; they had come on in that famous massed attack, they
+had come on in the face of machine gun and "seventy-fives." They had
+just reached the wires, which marked high water. In the woods below,
+the Bois de Facq, in the fields by the river 4,000 Germans had been
+buried.
+
+    [Illustration: GERMAN LORRAINE (map)]
+
+Looking out from the trenches the whole country unfolded. Northward
+the little village of Atton slept under the steep slope of
+Côte-de-Mousson, a round pinnacle crowned with an ancient château.
+From the hill the German artillery had swept the ground where I stood.
+Below the hill to the west was Pont-à-Mousson, the city of 150
+bombardments, which the Germans took when they came south and lost
+later. Above it was the Bois-le-Prêtre, in which guns were now booming
+occasionally. Far to the north was another hill, just visible, and its
+slope toward us was cut and seamed with yellow slashes: Those were the
+French trenches, then of the second or third line; beyond there was
+still another hill, it was slightly blurred in the haze, but it was
+not over five miles away, and it was occupied by the Germans. From the
+slope above me on a clear day it is possible to see Metz, so near are
+French and German lines to the old frontier.
+
+Straight across the river to the west of us was another wood, with a
+glorious name, the Forest of the Advance Guard. It swept to the south
+of us. In that wood the Germans had also planted their guns on the day
+of battle. They had swept the trenches where I stood from three sides.
+Plainly it had been a warm corner. But the French had held on. Their
+commander had received a verbal order to retreat. He insisted that it
+should be put in writing, and this took time. The order came. It had
+to be obeyed, but he obeyed slowly. Reluctantly the men left the
+trenches they had held so long. They slipped southward along the road
+by which we had come. But suddenly their rear guards discovered the
+Germans were also retreating. So the French came back and the line of
+St. Geneviève was held, the northern door to Nancy was not forced.
+
+Looking down again it was not difficult to reconstitute that German
+assault, made at night. The thing was so simple the civilian could
+grasp it. A road ran through the valley and along it the Germans had
+formed; the slope they had to advance up was gentle, far more gradual
+than that of San Juan. They had been picked troops selected for a
+forlorn hope, and they had come back four times. The next morning the
+whole forest had been filled with dead and dying. Not less than a
+division--20,000 men--had made the terrible venture. Now there was a
+strange sense of emptiness in the country; war had come and gone, left
+its graves, its trenches, its barbed-wire entanglements; but these
+were all disappearing already. On this beautiful spring morning it was
+impossible to feel the reality of what happened here, what was
+happening now, in some measure, five miles or more to the north.
+Nature is certainly the greatest of all pacifists; she will not permit
+the signs of war to endure nor the mind to believe that war itself has
+existed and exists.
+
+From St. Geneviève we went to the Grand Mont d'Amance, the most famous
+point in all the Lorraine front, the southeast corner of the Grand
+Couronné, as St. Geneviève is the northern. Here, from a hill some
+1,300 feet high, one looks eastward into the Promised Land of
+France--into German Lorraine. In the early days of August the great
+French invasion, resting one flank upon this hill, the other upon the
+distant Vosges, had stepped over the frontier. One could trace its
+route to the distant hills among which it had found disaster. In these
+hills the Germans had hidden their heavy guns, and the French, coming
+under their fire without warning, unsupported by heavy artillery,
+which was lacking to them, had broken. Then the German invasion had
+rolled back. You could follow the route. In the foreground the little
+Seille River could be discerned; it marked the old frontier. Across
+this had come the defeated troops. They had swarmed down the low, bare
+hills; they had crossed and vanished in the woods just at my feet;
+these woods were the Forest of Champenoux. Into this forest the
+Germans had followed by the thousand, they were astride the main road
+to Nancy, which rolled white and straight at my feet. But in the woods
+the French rallied. For days there was fought in this stretch of trees
+one of the most terrible of battles.
+
+As I stood on the Grand Mont I faced almost due east. In front of me
+and to the south extended the forest. Exactly at my feet the forest
+reached up the hill and there was a little cluster of buildings about
+a fountain. All was in ruins, and here, exactly here, was the high
+water mark of the German advance. They had occupied the ruins for a
+few moments and then had been driven out. Elsewhere they had never
+emerged from the woods; they had approached the western shore, but the
+French had met them with machine guns and "seventy-fives." The brown
+woods at my feet were nothing but a vast cemetery; thousands of French
+and German soldiers slept there.
+
+In their turn the Germans had gone back. Now, in the same woods, a
+French battery was shelling the Germans on the other side of the
+Seille. Under the glass I studied the little villages unfolding as on
+a map; they were all destroyed, but it was impossible to recognize
+this. Some were French, some German; you could follow the line, but
+there were no trenches; behind them French shells were bursting
+occasionally and black smoke rose just above the ground. Thousands of
+men faced each other less than four miles from where I stood, but all
+that there was to be detected were the shell bursts; otherwise one saw
+a pleasant country, rolling hills, mostly without woods, bare in the
+spring, which had not yet come to turn them green. In the foreground
+ran that arbitrary line Bismarck had drawn between Frenchmen forty-six
+years before--the frontier--but of natural separation there was none.
+He had cut off a part of France, that was all, and one looked upon
+what had been and was still a bleeding wound.
+
+I asked the French commandant about the various descriptions made by
+those who have written about the war. They have described the German
+attack as mounting the slope of the Grand Mont, where we stood. He
+took me to the edge and pointed down. It was a cliff almost as steep
+as the Palisades. "C'est une blague," he smiled. "Just a story." The
+Germans had not charged here, but in the forest below, where the Nancy
+road passed through and enters the valley of the Amezeule. They had
+not tried to carry but to turn the Grand Mont. More than 200,000 men
+had fought for days in the valley below. I asked him about the legend
+of the Kaiser, sitting on a hill, waiting in white uniform with his
+famous escort, waiting until the road was clear for his triumphal
+entrance into the capital of Lorraine. He laughed. I might choose my
+hill; if the Emperor had done this thing the hill was "over there,"
+but had he? They are hard on legends at the front, and the tales that
+delight Paris die easily on the frontiers of war.
+
+But since I had asked so much about the fighting my commandant
+promised to take me in the afternoon to the point where the struggle
+had been fiercest, still farther to the south, where all the hills
+break down and there is a natural gateway from Germany into France,
+the beginning of the famous Charmes Gap, through which the German road
+to Paris from the east ran, and still runs. Leaving Nancy behind us,
+and ascending the Meurthe valley on the eastern bank, turning out of
+it before Saint Nicholas du Port, we came presently to the most
+completely war-swept fields that I have ever seen. On a perfectly
+level plain the little town of Haraucourt stands in sombre ruins. Its
+houses are nothing but ashes and rubble. Go out of the village toward
+the east and you enter fields pockmarked by shell fire. For several
+miles you can walk from shell hole to shell hole. The whole country is
+a patchwork of these shell holes. At every few rods a new line of old
+trenches approaches the road and wanders away again. Barbed-wire
+entanglements run up and down the gently sloping hillsides.
+
+Presently we came out upon a perfectly level field. It was simply torn
+by shell fire. Old half-filled trenches wandered aimlessly about, and
+beyond, under a gentle slope, the little village of Courbessaux stood
+in ruins. The commandant called my attention to a bit of woods in
+front.
+
+"The Germans had their machine guns there," said he. "We didn't know
+it, and a French brigade charged across this field. It started at
+8:15, and at 8:30 it had lost more than 3,000 out of 6,000. Then the
+Germans came out of the woods in their turn, and our artillery, back
+at Haraucourt, caught them and they lost 3,500 men in a quarter of an
+hour." Along the roadside were innumerable graves. We looked at one.
+It was marked: "Here 196 French." Twenty feet distant was another; it
+was marked: "Here 196 Germans." In the field where we stood I was told
+some 10,000 men are buried. They were buried hurriedly, and even now
+when it rains arms and legs are exposed.
+
+Two years had passed, almost two years, since this field had been
+fought for. The Germans had taken it. They had approached Haraucourt,
+but had not passed it. This was the centre and the most vital point in
+the Lorraine battle. What Foch's troops had done about La Fêre
+Champenoise, those of Castelnau had done here. The German wave had
+been broken, but at what cost? And now, after so many months, the
+desolation of war remained. But yet it was not to endure. Beside the
+very graves an old peasant was ploughing, guiding his plough and his
+horses carefully among the tombs. Four miles away more trenches faced
+each other and the battle went on audibly, but behind this line, in
+this very field where so many had died, life was beginning.
+
+Later we drove south, passing within the lines the Germans had held in
+their great advance, we travelled through Lunéville, which they had
+taken and left unharmed, save as shell fire had wrecked an eastern
+suburb. We visited Gerbéviller, where in an excess of rage the Germans
+had burned every structure in the town. I have never seen such a
+headquarters of desolation. Everything that had a shape, that had a
+semblance of beauty or of use, lies in complete ruin, detached houses,
+a château, the blocks in the village, all in ashes. Save for Sermaize,
+Gerbéviller is the most completely wrecked town in France.
+
+You enter the village over a little bridge across the tiny Mortagne.
+Here some French soldiers made a stand and held off the German advance
+for some hours. There was no other battle at Gerbéviller, but for this
+defence the town died. Never was death so complete. Incendiary
+material was placed in every house, and all that thoroughness could do
+to make the destruction complete was done. Gerbéviller is dead, a few
+women and children live amidst its ashes, there is a wooden barrack by
+the bridge with a post-office and the inevitable postcards, but only
+on postcards, picture postcards, does the town live. It will be a
+place of pilgrimage when peace comes.
+
+From Gerbéviller we went by Bayon to the Plateau of Saffais, the ridge
+between the Meurthe and the Moselle, where the defeated army of
+Castelnau made its last and successful stand. The French line came
+south from St. Geneviève, where we had been in the morning, through
+the Grand Mont, across the plain by Haraucourt and Corbessaux, then
+crossed the Meurthe by Dombasle and stood on the heights from
+Rossières south. Having taken Lunèville, the Germans attempted to
+cross the Meurthe coming out of the Forest of Vitrimont.
+
+Standing on the Plateau of Saffais and facing east, the whole country
+unfolded again, as it did at the Grand Mont. The face of the plateau
+is seamed with trenches. They follow the slopes, and the village of
+Saffais stands out like a promontory. On this ridge the French had
+massed three hundred cannon. Their army had come back in ruins, and to
+steady it they had been compelled to draw troops from Alsace.
+Mülhausen was sacrificed to save Nancy. Behind these crests on which
+we stood a beaten army, almost routed, had in three days found itself
+and returned to the charge.
+
+In the shadow of the dusk I looked across the Meurthe into the brown
+mass of the Forest of Vitrimont. Through this had come the victorious
+Germans. They had debouched from the wood; they had approached the
+river, hidden under the slope, but, swept by the hell of this
+artillery storm, they had broken. But few had lived to pass the river,
+none had mounted the slopes. There were almost no graves along these
+trenches. Afterward the Germans had in turn yielded to pressure from
+the south and gone back. Before the Battle of the Marne began the
+German wave of invasion had been stopped here in the last days of
+August. A second terrific drive, coincident with the Marne, had
+likewise failed. Then the Germans had gone back to the frontier. The
+old boundary line of Bismarck is now in many instances an actual line
+of fire, and nowhere on this front are the Germans more than three or
+four miles within French territory.
+
+If you should look at the map of the wholly imaginary Battle of Nancy,
+drawn by Colonel Boucher to illustrate his book, published before
+1910, a book describing the problem of the defence of the eastern
+frontier, you will find the lines on which the French stood at Saffais
+indicated exactly. Colonel Boucher had not dreamed this battle, but
+for a generation the French General Staff had planned it. Here they
+had expected to meet the German thrust. When the Germans decided to go
+by Belgium they had in turn taken the offensive, but, having failed,
+they had fought their long-planned battle.
+
+Out of all the region of war, of war to-day and war yesterday, one
+goes back to Nancy, to its busy streets, its crowds of people
+returning from their day's work. War is less than fifteen miles away,
+but Nancy is as calm as London is nervous. Its bakers still make
+macaroons; even Taube raids do not excuse the children from punctual
+attendance at school. Nancy is calm with the calmness of all France,
+but with just a touch of something more than calmness, which forty-six
+years of living by an open frontier brings. Twenty-one months ago it
+was the gauge of battle, and half a million men fought for it; a new
+German drive may approach it at any time. Out toward the old frontier
+there is still a German gun, hidden in the Forest of Bézange, which
+has turned one block to ashes and may fire again at any hour.
+Zeppelins have come and gone, leaving dead women and children behind
+them, but Nancy goes on with to-day.
+
+And to-morrow? In the hearts of all the people of this beautiful city
+there is a single and a simple faith. Nancy turns her face toward the
+ancient frontier, she looks hopefully out upon the shell-swept Grand
+Couronné and beyond to the Promised Land. And the people say to you,
+if you ask them about war and about peace, as one of them said to me:
+"Peace will come, but not until we have our ancient frontier, not
+until we have Metz and Strassburg. We have waited a long time, is it
+not so?"
+
+
+
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK.
+
+
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+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of They Shall Not Pass, by Frank H. Simonds
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+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of They Shall Not Pass, by Frank H. Simonds.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
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+    .tr       {margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; margin-top: 5%; margin-bottom: 5%; padding: 1em; background-color: #f6f2f2; color: black; border: dotted black 1px;} /* transcriber's notes */
+
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+               /*  visibility: hidden;  */
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+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of They Shall Not Pass, by Frank H. Simonds
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: They Shall Not Pass
+
+Author: Frank H. Simonds
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2009 [EBook #28171]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEY SHALL NOT PASS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeannie Howse and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:</p>
+<br />
+<p class="noin" style="text-align: left;">Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+For a complete list, please see the <span style="white-space: nowrap;"><a href="#TN">end of this document</a>.</span></p>
+<p class="noin">Click on the map to see a larger version.</p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h2>THEY SHALL NOT PASS</h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<h1>THEY<br />
+SHALL NOT PASS</h1>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h2>FRANK H. SIMONDS</h2>
+<h4>AUTHOR OF "THE GREAT WAR"</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="img">
+<img border="0" src="images/deco.jpg" width="15%" alt="Publisher's Mark" />
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4><span class="sc">Garden City &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; New York</span><br />
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE &amp; COMPANY<br />
+1916</h4>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h5><i>Copyright, 1916, by</i><br />
+<span class="sc">Doubleday, Page &amp; Company</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>All rights reserved, including that of<br />
+translation into foreign languages,<br />
+including the Scandinavian</i><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+COPYRIGHT, 1916, THE TRIBUNE ASS'N.</h5>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<div class="block">
+<p class="noin">Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to the New York <i>Tribune</i> for
+permission to reprint these articles in book form.</p>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="toc" id="toc"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span><br />
+
+<h3>CONTENTS</h3>
+<br />
+
+<div class="centered">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" width="70%" summary="Table of Contents">
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr" width="10%">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdl" width="75%">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdr1" width="15%" style="font-size: 80%;">PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr1">I.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#I">My Trip to Verdun&mdash;General P&eacute;tain Face to Face</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr2">3</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr1">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdl">The men who hold the line&mdash;what their faces told of the
+     past and the future of France.</td>
+  <td class="tdr2">&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr1">II.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#II">My Trip to Verdun&mdash;A Dying, Shell-Ridden City</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr2">43</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr1">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdl">The Vauban Citadel, in the shelter of which falling
+     shells cannot find you&mdash;houses and blocks that are
+     vanishing hourly&mdash;"but William will not come"&mdash;war
+     that is invisible&mdash;a luncheon underground with a toast
+     to America&mdash;the last courtesy from a general and a
+     host&mdash;nothing that was not beautiful.</td>
+  <td class="tdr2">&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr1">III.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#III">Battle of Verdun Another Gettysburg</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr2">72</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr1">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdl">Failure of Crown Prince likened by French to "high tide"
+     of confederacy.</td>
+  <td class="tdr2">&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr1">IV.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#IV">Verdun, the Door That Leads Nowhere</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr2">95<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr1">&nbsp;</td>
+  <td class="tdl">The battle and the topography of the battlefield&mdash;an
+     analysis of the attack and defence.</td>
+  <td class="tdr2">&nbsp;</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+  <td class="tdr1">V.</td>
+  <td class="tdlsc"><a href="#V">In Sight of the Promised Land&mdash;on the Lorraine
+     Battlefield</a></td>
+  <td class="tdr2">116</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h2>THEY SHALL NOT PASS</h2>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="I" id="I"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span><br />
+
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+<h3>MY TRIP TO VERDUN&mdash;GENERAL P&Eacute;TAIN FACE TO FACE<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p class="noin">THE MEN WHO HOLD THE LINE&mdash;WHAT THEIR FACES TOLD OF THE PAST
+AND THE FUTURE OF FRANCE</p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>My road to Verdun ran through the Elys&eacute;e Palace, and it was to the
+courtesy and interest of the President of the French Republic that I
+owed my opportunity to see the battle for the Meuse city at close
+range. Already through the kindness of the French General Staff I had
+seen the Lorraine and Marne battlegrounds and had been guided over
+these fields by officers who had shared in the opening battles that
+saved France. But Verdun was more difficult; there is little time for
+caring for the wandering correspondent when a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>decisive contest is
+going forward, and quite naturally the General Staff turned a deaf ear
+to my request.</p>
+
+<p>Through the kindness of one of the many Frenchmen who gave time and
+effort to make my pilgrimage a success I was at last able to see M.
+Poincar&eacute;. Like our own American President, the French Chief Magistrate
+is never interviewed, and I mention this audience simply because it
+was one more and in a sense the final proof for me of the
+friendliness, the courtesy, the interest that the American will find
+to-day in France. I had gone to Paris, my ears filled with the
+warnings of those who told me that it was hard to be an American in
+Europe, in France, in the present hour. I had gone expecting, or at
+least fearing, that I should find it so.</p>
+
+<p>Instead, from peasant to President I found only kindness, only
+gratitude, only a profound appreciation for all that Americans had
+individually done for France in the hour of her great trial. These
+things <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>and one thing more I found: a very intense desire that
+Americans should be able to see for themselves; the Frenchman will not
+talk to you of what France has done, is doing; he shrinks from
+anything that might suggest the imitation of the German method of
+propaganda. In so far as it is humanly possible he would have you see
+the thing for yourself and testify out of your own mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it came about that all my difficulties vanished when I had been
+permitted to express to the President my desire to see Verdun and to
+go back to America&mdash;I was sailing within the week&mdash;able to report what
+I had seen with my own eyes of the decisive battle still going forward
+around the Lorraine city. Without further delay, discussion, it was
+promised that I should go to Verdun by motor, that I should go cared
+for by the French military authorities and that I should be permitted
+to see all that one could see at the moment of the contest.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>We left Paris in the early afternoon; my companions were M. Henri
+Ponsot, chief of the Press Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
+and M. Hugues le Roux, a distinguished Frenchman of letters well known
+to many Americans. To start for the battlefield from a busy, peaceful
+city, to run for miles through suburbs as quiet and lacking in martial
+aspect as the regions beyond the Harlem, at home, was a thing that
+seemed almost unreal; but only for a brief moment, for war has come
+very near to Paris, and one may not travel far in Eastern France
+without seeing its signs.</p>
+
+<p>In less than an hour we were passing the rear of the line held by the
+British at the Battle of the Marne, and barely sixty minutes after we
+had passed out through the Vincennes gate we met at Courtacon the
+first of the ruined villages that for two hundred miles line the
+roadways that lead from the capital to Lorraine and Champagne.
+Suddenly in the midst of a peaceful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>countryside, after passing a
+score of undisturbed villages, villages so like one to another, you
+come to one upon which the storm has burst, and instead of snug
+houses, smiling faces, the air of contentment and happiness that was
+France, there is only a heap of ruins, houses with their roofs gone,
+their walls torn by shell fire, villages abandoned partially or
+wholly, contemporary Pompeiis, overtaken by the Vesuvius of Krupp.</p>
+
+<p>Coincidentally there appear along the roadside, in the fields, among
+the plough furrows, on every side, the crosses that mark the graves of
+those who died for France&mdash;or for Germany. Along the slope you may
+mark the passage of a charge by these crosses; those who fell were
+buried as they lay, French and Germans with equal care. Indeed, there
+is a certain pride visible in all that the French do for their dead
+foes. Alongside a hamlet wantonly burned, burned by careful labor and
+with German thoroughness; in villages where you will be told of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span>nameless atrocities and shameful killings, you will see the German
+graves, marked by neat crosses, surrounded by sod embankments, marked
+with plaques of black and white; the French are marked by plaques of
+red, white and blue, and the latter invariably decorated with a flag
+and flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Once you have seen these graves by the roadside going east you will
+hardly go a mile in two hundred which has not its graves. From the
+environs of Meaux, a scant twenty miles from Paris, to the frontier at
+the Seille, beyond Nancy, there are graves and more graves, now
+scattered, now crowded together where men fought hand to hand. Passing
+them in a swift-moving auto, they seem to march by you; there is the
+illusion of an army advancing on the hillside, until at last, beyond
+Nancy, where the fighting was so terrible, about little villages such
+as Corbessaux, you come to the great common graves, where a hundred or
+two hundred men have been gathered, where the trenches now <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>levelled
+are but long graves, and you read, "Here rest 179 French soldiers," or
+across the road, "Here 196 Germans."</p>
+
+<p>Take a map of France and from a point just south of Paris draw a
+straight line to the Vosges; twenty or thirty miles to the north draw
+another. Between the two is the black district of the Marne and Nancy
+battles. It is the district of ruined villages, destroyed farms; it is
+the region where every hillside&mdash;so it will seem to the traveller&mdash;is
+marked by these pathetic crosses. It is a region in which the sense of
+death and destruction is abroad. Go forty miles north again and draw
+two more lines, and this is the region not of the death and
+destruction of yesterday, but of to-day; this is the front, where the
+graves are still in the making, the region of the Oise to the Meuse,
+from Noyon to Verdun.</p>
+
+<p>On this day our route led eastward through the villages which in
+September, 1914, woke from at least a century of oblivion, from the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>forgetting that followed Napoleon's last campaign in France to a
+splendid but terrible ten days: Courtacon, S&eacute;zanne, La-F&egrave;re
+Champenoise, Vitry-le-Fran&ccedil;ois, the region where Franchet d'Esperey
+and Foch fought, where the "Miracle of the Marne" was performed. Mile
+after mile the countryside files by, the never-changing impression of
+a huge cemetery, the hugest in the world, the stricken villages, now
+and then striving to begin again, a red roof here and there telling of
+the first counter offensive of peace, of construction made against the
+whirlwind that had come and gone.</p>
+
+<p>Always, too, nothing but old men and women, these and children,
+working in the broad fields, still partially cultivated, but no longer
+the fields of that perfectly cared for France of the other peace days.
+Women and children at the plough, old men bent double by age still
+spending such strength as is left in the tasks that war has set for
+them. This is the France behind the front, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>and, aside from the ruined
+villages and graves, the France that stretches from the Pyrenees to
+the Marne, a France from which youth and manhood are gone, in which
+age and childhood remain with the women. Yet in this land we were
+passing how much of the youth and manhood of France and Germany was
+buried in the graves the crosses demonstrated at every kilometre.</p>
+
+<p>But a hundred miles east of Paris there begins a new world. The
+graves, the shell-cursed villages, remain, but this is no longer the
+France of the Marne fighting and of the war of two years ago. At
+Vitry-le-Fran&ccedil;ois you pass almost without warning into the region
+which is the back of the front to-day, the base of all the line of
+fire from Rheims to the Meuse, and suddenly along the road appear the
+canvas guideposts which bear the terse warning, "Verdun." You pass
+suddenly from ancient to contemporary history, from the killing of
+other years to the killing that is of to-day&mdash;the killing and the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>wounding&mdash;and along the hills where there are still graves there begin
+to appear Red Cross tents and signs, and ambulances pass you bearing
+the latest harvest.</p>
+
+<p>And now every village is a garrison town. For a hundred miles there
+have been only women and old men, but now there are only soldiers;
+they fill the streets; they crowd the doorways of the houses. The
+fields are filled with tents, with horses, with all the impedimenta of
+an army. The whole countryside is a place of arms. Every branch of
+French service is about you&mdash;Tunisians, Turcos, cavalry, the black,
+the brown, and the white&mdash;the men who yesterday or last week were in
+the first line, who rest and will return to-morrow or next day to
+fight again.</p>
+
+<p>Unmistakably, too, you feel that this is the business of war; you are
+in a factory, a machine shop; if the product is death and destruction,
+it is no less a matter of machinery, not of romance, of glamour. The
+back of the front is a place of work <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>and of rest for more work, but
+of parade, of the brilliant, of the fascinating there is just nothing.
+Men with bright but plainly weary faces, not young men, but men of
+thirty and above, hard bitten by their experience, patently fit, fed,
+but somehow related to the ruins and the destruction around them, they
+are all about you, and wherever now you see a grave you will discover
+a knot of men standing before it talking soberly. Wherever you see the
+vestiges of an old trench, a hill that was fought for at this time
+twenty months ago, you will see new practice trenches and probably the
+recruits, the "Class of 1917," the boys that are waiting for the call,
+listening to an officer explaining to them what has been done here,
+the mistake or the good judgment revealed by the event. For France is
+training the youth that remains to her on the still recent
+battlefields and in the presence of those who died to keep the ground.</p>
+
+<p>Just as the darkness came we passed St. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>Dizier and entered at last
+upon the road to Verdun, the one road that is the life line of the
+city. For to understand the real problem of the defence of Verdun you
+must realize that there is lacking to the city any railroad. In
+September, 1914, the Germans took St. Mihiel and cut the railway
+coming north along the Meuse. On their retreat from the Marne the
+soldiers of the Crown Prince halted at Montfaucon and Varennes, and
+their cannon have commanded the Paris-Verdun-Metz Railroad ever since.
+Save for a crazy narrow-gauge line wandering along the hill slopes,
+climbing by impossible grades, Verdun is without rail communication.</p>
+
+<p>It was this that made the defence of the town next to impossible.
+Partially to remedy the defect the French had reconstructed a local
+highway running from St. Dizier by Bar-le-Duc to Verdun beyond the
+reach of German artillery. To-day an army of a quarter of a million of
+men, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>enormous parks of heavy artillery and field guns&mdash;everything
+is supplied by this one road and by motor transport.</p>
+
+<p>Coming north from St. Dizier we entered this vast procession. Mile
+after mile the caravan stretched on, fifty miles with hardly a break
+of a hundred feet between trucks. Paris 'buses, turned into vehicles
+to bear fresh meat; new motor trucks built to carry thirty-five men
+and travelling in companies, regiments, brigades; wagons from the hood
+of which soldiers, bound to replace the killed and wounded of
+yesterday, looked down upon you, calmly but unsmilingly. From St.
+Dizier to Verdun the impression was of that of the machinery by which
+logs are carried to the saw in a mill. You felt unconsciously, yet
+unmistakably, that you were looking, not upon automobiles, not upon
+separate trucks, but upon some vast and intricate system of belts and
+benches that were steadily, swiftly, surely carrying all this vast
+material, carrying men <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>and munitions and supplies, everything human
+and inanimate, to that vast grinding mill which was beyond the hills,
+the crushing machine which worked with equal remorselessness upon men
+and upon things.</p>
+
+<p>Now and again, too, over the hills came the Red Cross ambulances; they
+passed you returning from the front and bringing within their
+carefully closed walls the finished product, the fruits of the day's
+grinding, or a fraction thereof. And about the whole thing there was a
+sense of the mechanical rather than the human, something that
+suggested an automatic, a machine-driven, movement; it was as if an
+unseen system of belts and engines and levers guided, moved, propelled
+this long procession upward and ever toward the mysterious front where
+the knives or the axes or the grinding stones did their work.</p>
+
+<p>Night came down upon us along the road and brought a new impression.
+Mile on mile over the hills and round the curves, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>disappearing in the
+woods, reappearing on the distant summits of the hills, each showing a
+rear light that wagged crazily on the horizon, this huge caravan
+flowed onward, while in the villages and on the hillsides campfires
+flashed up and the faces or the figures of the soldiers could be seen
+now clearly and now dimly. But all else was subordinated to the line
+of moving transports. Somewhere far off at one end of the procession
+there was battle; somewhere down below at the other end there was
+peace. There all the resources, the life blood, the treasure in men
+and in riches of France were concentrating and collecting, were being
+fed into this motor fleet, which like baskets on ropes was carrying it
+forward to the end of the line and then bringing back what remained,
+or for the most part coming back empty, for more&mdash;for more lives and
+more treasure.</p>
+
+<p>It was full night when our car came down the curved grades into
+Bar-le-Duc, halted at the corner, where soldiers <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>performed the work
+of traffic policemen and steadily guided the caravan toward the road
+marked by a canvas sign lighted within by a single candle and bearing
+the one word, "Verdun." All night, too, the rumble of the passing
+transport filled the air and the little hotel shook with the jar of
+the heavy trucks, for neither by day nor by night is there a halt in
+the motor transport, and the sound of this grinding is never low.</p>
+
+<p>It was little more than daylight when we took the road again, with a
+thirty-mile drive to Verdun before us. Almost immediately we turned
+into the Verdun route we met again the caravan of automobiles, of
+camions, as the French say. It still flowed on without break. Now,
+too, we entered the main road, the one road to Verdun, the road that
+had been built by the French army against just such an attack as was
+now in progress. The road was as wide as Fifth Avenue, as smooth as
+asphalt&mdash;a road that, when peace comes, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>if it ever does, will delight
+the motorist. Despite the traffic it had to bear, it was in perfect
+repair, and soldiers in uniform sat by the side breaking stone and
+preparing metal to keep it so.</p>
+
+<p>The character of the country had now changed. We were entering the
+region of the hills, between the Aisne and the Meuse, a country
+reminiscent of New England. Those hills are the barrier which beyond
+the Meuse, under the names of the C&ocirc;te de Meuse, have been the scene
+of so much desperate fighting. The roads that sidled off to the east
+bore battle names, St. Mihiel, Troyon, and the road that we followed
+was still marked at every turn with the magic word "Verdun." Our
+immediate objective was Souilly, the obscure hill town twenty miles,
+perhaps, south of the front, from which Sarrail had defended Verdun in
+the Marne days and from which P&eacute;tain was now defending Verdun against
+a still more terrible attack.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>And in France to-day one speaks only of Verdun and P&eacute;tain. Soldiers
+have their day; Joffre, Castelnau, Foch, all retain much of the
+affection and admiration they have deserved, but at the moment it is
+the man who has held Verdun that France thinks of, and there was the
+promise for us that at Souilly we should see the man whose fame had
+filled the world in the recent great and terrible weeks. Upward and
+downward over the hills, through more ruined villages, more hospitals,
+more camps, our march took us until after a short hour we came to
+Souilly, general headquarters of the Army of Verdun, of P&eacute;tain, the
+centre of the world for the moment.</p>
+
+<p>Few towns have done less to prepare for greatness than Souilly. It
+boasts a single street three inches deep in the clay mud of the
+spring&mdash;a single street through which the Verdun route marches almost
+contemptuously, the same nest of stone and plaster houses, one story
+high, houses from which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>the owners had departed to make room for
+generals and staff officers. This and one thing more, the Mairie, the
+town hall, as usual the one pretentious edifice of the French hamlet,
+and before the stairway of this we stopped and got out.</p>
+
+<p>We were at headquarters. From this little building, devoted for
+perhaps a century to the business of governing the commune of Souilly,
+with its scant thousand of people, P&eacute;tain was defending Verdun and the
+fate of an army of 250,000 men at the least. In the upstairs room,
+where the town councillors had once debated parochial questions,
+Joffre and Castelnau and P&eacute;tain in the terrible days of the opening
+conflict had consulted, argued, decided&mdash;decided the fate of France,
+so the Germans had said, for they had made the fall of Verdun the
+assurance of French collapse.</p>
+
+<p>Unconsciously, too, you felt the change in the character of the
+population of this <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>village. There were still the soldiers, the
+eternal gray-blue uniforms, but there were also men of a different
+type, men of authority. In the street your guides pointed out to you
+General Herr, the man who had designed and planned and accomplished
+the miracle of the motor transport that had saved Verdun&mdash;with the aid
+of the brave men fighting somewhere not far beyond the nearest hills.
+He had commanded at Verdun when the attack came, and without
+hesitation he had turned over his command to P&eacute;tain, his junior in
+service and rank before the war, given up the glory and become the
+superintendent of transport. Men spoke to you of the fine loyalty of
+that action with unconcealed admiration.</p>
+
+<p>And then out of the remoteness of Souilly there came a voice familiar
+to an American. Bunau-Varilla, the man of Panama, wearing the uniform
+of a commandant and the Croix de Guerre newly bestowed for some
+wonderful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>engineering achievement, stepped forward to ask for his
+friends and yours of the old "<i>Sun</i> paper." I had seen him last in the
+<i>Sun</i> office in the days when the war had just broken out and he was
+about to sail for home; in the days when the Marne was still unfought
+and he had breathed hope then as he spoke with confidence now.</p>
+
+<p>Presently there arrived the two officers whose duty it was to take me
+to Verdun, Captain Henri Bourdeaux, a man of letters known to all
+Frenchmen; Captain Madelin, an historian, already documented in the
+history of the war making under his own eyes. To these gentlemen and
+their colleagues who perform this task that can hardly be agreeable,
+who risk their lives and give over their time with unfailing courtesy
+and consideration that the American newspaper correspondent may see,
+may report, it is impossible to return sufficient thanks, and every
+American newspaper reader who <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>finds on his breakfast table the
+journal that tells him of the progress of the war owes something to
+some officer.</p>
+
+<p>"Were we to see Verdun?" This was the first problem. I had been warned
+two days before that the bombardment was raging and that it was quite
+possible that it would be unsafe to go farther. But the news was
+reassuring; Verdun was tranquil. "And P&eacute;tain?" One could not yet say.</p>
+
+<p>Even as we spoke there was a stirring in the crowd, general saluting,
+and I caught a glimpse of the commander-in-chief as he went quickly up
+the staircase. For the rest we must wait. But not for very long; in a
+few minutes there came the welcome word that General P&eacute;tain would see
+us, would see the stray American correspondent.</p>
+
+<p>Since I saw P&eacute;tain in the little Mairie at Souilly I have seen many
+photographs of him, but none in any real measure give the true picture
+of the defender of Verdun. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>He saw us in his office, the bare upstairs
+room, two years ago the office of the Mayor of Souilly. Think of the
+Selectmen's office in any New England village and the picture will be
+accurate: a bare room, a desk, one chair, a telephone, nothing on the
+walls but two maps, one of the military zone, one of the actual front
+and positions of the Verdun fighting. A bleak room, barely heated by
+the most primitive of stoves. From the single window one looked down
+on the cheerless street along which lumbered the caravan of autos. On
+the pegs against the wall hung the General's hat and coat,
+weather-stained, faded, the clothes of a man who worked in all
+weathers. Of staff officers, of uniforms, of color there was just
+nothing; of war there was hardly a hint.</p>
+
+<p>At the door the commander-in-chief met us, shook hands, and murmured
+clearly and slowly, with incisive distinctness, the formal words of
+French greeting; he spoke no English. Instantly there was the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>suggestion of Kitchener, not of Kitchener as you see him in flesh, but
+in photographs, the same coldness, decision. The smile that
+accompanied the words of welcome vanished and the face was utterly
+motionless, expressionless. You saw a tall, broad-shouldered man, with
+every appearance of physical strength, a clear blue eye, looking
+straight forward and beyond.</p>
+
+<p>My French companion, M. Le Roux, spoke with P&eacute;tain. He had just come
+from Joffre and he told an interesting circumstance. P&eacute;tain listened.
+He said now and then "yes" or "no." Nothing more. Watching him
+narrowly you saw that occasionally his eyes twitched a little, the
+single sign of fatigue that the long strain of weeks of responsibility
+had brought.</p>
+
+<p>It was hard to believe, looking at this quiet, calm, silent man, that
+you were in the presence of the soldier who had won the Battle of
+Champagne, the man whom the war had surprised in the last of his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>fifties, a Colonel, a teacher of war rather than a soldier, a
+professor like Foch.</p>
+
+<p>No one of Napoleon's marshals had commanded as many men as obeyed this
+Frenchman, who was as lacking in the distinction of military
+circumstance as our own Grant. Napoleon had won all his famous
+victories with far fewer troops than were directed from the telephone
+on the table yonder.</p>
+
+<p>Every impression of modern war that comes to one actually in touch
+with it is a destruction of illusion: this thing is a thing of
+mechanism rather than of brilliance; perhaps P&eacute;tain has led a
+regiment, a brigade, or a division to the charge. You knew
+instinctively in seeing the man that you would go or come, as he said,
+but there was neither dash nor fire, nothing of the suggestion of
+&eacute;lan; rather there was the suggestion of the commander of a great
+ocean liner, the man responsible for the lives, this time of hundreds
+of thousands, not scores, for the safety of France, not of a ship, but
+the man of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>machinery and the master of the wisdom of the tides and
+the weather, not the Ney, or the Murat, not the Napoleon of Arcola.
+The impression was of a strong man whose life was a life beaten upon
+by storms; the man on the bridge, to keep to the rather ridiculously
+inadequate figure, but not by any chance the man on horseback.</p>
+
+<p>My talk, our talk with P&eacute;tain was the matter of perhaps five minutes.
+The time was consumed by the words of M. Le Roux, who spoke very
+earnestly urging that more American correspondents be permitted to
+visit Verdun, and P&eacute;tain heard him patiently, but said just nothing.
+Once he had greeted us his face settled into that grim expression that
+never changed until he smiled his word of good wishes as we left. Yet
+I have since found that apart from one circumstance which I shall
+mention in a moment I have remembered those minutes most clearly of
+all of my Verdun experience. Just as the photograph does not reveal
+the face of the man, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>word does not describe the sense of
+strength, of responsibility, that he gives.</p>
+
+<p>In a childish sort of way, exactly as one thinks of war as a matter of
+dash and color and motion, one thinks of the French general as the
+leader of a cavalry charge or of a forlorn hope of infantry. And the
+French soldier of this war has not been the man of charge or of
+dash&mdash;not that he has not charged as well as ever in his history, a
+little more bravely, perhaps, for machine guns are new and something
+worse than other wars have had. What the French soldier has done has
+been to stand, to hold, to die not in the onrush but on the spot.</p>
+
+<p>And P&eacute;tain in some curious way has fixed in my mind the impression of
+the new Frenchman, if there be a new one, or perhaps better of the
+French soldier of to-day, whether he wear the stars of the general or
+undecorated "horizon" blue of the Poilu. The look that I saw in his
+eyes, the calm, steady, utterly emotionless looking straight <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>forward,
+I saw everywhere at the front and at the back of the front. It
+embodied for me an enduring impression of the spirit and the poise of
+the French soldier of the latest and most terrible of French
+struggles. And I confess that, more than all I saw and heard at the
+front and in Paris, the look of this man convinced me that Verdun
+would not fall, that France herself would not either weary or weaken.</p>
+
+<p>In Paris, where one may hear anything, there are those that will tell
+you that Joffre's work is done and that France waits for the man who
+will complete the task; that the strain of the terrible months has
+wearied the general who won the Battle of the Marne and saved France.
+They will tell you, perhaps, that P&eacute;tain is the man; they will
+certainly tell you that they hope that the man has been found in
+P&eacute;tain. As to the truth of all this I do not pretend to know. I did
+not see Joffre, but all that I have read of Joffre suggests that
+P&eacute;tain is of his sort, the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>same quiet, silent man, with a certain
+coldness of the North, a grimness of manner that is lacking in his
+chief.</p>
+
+<p>There was a Kitchener legend in Europe, and I do not think it survives
+save a little perhaps in corners of England. There was a legend of a
+man of ice and of iron, a man who made victory out of human material
+as a man makes a wall of mortar and stone, a man to whom his material
+was only mortar and stone, even though it were human. This legend has
+perished so far as Kitchener is concerned, gone with so much that
+England trusted and believed two years ago, but I find myself thinking
+now of P&eacute;tain as we all thought of Kitchener in his great day.</p>
+
+<p>If I were an officer I should not like to come to the defender of
+Verdun with the confession of failure. I think I should rather meet
+the Bavarians in the first line trenches, but I should like to know
+that when I was obeying orders I was carrying out a minor detail of
+something P&eacute;tain had planned; I <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>should expect it to happen, the thing
+that he had arranged, and I should feel that those clear, steel-blue
+eyes had foreseen all that could occur, foreseen calmly and utterly,
+whether it entailed the death of one or a thousand men, of ten
+thousand men if necessary, and had willed that it should happen.</p>
+
+<p>I do not believe Napoleon's Old Guard would have followed P&eacute;tain as
+they followed Ney. I cannot fancy him in the Imperial uniform, and
+yet, now that war is a thing of machines, of telephones, of indirect
+fire and destruction from unseen weapons at remote ranges, now that
+the whole manner and circumstance of conflict have changed, it is but
+natural that the General should change, too. Patently P&eacute;tain is of the
+new, not the old, but no less patently he was the master of it.</p>
+
+<p>We left the little Mairie, entered our machines and slid out swiftly
+for the last miles, climbed and curved over the final hill and
+suddenly looked down on a deep, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>trenchlike valley marching from east
+to west and carrying the Paris-Verdun-Metz Railroad, no longer
+available for traffic. And as we coasted down the hill we heard the
+guns at last, not steadily, but only from time to time, a distant
+boom, a faint billowing up of musketry fire. Some three or four miles
+straight ahead there were the lines of fire beyond the brown hills
+that flanked the valley.</p>
+
+<p>At the bottom of the valley we turned east, moved on for a mile, and
+stopped abruptly. The guns were sounding more clearly, and suddenly
+there was a sense not of soldiers, but of an army. On one side of the
+road a column was coming toward us, a column of men who were leaving
+the trenches for a rest, the men who for the recent days had held the
+first line. Wearily but steadily they streamed by; the mud of the
+trenches covered their tunics; here and there a man had lost his steel
+helmet and wore a handkerchief about his head, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>probably to conceal a
+slight wound that but for the helmet had killed him.</p>
+
+<p>These men were smiling as they marched; they carried their full
+equipment and it rattled and tinkled; they carried their guns at all
+angles, they wore their uniforms in the strangest of disorders; they
+seemed almost like miners coming from the depths of the earth rather
+than soldiers returning from a decisive battle, from the hell of
+modern shell fire.</p>
+
+<p>But it was the line on the other side of the road that held the eye.
+Here were the troops that were going toward the fire, toward the
+trenches, that were marching to the sound of the guns, and as one saw
+them the artillery rumble took on a new distinctness.</p>
+
+<p>Involuntarily I searched the faces of these men as they passed. They
+were hardly ten feet from me. Platoon after platoon, company after
+company, whole regiments in columns of fours. And seeing the faces
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>brought an instant shock; they all wore the same calm, steady,
+slightly weary expression, but there was in the whole line scarcely a
+young man. Here were men of the thirties, not the twenties; men still
+in the prime of strength, of health, but the fathers of families, the
+men of full manhood.</p>
+
+<p>Almost in a flash the fact came home. This was what all the graves
+along the road had meant. This was what the battlefields and the
+glories of the twenty months had spelled&mdash;France had sent her youth
+and it was spent; she was sending her manhood now.</p>
+
+<p>In the line no man smiled and no man straggled; the ranks were closed
+up and there were neither commands nor any visible sign of authority.
+These men who were marching to the sound of the guns had been there
+before. They knew precisely what it meant. Yet you could not but feel
+that as they went a little wearily, sadly, they marched willingly.
+They would not <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>have it otherwise. Their faces were the faces of men
+who had taken the full measure of their own fate.</p>
+
+<p>You had a sense of the loathing, the horror, above all the sadness
+that was in their hearts that this thing, this war, this destruction
+had to be. They had come back here through all the waste of ruined
+villages and shell-torn hillsides; all the men that you saw would not
+measure the cost of a single hour of trench fighting if the real
+attack began. This these men knew, and the message of the artillery
+fire, which was only one of unknown terrors for you, was intelligible
+to the utmost to each of them.</p>
+
+<p>And yet with the weariness there was a certain resignation, a certain
+patience, a certain sense of comprehending sacrifice that more than
+all else is France to-day, the true France. This, and not the empty
+forts, not even the busy guns, was the wall that defended France, this
+line of men. If it broke there would come thundering down <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>again out
+of the north all the tornado of destruction that had turned
+Northeastern France into a waste place and wrecked so much of the
+world's store of the beautiful and the inspiring.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow you felt that this was in the minds of all these men. They had
+willed to die that France might live. They were going to a death that
+sounded ever more clearly as they marched. This death had eaten up all
+that was young, most of what was young at the least, of France; it
+might yet consume France, and so these men marched to the sound of the
+guns, not to martial music, not with any suggestion of dash, of
+enthusiasm, but quietly, steadily, all with the same look upon their
+faces&mdash;the look of men who have seen death and are to see it again.
+Instinctively I thought of what Kipling had said to me in London:</p>
+
+<p>"Somewhere over there," he had said, "the thing will suddenly grip
+your throat and your heart; it will take hold of you <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>as nothing in
+your life has ever done or ever will." And I know that I never shall
+forget those lines of quiet, patient, middle-aged men marching to the
+sound of the guns, leaving at their backs the countless graves that
+hold the youth of France, the men who had known the Marne, the Yser,
+Champagne, who had known death for nearly two years, night and day,
+almost constantly. Yet during the fifteen minutes I watched there was
+not one order, not one straggler; there was a sense of the regularity
+with which the blood flows through the human arteries in this tide,
+and it was the blood of France.</p>
+
+<p>So many people have asked me, I had asked myself, the question before
+I went to France: "Are they not weary of it? Will the French not give
+up from sheer exhaustion of strength?" I do not think so, now that I
+have seen the faces of these hundreds of men as they marched to the
+trenches beyond Verdun. France may bleed to death, but I do not think
+that while there are men there <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>will be an end of the sacrifice. No
+pen or voice can express the horror that these men, that all
+Frenchmen, have of this war, of all war, the weariness. They hate it;
+you cannot mistake this; but France marches to the frontier in the
+spirit that men manned the walls against the barbarians in the other
+days; there is no other way; it must be.</p>
+
+<p>Over and over again there has come the invariable answer; it would
+have come from scores and hundreds of these men who passed so near me
+I could have touched their faded uniforms if I had asked&mdash;"It is for
+France, for civilization; it must be, for there is no other way; we
+shall die, but with us, with our sacrifice, perhaps this thing will
+end." You cannot put it in words quite, I do not think even any
+Frenchman has quite said it, but you can see it, you can feel it, you
+can understand it, when you see a regiment, a brigade, a division of
+these men of thirty, some perhaps of forty, going forward to the war
+they hate and will never quiet until that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>which they love is safe or
+they and all of their race are swallowed up in the storm that now was
+audibly beating beyond the human walls on the nearby hillsides.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we moved again, we slipped through the column, topped the
+last incline, shot under the crumbling gate of the Verdun fortress,
+and as we entered a shell burst just behind us and the roar drowned
+out all else in its sudden and paralyzing crash. It had fallen, so we
+learned a little later, just where we had been watching the passing
+troops; it had fallen among them and killed. But an hour or two later,
+when we repassed the point where it fell, men were still marching by.
+Other regiments of men were still marching to the sound of the guns,
+and those who had passed were already over the hills and beyond the
+river, filing into the trenches in time, so it turned out, to meet the
+new attack that came with the later afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>I went to Verdun to see the forts, the city, the hills, and the
+topography of a great <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>battle; I went in the hope of describing with a
+little of clarity what the operation meant as a military affair. I
+say, and I shall hereafter try to describe this. But I shall never be
+able to describe this thing which was the true Verdun for me&mdash;these
+men, their faces, seen as one heard the shell fire and the musketry
+rolling, not steadily but intermittently, the men who had marched over
+the roads that are lined with graves, through villages that are
+destroyed, who had come of their own will and in calm determination
+and marched unhurryingly and yet unshrinkingly, the men who were no
+longer young, who had left behind them all that men hold dear in life,
+home, wives, children, because they knew that there was no other way.</p>
+
+<p>I can only say to all those who have asked me, "What of France?" this
+simple thing, that I do not believe the French will ever stop. I do
+not believe, as the Germans have said, that French courage is
+weakening, that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>French determination is abating. I do not believe the
+Kaiser himself would think this if he had seen these men's faces as
+they marched <i>toward</i> his guns. I think he would feel as I felt, as
+one must feel, that these men went willingly, hating war with their
+whole soul, destitute of passion or anger. I never heard a passionate
+word in France, because there had entered into their minds, into the
+mind and heart of a whole race, the belief that what was at stake was
+the thing that for two thousand years of history had been France.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="II" id="II"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span><br />
+
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+<h3>MY TRIP TO VERDUN&mdash;A DYING, SHELL-RIDDEN CITY<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p class="noin">THE VAUBAN CITADEL, IN THE SHELTER OF WHICH FALLING SHELLS
+CANNOT FIND YOU&mdash;HOUSES AND BLOCKS THAT ARE VANISHING
+HOURLY&mdash;"BUT WILLIAM WILL NOT COME"&mdash;WAR THAT IS INVISIBLE&mdash;A
+LUNCHEON UNDERGROUND WITH A TOAST TO AMERICA&mdash;THE LAST
+COURTESY FROM A GENERAL AND A HOST&mdash;NOTHING THAT WAS NOT
+BEAUTIFUL</p></div>
+
+<br />
+
+<p>The citadel of Verdun, the bulwark of the eastern frontier in ancient
+days, rises out of the meadows of the Meuse with something of the
+abruptness of the sky-scraper, and still preserves that aspect which
+led the writers of other wars to describe all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>forts as "frowning." It
+was built for Louis XIV by Vauban. He took a solid rock and blasted
+out redoubts and battlements. The generations that followed him dug
+into the living rock and created within it a whole city of catacombs,
+a vast labyrinth of passages and chambers and halls; even an elevator
+was added by the latest engineers, so that one can go from floor to
+floor, from the level of the meadow to the level of the summit of the
+rock, possibly a hundred feet above.</p>
+
+<p>By reason of the fact that many correspondents have visited this
+fortress since the war began the world has come to know of the
+underground life in Verdun, to think of the city as defended by some
+wonderful system of subterranean works; to think of Verdun, in fact,
+as a city or citadel that is defensible either by walls or by forts.
+But the truth is far different: even the old citadel is but a deserted
+cave; its massive walls of natural rock resist the shells as they
+would repulse an avalanche; but the guns that were once <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>on its
+parapets are gone, the garrison is gone, gone far out on the trench
+lines beyond the hills. The Vauban citadel is now a place where bread
+is baked, where wounded men are occasionally brought, where live the
+soldiers and officers whose important but unromantic mission it is to
+keep the roads through the town open, to police the ashes of the city,
+to do what remains of the work that once fell to the lot of the civil
+authorities.</p>
+
+<p>To glide swiftly to the shelter of this rock from a region in which a
+falling shell has served to remind you of the real meaning of Verdun
+of the moment, to leave the automobile and plunge into the welcome
+obscurity of this cavern&mdash;this was perhaps the most comfortable
+personal incident of the day. The mere shadow of the rock gave a sense
+of security; to penetrate it was to pass to safety.</p>
+
+<p>Some moments of wandering by corridors and stairways into the very
+heart of the rock brought us to the quarters of our host, General
+Dubois; to his kind attention I was to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>owe all my good fortune in
+seeing his dying city; to him, at the end, I was to owe the ultimate
+evidence of courtesy, which I shall never forget.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike P&eacute;tain or Joffre, General Dubois is a little man, possibly a
+trifle older than either. A white-haired, bright-eyed, vigorous
+soldier, who made his real fame in Madagascar with Joffre and with
+Gallieni, and when the storm broke was sent to Verdun by these men,
+who knew him, to do the difficult work that there was to be performed
+behind the battle line. There is about General Dubois a suggestion of
+the old, as well as the new, of the French general. The private
+soldiers to whom he spoke as he went his rounds responded with a "Oui,
+mon G&eacute;n&eacute;ral" that had a note of affection as well as of discipline; he
+was rather as one fancied were the soldiers of the Revolution, of the
+Empire, of the Algerian days of P&egrave;re Bugeaud whose memory is still
+green.</p>
+
+<p>Our salutations made, we returned through <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>the winding corridors to
+inspect the bakeries, the water and light plant, the unsuspected
+resources of this rock. In one huge cavern we saw the men who provided
+30,000 men with bread each day, men working as the stokers in an ocean
+steamer labor amidst the glare of fires; we tasted the bread and found
+it good, as good as all French bread is, and that means a little
+better than all other bread.</p>
+
+<p>Then we slipped back into daylight and wandered along the face of the
+fortress. We inspected shell holes of yesterday and of last month; we
+inspected them as one inspects the best blossoms in a garden; we
+studied the angle at which they dropped; we measured the miniature
+avalanche that they brought with them. But always, so far, there was
+the subconscious sense of the rock between us and the enemy. I never
+before understood the full meaning of that phrase "a rock in a weary
+land."</p>
+
+<p>All this was but preliminary, however. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>Other automobiles arrived; the
+General entered one. I followed in the next and we set out to visit
+Verdun, to visit the ruins, or, rather, to see not a city that was
+dead, but a city that was visibly, hourly dying&mdash;a city that was
+vanishing by blocks and by squares&mdash;but was not yet fallen to the
+estate of Ypres or Arras; a city that in corners, where there were
+gardens behind the walls, still smiled; a city where some few brave
+old buildings still stood four square and solid, but only waiting what
+was to come.</p>
+
+<p>Before I visited Verdun I had seen many cities and towns which had
+been wholly or partially destroyed, either by shell fire or by the
+German soldiers in their great invasion before the Marne. One shelled
+town is much like another, and there is no thrill quite like that you
+experience when you see the first. But these towns had died nearly two
+years ago; indeed, in most the resurrection had begun: little red
+roofs were beginning to shine <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>through the brown trees and stark
+ruins. Children played again in the squares. It was like the sense you
+have when you see an old peasant ploughing among the cross-marked
+graves of a hard-fought battle corner&mdash;the sense of a beginning as
+well as of death and destruction.</p>
+
+<p>But at Verdun it was utterly different. Of life, or people, of
+activity beginning again or surviving there was nothing. Some time in
+the recent past all the little people who lived in these houses had
+put upon wagons what could be quickly moved and had slipped out of
+their home, that was already under sentence of death. They were gone
+into the distance, and they had left behind them no stragglers. The
+city was empty save for a few soldiers who passed rapidly along the
+streets, as one marches in a heavy snowstorm.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Verdun was not wholly dead. Shell fire is the most inexplicable of
+all things that carry destruction. As you passed down <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>one street the
+mark of destruction varied with each house. Here the blast had come
+and cut the building squarely; it had carried with it into ruin behind
+in the courtyard all that the house contained, but against the wall
+the telephone rested undisturbed; pictures&mdash;possibly even a looking
+glass&mdash;hung as the inhabitants had left it, hung as perhaps it had
+hung when the last woman had taken her ultimate hurried glance at her
+hat before she departed into the outer darkness.</p>
+
+<p>But the next house had lost only the front walls; it stood before you
+as if it had been opened for your inspection by the removal of the
+fa&ccedil;ade. Chairs, beds&mdash;all the domestic economy of the house&mdash;sagged
+visibly outward toward the street, or stood still firm, but open to
+the four winds. It was as if the scene were prepared for a stage and
+you sat before the footlights looking into the interior. Again, the
+next house and that beyond were utterly gone&mdash;side walls, front walls,
+everything swallowed up and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>vanished&mdash;the iron work twisted into
+heaps, the stone work crumbled to dust; the whole mass of ruin still
+smoked, for it was a shell of yesterday that had done this work.</p>
+
+<p>Down on the Riviera, where the mistral blows&mdash;all the pine trees lean
+away from the invariable track of this storm wind&mdash;you have the sense,
+even in the summer months, of a whole countryside bent by the gales.
+In the same fashion you felt in Verdun, felt rather than saw, a whole
+town not bent, but crumbled, crushed&mdash;and the line of fall was always
+apparent; you could tell the direction from which each storm of shells
+had come, you could almost feel that the storm was but suspended, not
+over, that at any moment it might begin again.</p>
+
+<p>Yet even in the midst of destruction there were enclaves of unshaken
+structures. On the Rue Mazel, "Main Street," the chief clothing store
+rose immune amid ashes on all sides. Its huge plate-glass window <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>was
+not even cracked. And behind the window a little mannikin, one of the
+familiar images that wear clothes to tempt the purchaser, stood erect.
+A French soldier had crept in and raised the stiff arm of the mannikin
+to the salute, pushed back the hat to a rakish angle. The mannikin
+seemed alive and more than alive, the embodiment of the spirit of the
+place. Facing northward toward the German guns it seemed to respond to
+them with a "<i>morituri salutamus</i>." "The last civilian in Verdun," the
+soldiers called him, but his manner was rather that of the Poilu.</p>
+
+<p>We crossed the river and the canal and stopped by the ruin of what had
+once been a big factory or warehouse. We crawled through an open
+shell-made breach in the brick wall and stood in the interior. The
+ashes were still hot, and in corners there were smoking fires. Two
+days ago, at just this time, your guides told you, men had been
+working here; making bread, I think. At the same time we had come to
+the ruins&mdash;the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>same time of day, that is&mdash;the Germans had dropped a
+half-dozen incendiary shells into the building and it had burned in
+ten minutes. Most of the men who had been there then were still there,
+under the smoking mass of wreckage; the smell of burned human flesh
+was in the air.</p>
+
+<p>A few steps away there was a little house standing intact. On the
+floor there were stretched four rolls of white cloth. The General and
+those with him took off their hats as they entered. He opened one of
+the packages and you saw only a charred black mass, something that
+looked like a half-burned log taken from the fireplace. But two days
+ago it had been a man, and the metal disk of identification had
+already been found and had served to disclose the victim's name. These
+were the first bodies that had been removed from the ruins.</p>
+
+<p>Taking our cars again we drove back and stopped before the Mairie, and
+passing under the arch entered the courtyard. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>building had fared
+better than most, but there were many shell marks. In the courtyard
+were four guns. Forty-six years before another German army had come
+down from the North, another whirlwind of artillery had struck the
+town and laid it in ashes, but even under the ashes the town had held
+out for three weeks. Afterward the Republic of France had given these
+guns to the people of Verdun in recognition of their heroism.</p>
+
+<p>In the courtyard I was presented to a man wearing the uniform and
+helmet of a fireman. He was the chief of the Verdun fire department.
+His mission, his perilous duty, it was to help extinguish the fires
+that flamed up after every shell. In all my life I have never seen a
+man at once so crushed and so patently courageous. He was not young,
+but his blue Lorraine eyes were still clear. Yet he looked at you, he
+looked out upon the world with undisguised amazement. For a generation
+his business had been to fight fires. He had protected his little town
+from conflagrations <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>that might sometimes, perhaps once, possibly
+twice, have risen to the dignity of a "three alarm." For the rest he
+had dealt with blazes.</p>
+
+<p>Now out of the skies and the darkness and out of the daylight, too,
+fire had descended upon his town. Under an avalanche of incendiary
+shells, under a landslide of fire, his city was melting visibly into
+ashes. He had lived fire and dreamed fire for half a century, but now
+the world had turned to fire&mdash;his world&mdash;and he looked out upon it in
+dazed wonder. He could no longer fight this fire, restrain it, conquer
+it; he could only go out under the bursting shells and strive to
+minimize by some fraction the destruction; but it was only child's
+play, this work of his which had been a man's business. And there was
+no mistaking the fact that this world was now too much for him. He was
+a brave man; they told me of things he had done; but his little cosmos
+had gone to chaos utterly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>We entered our cars again and went to another quarter of the city.
+Everywhere were ashes and ruin, but everywhere the sense of a
+destruction that was progressive, not complete: it still marched. It
+was as Arras had been, they told me, before the last wall had tumbled
+and the Artois capital had become nothing but a memory. We climbed the
+slope toward the cathedral and stopped in a little square still
+unscathed, the Place d'Armes, the most historic acre of the town.
+After a moment I realized what my friends were telling me. It was in
+this square that the Crown Prince was to receive the surrender of the
+town. Along the road we had climbed he was to lead his victorious army
+through the town and out the Porte de France beyond. In this square
+the Kaiser was to stand and review the army, to greet his victorious
+son. The scene as it had been arranged was almost rehearsed for you in
+the gestures of the French officers.</p>
+
+<p>"But William has not come," they said, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>"and he will not come now."
+This last was not spoken as a boast, but as a faith, a conviction.</p>
+
+<p>Still climbing we came to the cathedral. It is seated on the very top
+pinnacle of the rock of Verdun, suggesting the French cities of
+Provence. Its two towers, severe and lacking ornamentation, are the
+landmarks of the countryside for miles around. When I came back to
+America I read the story of an American correspondent whom the Germans
+had brought down from Berlin to see the destruction of Verdun. They
+had brought him to the edge of the hills and then thrown some
+incendiary shells into the town, the very shells that killed the men
+whose bodies I had seen. The black smoke and flames rushed up around
+these towers and then the Germans brought the correspondent over the
+hills and showed him the destruction of Verdun. He described it
+vividly and concluded that the condition of the town must be
+desperate.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>They are a wonderful people, these Germans, in their stage management.
+Of course this was precisely the thing that they desired that he
+should feel. They had sent their shells at the right moment, the whole
+performance had gone off like clockwork. Those poor blackened masses
+of humanity in the house below were the cost that was represented in
+the performance. And since there is much still left to burn in Verdun,
+the Germans may repeat this thing whenever they desire.</p>
+
+<p>But somewhere three or four miles from here, and between Verdun and
+the Germans, are many thousands of Frenchmen, with guns and cannon,
+and hearts of even finer metal. They cannot even know that Verdun is
+being shelled or is burning, and if it burns to ultimate ashes it will
+not affect them or their lines. This is the fallacy of all the talk of
+the destruction of Verdun city and the desperate condition of its
+defenders. The army left Verdun for the hills when the war began; the
+people left when the present drive began <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>in February. Even the dogs
+and cats, which were seen by correspondents in earlier visits, have
+been rescued and sent away. Verdun is dead, it is almost as dead as
+are Arras and Ypres; but neither of these towns after a year and a
+half bombardment has fallen.</p>
+
+<p>The correspondent who was taken up on a hill by the Germans to see
+Verdun burn, after it had been carefully set on fire by shell fire,
+was discovered by French gunners and shelled. He went away taking with
+him an impression of a doomed city. This picture was duly transmitted
+to America. But two days later, when I visited the city, there was no
+evidence of desperation, because there was no one left to be
+desperate. Doubtless on occasion we shall have many more descriptions
+of the destruction of this town, descriptions meant to impress
+Americans or encourage Germans. The material for such fires is not
+exhausted. The cathedral on the top of the hill is hardly shell-marked
+at all, and it will make a famous display when it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>is fired as was
+Rheims, as were the churches of Champagne and Artois. But there is
+something novel in the thought of a city burned, not to make a Roman
+or even German holiday, but burned to make the world believe that the
+Battle of Verdun had been a German victory.</p>
+
+<p>For two hours we wandered about the town exploring and estimating the
+effect of heavy gunfire, for the Germans are too far from the city to
+use anything but heavy guns effectively. The impressions of such a
+visit are too numerous to recall. I shall mention but one more. Behind
+the cathedral are cloisters that the guide books mention; they inclose
+a courtyard that was once decorated with statues of saints. By some
+accident or miracle&mdash;there are always miracles in shelled towns&mdash;one
+of these images, perhaps that of the Madonna, has been lifted from its
+pedestal and thrown into the branches of a tree, which seems almost to
+hold it with outstretched arms.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>At length we left the town, going out by the Porte de France, which
+cuts the old Vauban ramparts, now as deserted as those of Paris,
+ramparts that had been covered with trees and were now strewn with the
+d&eacute;bris of the trees that had fallen under the shell fire. In all this
+time not a shell had fallen in Verdun; it was the first completely
+tranquil morning in weeks; but there was always the sense of impending
+destruction, there was always the sense of the approaching shell.
+There was an odd subconscious curiosity, and something more than
+curiosity, about the mental processes of some men, not far away, who
+were beside guns pointed toward you, guns which yesterday or the day
+before had sent their destruction to the very spot where you stood.</p>
+
+<p>Yet, oddly enough, in the town there was a wholly absurd sense of
+security, derived from the fact that there were still buildings
+between you and those guns. You saw that the buildings went to dust
+and ashes whenever the guns were fired; you saw that each <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>explosion
+might turn a city block into ashes, and yet you were glad of the
+buildings and there was reassurance in their shadows. Now we travelled
+in the open country; we began to climb across the face of a bare hill,
+and it was the face that fronted the Germans.</p>
+
+<p>Presently the General's car stuck in the mud and we halted, for a
+minute perhaps; then we went on; we passed a dead horse lying in the
+road, then of a sudden came that same terrible grinding, metallic
+crash. I have never seen any description of a heavy shell explosion
+that fitted it. Behind us we could see the black smoke rising from the
+ground in a suburb through which we had just come. I saw three
+explosions. A moment later we were at the gate of Fort de la Chaume,
+and we were warned not to stop, but to hasten in, for the Germans,
+whenever they see cars at this point, suspect that Joffre has arrived,
+or President Poincar&eacute;, and act accordingly. We did not delay.</p>
+
+<p>Fort de la Chaume is one of the many <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>fortifications built since the
+Franco-Prussian War and intended to defend the city. Like all the
+rest, it ceased to have value when the German artillery had shown at
+Li&egrave;ge and at Namur that it was the master of the fort. Then the French
+left their forts and went out to trenches beyond and took with them
+the heavy guns that the fort once boasted. To-day Fort de la Chaume is
+just an empty shell, as empty as the old Vauban citadel in the valley
+below. And what is true of this fort is true of all the other forts of
+that famous fortress of Verdun, which is no longer a fortress, but a
+sector in the trench line that runs from the North Sea to Switzerland.</p>
+
+<p>From the walls of the fort staff officers showed me the surrounding
+country. I looked down on the city of Verdun, hiding under the shadow
+of its cathedral. I looked across the level Meuse Valley, with its
+little river; I studied the wall of hills beyond. Somewhere in the
+tangle on the horizon was Douaumont, which the Germans held. Down <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>the
+valley of the river in the haze was the town of Bras, which was
+French; beyond it the village of Vachereauville, which was German.
+Beyond the hills in the centre of the picture, but hidden by them,
+were Le Mort Homme and Hill 304.</p>
+
+<p>Verdun is like a lump of sugar in a finger bowl, and I was standing on
+the rim. It seemed utterly impossible that any one should even think
+of this town as a fortress or count its ashes as of meaning in the
+conflict.</p>
+
+<p>Somewhere in the background a French battery of heavy guns was firing,
+and the sound was clear; but it did not suggest war, rather a blasting
+operation. The German guns were still again. There was a faint
+billowing roll of gunfire across the river toward Douaumont, but very
+faint. As for trenches, soldiers, evidences of battle, they did not
+exist. I thought of Ralph Pulitzer's vivid story of riding to the
+Rheims front in a military aeroplane and seeing, of war, just
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>The geography of the Verdun country unrolled before us with absolute
+clarity; the whole relation of hills and river and railroads was
+unmistakable. But despite the faint sound of musketry, the occasional
+roar of a French gun, I might have been in the Berkshires looking down
+on the Housatonic. Six miles to the north around Le Mort Homme that
+battle which has not stopped for two months was still going on. Around
+Douaumont the overture was just starting, the overture to a stiff
+fight in the afternoon, but of all the circumstances of battle that
+one has read of, that one still vaguely expects to see, there was not
+a sign. If it suited their fancy the Germans could turn the hill on
+which I stood into a crater of ruin, as they did with Fort Loncin at
+Li&egrave;ge. We were well within range, easy range; we lived because they
+had no object to serve by such shooting, but we were without even a
+hint of their whereabouts.</p>
+
+<p>I have already described the military geography of Verdun. I shall not
+attempt to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>repeat it here, but it is the invisibility of warfare,
+whether examined from the earth or the air, which impresses the
+civilian. If you go to the trenches you creep through tunnels and
+cavities until you are permitted to peer through a peephole, and you
+see yellow dirt some yards away. You may hear bullets over your head,
+you may hear shells passing, but what you see is a hillside with some
+slashings. That is the enemy. If you go to an observation post back of
+the trenches, then you will see a whole range of country, but not even
+the trenches of your own side.</p>
+
+<p>From the Grand Mont east of Nancy I watched some French batteries
+shell the German line. I didn't see the French guns, I didn't see the
+German trenches, I didn't see the French line. I did see some black
+smoke rising a little above the underbrush, and I was told that the
+shells were striking behind the German lines and that the gunners were
+searching for a German battery. But I might as well have been
+observing a gang of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>Italians at blasting operations in the Montclair
+Mountains. And the officer with me said: "Our children are just
+amusing themselves."</p>
+
+<p>From Fort de la Chaume we rode back to the citadel; and there I was
+the guest of the General and the officers of the town garrison; their
+guest because I was an American who came to see their town. I shall
+always remember that luncheon down in the very depths of this rock in
+a dimly lighted room. I sat at the General's right, and all around me
+were the men whose day's work it was to keep the roads open, the
+machinery running in the shell-cursed city. Every time they went out
+into daylight they knew that they might not return. For two months the
+storm had beaten about this rock, it had written its mark upon all
+these faces, and yet it had neither extinguished the light nor the
+laughter; the sense of strength and of calmness was inescapable, and
+never have I known such charming, such thoughtful hosts.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>When the champagne came the old General rose and made me a little
+speech. He spoke in English, with absolute correctness, but as one who
+spoke it with difficulty. He welcomed me as an American to Verdun, he
+thanked me for coming, he raised his glass to drink to my country and
+the hope that in the right time she would be standing with France&mdash;in
+the cause of civilization. Always in his heart, in his thought, in his
+speech, the Frenchman is thinking of that cause of civilization;
+always this is what the terrible conflict that is eating up all France
+means to him.</p>
+
+<p>Afterward we went out of this cavern into daylight, and the officers
+came and shook hands with me and said good-bye. One does not say <i>au
+revoir</i> at the front; one says <i>bonne chance</i>&mdash;"good luck; it may and
+it may not&mdash;we hope not." We entered our cars and were about to start,
+when suddenly, with a blinding, stunning crash, a whole salvo landed
+in the meadow just beyond the road, we could not see where, because
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>some houses hid the field. It was the most suddenly appalling crash I
+have ever heard.</p>
+
+<p>Instantly the General ordered our drivers to halt. He explained that
+it might be the beginning of a bombardment or only a single trial, a
+detail in the intermittent firing to cut the road that we were to
+take. We sat waiting for several moments and no more shots came. Then
+the General turned and gave an order to his car to follow, bade our
+drivers go fast, and climbed into my car and sat down. The wandering
+American correspondent was his guest. He could not protect him from
+the shell fire. He could not prevent it. But he could share the
+danger. He could share the risk, and so he rode with me the mile until
+we passed beyond the danger zone. There he gave me another <i>bonne
+chance</i> and left me, went back to his shell-cursed town with its ruins
+and its agonies.</p>
+
+<p>I hope I shall see General Dubois again. I hope it will be on the day
+when he is made Governor of Strassburg.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>As we left Verdun the firing was increasing; it was rolling up like a
+rising gale; the infantry fire was becoming pronounced; the Germans
+were beginning an attack upon Le Mort Homme. Just before sunset we
+passed through the Argonne Forest and came out beyond. On a hill to
+the north against the sky the monument of Valmy stood out in clear
+relief, marking the hill where Kellerman had turned back another
+Prussian army. Then we slipped down into the Plain of Ch&acirc;lons, where
+other Frenchmen had met and conquered Attila. At dark we halted in
+Montmirail, where Napoleon won his last victory before his empire
+fell. The sound of the guns we had left behind was still in our ears
+and the meaning of these names in our minds. Presently my French
+companion said to me: "It is a long time, isn't it?" He meant all the
+years since the first storm came out of the north, and I think the
+same thought is in every Frenchman's mind. Then he told me his story.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>"I had two boys," he said; "one was taken from me years ago in an
+accident; he was killed and it was terrible. But the other I gave.</p>
+
+<p>"He was shot, my last boy, up near Verdun, in the beginning of the
+war. He did not die at once and I went to him. For twenty days I sat
+beside him in a cellar waiting for him to die. I bought the last
+coffin in the village, that he might be buried in it, and kept it
+under my bed. We talked many times before he died, and he told me all
+he knew of the fight, of the men about him and how they fell.</p>
+
+<p>"My name is finished, but I say to you now that in all that experience
+there was nothing that was not beautiful." And as far as I can analyze
+or put in words the impression that I have brought away from France,
+from the ruin and the suffering and the destruction, I think it is
+expressed in those words. I have seen nothing that was not beautiful,
+too, because through all the spirit of France shone clear and bright.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span><br />
+
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+<h3>BATTLE OF VERDUN ANOTHER GETTYSBURG<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p class="noin">FAILURE OF CROWN PRINCE LIKENED BY FRENCH TO "HIGH TIDE" OF
+CONFEDERACY</p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>"The parallel between Gettysburg in your Civil War and Verdun in the
+present contest is unmistakable and striking." This was said to me by
+General Delacroix, one of Joffre's predecessors as chief of the French
+General Staff and the distinguished military critic of the Paris
+<i>Temps</i> now that because of age he has passed to the retired list.</p>
+
+<p>What General Delacroix meant was patent and must have already
+impressed many Americans. Our own Gettysburg was the final bid for
+decision of a South which had long been victorious on the battlefield,
+which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>still possessed the armies that seemed the better organized and
+the generals whose campaigns had been wonderfully successful. But it
+was the bid for decision of a Confederacy which was outnumbered in
+men, in resources, in the ultimate powers of endurance, and was
+already beginning to feel the growing pinch both in numbers and
+credit.</p>
+
+<p>At Gettysburg Lee made his final effort to destroy the army which he
+had frequently defeated but never eliminated. Victory meant the fall
+of Washington, the coming of despair to the North, an end of the Civil
+War, which would bring independence and the prize for which they had
+contended to the Confederates. And Lee failed at Gettysburg, not as
+Napoleon failed at Waterloo or as MacMahon failed at Sedan, but he
+failed, and his failure was the beginning of the end. The victory of
+Gettysburg put new heart, new assurance into the North; it broke the
+long illusion of an invincible Confederacy; it gave to Europe, to
+London, and to Paris, even more promptly <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>than to Washington, the
+unmistakable message that the North was bound to win the Civil War.</p>
+
+<p>I mean in a moment to discuss the military aspects of this conflict
+about the Lorraine fortress, but before the military it is essential
+to grasp the moral consequences of Verdun to France, to the Allies, to
+Germany. Not since the Marne, not even then&mdash;because it was only after
+a long delay that France really knew what had happened in this
+struggle&mdash;has anything occurred that has so profoundly, so
+indescribably, heartened the French people as has the victory at
+Verdun. It is not too much to say that the victory has been the most
+immediately inspiring thing in French national life since the disaster
+at Sedan and that it has roused national confidence, hope, faith, as
+nothing else has since the present conflict began.</p>
+
+<p>In this sense rather than in the military sense Verdun was a decisive
+battle and its consequences of far-reaching character. France <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>as a
+whole, from the moment when the attack began, understood the issue;
+the battle was fought in the open and the whole nation watched the
+communiqu&eacute;s day by day. It was accepted as a terrible if not a final
+test, and no Frenchman fails to recognize in all that he says the
+strength, the power, the military skill of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>And when the advance was checked, when after the first two weeks the
+battle flickered out as did the French offensive in Champagne and the
+former German drive about Ypres a year ago, France, which had held her
+breath and waited, hoped, read in the results at Verdun the promise of
+ultimate victory, felt that all that Germany had, all that she could
+produce, had been put to the test and had failed to accomplish the
+result for which Germany had striven&mdash;or any portion thereof.</p>
+
+<p>War is something beyond armies and tactics, beyond strategy and even
+military genius, and the real meaning of Verdun is not to be found in
+lines held or lost, not to be found <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>even in the ashes of the old town
+that France and not Germany holds. It is to be found in the spirit of
+France, now that the great trial is over and the lines have held.</p>
+
+<p>It was Germany and not France that raised the issue of Verdun. The
+Germans believed, and all their published statements show this, that
+France was weary, disheartened, ready to quit, on fair terms. They
+believed that there was needed only a shining victory, a great moral
+demonstration of German strength to accomplish the end&mdash;to bring
+victorious peace. In this I think, and all with whom I talked in
+France felt, that the Germans were wrong, that France would have
+endured defeat and gone on. But conversely, the Germans knew, must
+have known, that to try and to fail was to rouse the whole heart of
+France, to destroy any pessimism, and this is precisely what the
+failure has done.</p>
+
+<p>The battle for Verdun was a battle for moral rather than military
+values, and the moral victory remains with the French. It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>was a
+deliberate and calculated effort to break the spirit of France, and it
+roused the spirit of France as perhaps nothing has raised the spirit
+of this people since Valmy, where other Frenchmen met and checked
+another German invasion, brought to a halt the army of Frederick the
+Great, which still preserved the prestige of its great captain who was
+dead, turned it back along the road that was presently to end at Jena.</p>
+
+<p>Beside the moral value of Verdun the military is just nothing. To
+appreciate its meaning you must understand what it has meant to the
+French, and you must understand it by recalling what Gettysburg meant
+to the North, invaded as is France, defeated at half a dozen struggles
+in Virginia as France has been defeated in the past months of this
+war. Gettysburg was and remains the decisive battle of our Civil War,
+although the conflict lasted for nearly two years more. For France
+Verdun is exactly the same thing. Having accepted the moral likeness,
+you may <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>find much that is instructive and suggestive in the military,
+but this is of relatively minor importance.</p>
+
+<p>Now, on the military side it is necessary to know first of all that
+when the Germans began their gigantic attack upon Verdun the French
+high command decided not to defend the city. Joffre and those who with
+him direct the French armies were agreed that the city of Verdun was
+without military value comparable with the cost of defending it, and
+that the wisest and best thing to do was to draw back the lines to the
+hills above the city and west of the Meuse. Had their will prevailed
+there would have been no real battle at Verdun and the Germans would
+long ago have occupied the ashes of the town.</p>
+
+<p>Joffre's view was easily explicable, and it was hardly possible to
+quarrel with the military judgment it discloses. To the world Verdun
+is a great fortress, a second Gibraltar, encircled by great forts,
+furnished with huge guns, the gateway to Paris and the key to the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>French eastern frontier. And this is just what Verdun was until the
+coming of the present war, when the German and Austrian siege guns
+levelled the forts of Antwerp, of Maubeuge, of Li&egrave;ge. But after that
+Verdun ceased to be anything, because all fortresses lost their value
+with the revelation that they had failed to keep pace with the gun.</p>
+
+<p>After the Battle of the Marne, when the trench war began, the French
+took all their guns out of the forts of Verdun, pushed out before the
+forts, and Verdun became just a sector in the long trench line from
+the sea to Switzerland. It was defended by trenches, not forts. It was
+neither of more importance nor less than any other point in the line
+and it was a place of trenches, not of forts. The forts were empty and
+remain empty, monuments to the past of war, quite as useless as the
+walls of Rome would be against modern artillery.</p>
+
+<p>The decline of Verdun was even more complete. From the strongest point
+in French <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>defence it became the weakest. When the Germans took St.
+Mihiel in September, 1914, they cut the north and south railroad that
+binds Verdun to the Paris-Nancy Railroad. When they retreated from the
+Marne they halted at Varennes and Montfaucon, and from these points
+they command the Paris-Verdun-Metz Railroad. Apart from a single
+narrow-gauge railroad of minor value, which wanders among the hills,
+climbing at prohibitive grades, Verdun is isolated from the rest of
+France. Consider what this means in modern war when the amount of
+ammunition consumed in a day almost staggers belief. Consider what it
+means when there are a quarter of a million men to be fed and
+munitioned in this sector.</p>
+
+<p>More than all this, when the lines came down to the trench condition
+Verdun was a salient, it was a narrow curve bulging out into the
+German front. It was precisely the same sort of military position as
+Ypres, which the Germans have twice before selected as the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>point for
+a great attack. In the Verdun sector the French are exposed to a
+converging fire; they are inside the German semicircle. Moreover, the
+salient is so narrow that the effect of converging fire is not to be
+exaggerated.</p>
+
+<p>When the French attacked the Germans in Champagne last fall they
+advanced on a wide front from a line parallel to the German line. As
+they pierced the first German lines they were exposed to the
+converging fire of the Germans, because they were pushing a wedge in.
+Ultimately they got one brigade through all the German lines, but it
+was destroyed beyond by this converging fire. But as the Germans
+advanced upon Verdun they were breaking down a salient and possessed
+the advantage they had had on the defensive in Champagne.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, one-half the French army of Verdun fought with its back to a
+deep river, connected with the other half only by bridges, some of
+which presently came under German <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>fire, and there was every
+possibility that these troops might be cut off and captured if the
+German advance were pushed home far enough on the west bank of the
+Meuse and the German artillery was successful in interrupting the
+passage of the river. It was a perilous position and there were some
+days when the situation seemed critical.</p>
+
+<p>Accordingly, when the German drive at Verdun was at last disclosed in
+its real magnitude Joffre prepared to evacuate the town and the east
+bank of the river, to straighten his line and abolish the salient and
+give over to the Germans the wreck of Verdun. The position behind the
+river was next to impregnable; the lines would then be parallel; there
+would be no salient, and in the new position the French could
+concentrate their heavy artillery while the Germans were moving up the
+guns that they had fixed to the north of the old front.</p>
+
+<p>But at this point the French politician interfered. He recognized the
+wisdom of the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>merely military view of Joffre, but he saw also the
+moral value. He recognized that the French and the German public alike
+would not see Verdun as a mere point in a trench line and a point
+almost impossible to defend and destitute of military value. He saw
+that the French and German publics would think of Verdun as it had
+been thought of before the present war changed all the conditions of
+conflict. He recognized that the German people would be roused to new
+hope and confidence by the capture of a great fortress, and that the
+French would be equally depressed by losing what they believed was a
+great fortress.</p>
+
+<p>You had therefore in France for some hours, perhaps for several days,
+something that approximated a crisis growing out of the division of
+opinion between the civil and the military authorities, a division of
+opinion based upon two wholly different but not impossible equally
+correct appraisals. Joffre did not believe it was worth the men or the
+risk to hold a few square miles of French <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>territory, since to
+evacuate would strengthen, not weaken, the line. The French
+politicians recognized that to lose Verdun was to suffer a moral
+defeat which would almost infallibly bring down the Ministry, might
+call into existence a new Committee of Public Safety, and would fire
+the German heart and depress the French.</p>
+
+<p>In the end the politicians had their way and Castelnau, Joffre's
+second in command, came over to their view and set out for Verdun to
+organize the defence for the position at the eleventh hour. He had
+with him P&eacute;tain, the man who had commanded the French army in the
+Battle of Champagne and henceforth commanded the army that was hurried
+to the Verdun sector. France now took up definitely the gage of battle
+as Germany had laid it down. Verdun now became a battle in the
+decisive sense of the word, although still on the moral side. Nothing
+is more preposterous than to believe that there ever was any chance of
+a German advance through Verdun <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>to Paris. One has only to go to
+Verdun and see the country and the lines behind the city and miles
+back of the present front to realize how foolish such talk is.</p>
+
+<p>Meantime the German advance had been steady and considerable. All
+these attacks follow the same course&mdash;Ypres, Artois, Champagne,
+Dunajec. There is first the tremendous artillery concentration of the
+assailant; then the bombardment which abolishes the first and second
+line trenches of the defenders; then the infantry attack which takes
+these ruined trenches and almost invariably many thousands of
+prisoners and scores of guns. But now the situation changes. The
+assailant has passed beyond the effective range of his own heavy
+artillery, which cannot be immediately advanced because of its weight;
+he encounters a line of trenches that has not been levelled, he has
+come under the concentrated fire of his foe's heavy and light
+artillery without the support of his own heavy artillery, and all the
+advantage of surprise has gone.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>What happened at Verdun is what happened in the Champagne. The German
+advance was quite as successful&mdash;rather more successful than the
+French last September; it covered three or four miles on a
+considerable front, and it even reached Douaumont, one of the old
+forts and the fort which was placed on the highest hill in the
+environs of Verdun. Thousands of prisoners had been captured and many
+guns taken. But at this point the French resistance stiffened, as had
+the German last year. French reserves and artillery arrived. P&eacute;tain
+and Castelnau arrived. There was an end of the rapid advance and there
+began the pounding, grinding attack in which the advantage passed to
+the defender. It was just what happened at Neuve Chapelle so long ago
+when we first saw this kind of fighting exemplified completely.</p>
+
+<p>In the new attacks the Germans still gained ground, but they gained
+ground because the French withdrew from positions made untenable
+through the original German advance <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>at other points. They
+consolidated their line, organized their new front. Ten days after the
+attack had begun it had ceased to be a question of Verdun, just as in
+a shorter time the French had realized last September that they could
+not break the German line in Champagne. But like the French in
+Champagne, like the British at Neuve Chapelle, the Germans persevered,
+and in consequence suffered colossal losses, exactly as the French and
+British had.</p>
+
+<p>To understand the German tactics you must recognize two things. The
+Germans had expected to take Verdun, and they had unquestionably known
+that the French military command did not intend at the outset to hold
+the town. They had advertised the coming victory far and wide over the
+world; they had staked much upon it. Moreover, in the first days, when
+they had taken much ground, when they had got Douaumont and could look
+down into Verdun, they had every reason to believe that they possessed
+the key <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>to the city and that the French high command was slowly but
+steadily drawing back its lines and would presently evacuate the city.</p>
+
+<p>Knowing these things you can understand why the Germans were so
+confident. They did not invent stories of coming victory which they
+did not believe. They believed that Verdun was to fall because they
+knew, and the same thing was known and mentioned in London. I heard it
+there when the battle was in its earlier stages&mdash;that the French high
+command intended to evacuate Verdun. What they did not know and could
+not know was that the French politicians, perhaps one should say
+statesmen this time, had interfered, that the French high command had
+yielded and that Verdun was to be defended to the last ditch.</p>
+
+<p>When this decision was made the end of the real German advance was
+almost instantaneous. All that has happened since has been nothing but
+active trench war, violent fighting, desperate charge and counter
+charge, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>a material shortening of the French line at certain points,
+the abolition of minor salients, but of actual progress not the
+smallest. The advance stopped before lines on which P&eacute;tain elected to
+make his stand when he came with his army to defend Verdun. The
+Germans are still several miles outside of Verdun itself, and only at
+Douaumont have they touched the line of the exterior forts, which
+before the war were expected to defend the city.</p>
+
+<p>In Paris and elsewhere you will be told that Douaumont was occupied
+without resistance and that it was abandoned under orders before there
+had been a decision to hold Verdun. I do not pretend to know whether
+this is true or not, although I heard it on authority that was wholly
+credible, but the fact that the map discloses, that I saw for myself
+at Verdun, is that, save for Douaumont, none of the old forts have
+been taken and that the Germans have never been able to advance a foot
+from Douaumont or reach the other forts at any other point. And this
+is nothing more or <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>less than the French experience at Champagne, the
+German experience about Ypres in 1915.</p>
+
+<p>In a later chapter I hope to discuss the situation at Verdun as I saw
+it on April 6th, and also the miracle of motor transport which played
+so great a part in the successful defence of the position. But the
+military details are wholly subordinate to the moral. All France was
+roused by a successful defence of a position attacked by Germany with
+the advertised purpose of breaking the spirit of the French people.
+The battle was fought in the plain daylight without the smallest
+concealment, and the least-informed reader of the official reports
+could grasp the issue which was the fate of the city of Verdun.</p>
+
+<p>The fact, known to a certain number of Frenchmen only, that the
+defence was improvised after the decision had been made to evacuate
+the whole salient, serves for them to increase the meaning of the
+victory as it increases the real extent of the French exploit. But
+this is a detail. The Germans openly, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>deliberately, after long
+preparation, announced their purpose, used every conceivable bit of
+strength they could bring to bear to take Verdun, and told their own
+people not merely that Verdun would fall, but at one moment that it
+had fallen. They did this with the firm conviction that it would
+fall&mdash;was falling.</p>
+
+<p>The French were steadily aware that Verdun might be lost. They knew
+from letters coming daily from the front how terrible the struggle
+was, and it is impossible to exaggerate the tension of the early days,
+although it was not a tension of panic or fear. Paris did not expect
+to see the invader, and there was nothing of this sort of moonshine
+abroad. But it was plain that the fall of the town would bring a
+tremendous wave of depression and if not despair yet a real reduction
+of hope. Instead, Verdun defended itself, the lines were maintained
+several miles on the other side of the town and all substantial
+advance came to an end in the first two weeks. The <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>army itself, the
+military observers, were convinced that all danger was over as early
+as the second week in March, when correspondents of French newspapers
+were being taken to Verdun to see the situation and tell the people
+the facts.</p>
+
+<p>All over Northern France, and I was in many towns and cities, the
+"lift" that Verdun had brought was unmistakable and French confidence
+was everywhere evident. It showed itself in a spontaneous welcome to
+Alexander of Serbia in Paris, which, I am told, was the first thing of
+the sort in the war period. Frenchmen did not say that Verdun was the
+beginning of the end, and they did not forecast the prompt collapse of
+Germany. They did not even forecast the immediate end of the fighting
+about Verdun. They did not regard the victory as a Waterloo or a Sedan
+or any other foolish thing. But they did rather coolly and quite
+calmly appraise the thing and see in it the biggest German failure
+since the Marne, and a failure in a fight which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>the Germans had laid
+down all the conditions in advance and advertised the victory that
+they did not achieve as promising the collapse of French endurance and
+spirit.</p>
+
+<p>The Battle of Verdun was a battle for moral values, and the possession
+of the town itself was never of any real military value. Verdun
+commands nothing, and behind it lie well-prepared fortifications on
+dominating heights, positions that are ten times as easy to defend as
+those which the French have defended. It was not a battle for Paris,
+and there was never a prospect of the piercing of the French line;
+Germany was never as near a great military success as she was at Ypres
+after the first gas attack a year ago. The French army leaders judged
+the Verdun position as not worth the cost of defending. They were
+overruled by the politicians and they defended it successfully. But
+their first decision is the best evidence of the wholly illusory value
+that has been attached to the possession of Verdun itself.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>The politicians were unquestionably right as to the moral value, and
+it is possible if not probable that the relinquishment of the city
+voluntarily might have precipitated the fall of the Briand Ministry
+and the creation of a Committee of Public Safety&mdash;not to make peace,
+but to make war successfully. The will to defend Verdun came from the
+French people, it imposed itself upon the army and it resulted in a
+moral victory the consequences of which cannot be exaggerated and have
+given new heart and confidence to a people whose courage and
+determination must make an enduring impression on any one who sees
+France in the present terrible but glorious time.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="IV" id="IV"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span><br />
+
+<h2>IV</h2>
+
+<h3>VERDUN, THE DOOR THAT LEADS NOWHERE<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+
+<div class="block"><p class="noin">THE BATTLE AND THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE BATTLEFIELD&mdash;AN ANALYSIS
+OF THE ATTACK AND DEFENCE</p></div>
+<br />
+
+<p>In a preceding article I have endeavored to explain the tremendous
+moral "lift" that the successful defence of the city of Verdun has
+brought to France, a moral "lift" which has roused French confidence
+and expectation of ultimate victory to the highest point since the war
+began. I have also tried to demonstrate how utterly without value the
+fortress of Verdun was, because the forts were of no use in the
+present war, were as useless against German heavy artillery as those
+of Antwerp and Maubeuge, and had been evacuated by the French a full
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>eighteen months before the present battle began. Finally I have
+indicated that so little military value was attached to Verdun by the
+French high command that it was prepared to evacuate the whole
+position, which is the most difficult to defend on the whole French
+front, and was only persuaded to give over his purpose by the
+arguments of the politicians, who believed that the moral effect of
+the evacuation would be disastrous to France and inspiriting to
+Germany.</p>
+
+<p>I now desire to describe at some length the actual topographical
+circumstances of Verdun and later I shall discuss the fashion in which
+an automobile transport system was improvised to meet the situation
+created by the interruption of traffic by German artillery fire along
+the two considerable railroad lines. It was this system which actually
+saved the town and is the real "miracle of Verdun," if one is to have
+miracles to explain what brave and skilful men do.</p>
+
+<p>I saw Verdun on April 6th. I went through <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>the city, which was little
+more than a mass of ashes, with General Dubois, the military governor
+of the town itself, and with him I went to Fort de la Chaume, on one
+of the highest hills near Verdun, and from this vantage point had the
+whole countryside explained to me. The day on which I visited Verdun
+was the first completely quiet day in weeks, and I was thus fortunate
+in being able to see and to go about without the disturbing or
+hindering circumstances which are incident to a bombardment.</p>
+
+<p>The city of Verdun is situated at the bottom of the Meuse Valley on
+both sides of the river. But the main portion of the town is on the
+west bank and surrounds a low hill, crowned by the cathedral and old
+Vauban citadel. The town is surrounded by old ramparts, long ago
+deprived of military value and belonging, like the citadel, to
+eighteenth century warfare. The Valley of the Meuse is here several
+miles wide, as flat as your hand, and the river, which is small but
+fairly deep, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>a real obstacle since it cannot be forded, wanders back
+and forth from one side of the valley to the other. Below Verdun it is
+doubled, as a military obstacle, by the Canal de l'Est.</p>
+
+<p>If you put a lump of sugar in a finger bowl you will pretty fairly
+reproduce the Verdun topography. The lump of sugar will represent
+Verdun, the rim of the bowl the hills around the city, the interior of
+the bowl the little basin in which the city stands. This rim of hills,
+which rise some five or six hundred feet above the town itself, is
+broken on the west by a deep and fairly narrow trough which comes into
+the Meuse Valley and connects it some thirty miles to the west with
+the Plain of Ch&acirc;lons. If you should look down upon this region from an
+aeroplane this furrow would look like a very deep gutter cutting far
+into the tangle of hills.</p>
+
+<p>Now in the warfare of other centuries the value of the Verdun fortress
+was just this: the furrow which I have described is the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>one avenue
+available for an invading army coming from the east out of Metz or
+south from Luxemburg and aiming to get into the Plain of Ch&acirc;lons to
+the west. It is the way the Prussians came in 1792 and were defeated
+at Valmy, at the western entrance of the trough about thirty miles
+away. They took Verdun on their way&mdash;so did the Germans in 1870.</p>
+
+<p>Verdun in French hands closed this trough to the invaders.</p>
+
+<p>It closed it because the low hill which bears the town was strongly
+fortified and was surrounded by lower ground. Such artillery as was in
+existence was not of a sufficiently long range to place upon the hills
+about Verdun which we have described as the rim of the bowl. The town
+of Verdun was situated on both sides of the river and commanded all
+the bridges. It was, in fact, the stopple in the mouth of the
+bottle-neck passage leading into North Central France, the passage
+through which ran the main road and, later, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>the railway from the
+frontier nearest Paris to the capital.</p>
+
+<p>But when the modern developments of artillery came, then Verdun, the
+old fortress that Vauban built for Louis XIV, lost its value. It was
+commanded by the surrounding hills and the French moved out of the
+town and the Vauban fortifications and built on the surrounding hills,
+on the rim, to go back to our figure, the forts which were the defence
+of the town when the present war began, forts arranged quite like
+those of Li&egrave;ge or Antwerp and some four or five miles away from the
+town. But bear in mind these forts were designed, like the old
+fortress and fortifications of the eighteenth century, to bar the road
+from the Meuse and from Germany to the Plain of Ch&acirc;lons and the level
+country west of the Argonne. When the Germans came south through
+Belgium and got into the Plain of Ch&acirc;lons from the north they had
+turned the whole Verdun position and had got into the region it
+barred <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>by another route; they had come in by the back door; Verdun
+was the front. Not only that, but they are there now and have been
+there ever since the first days of September, 1914.</p>
+
+<p>When one hears about Verdun as the gateway to Paris or anything else
+one hears about the Verdun of the past. It was not the door to Paris
+but the outer door to the region around Paris, to the Plains of
+Champagne and Ch&acirc;lons. But as the Germans are already in these plains
+the taking of Verdun now would not bring them nearer to Paris; they
+are only fifty miles away at Noyon, on the Oise, and they would be 160
+at Verdun if they took the city. If they took Verdun they would get
+control of the Paris-Metz Railway, and if they then drove the French
+away from the trough we have been describing they would get a short
+line into France, and a line coming from German territory directly,
+not passing through Belgium. But they would not be nearer to Paris.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>When the French saw, in the opening days of the war, that forts were
+of no permanent value against the German guns they left the forts on
+the hills above Verdun as they had abandoned the Vauban works and
+moved north for a few miles. Here they dug trenches, mounted their
+guns in concealed positions, and stood on the defensive, as they were
+standing elsewhere from Belgium to Switzerland. There was now no
+fortress of Verdun, and Verdun city was nothing but a point behind the
+lines of trenches, a point like Rheims, or Arras. The forts of the rim
+were equally of no more importance and were now empty of guns or
+garrisons. If the Germans, by a sudden attack, broke all the way
+through the French trenches here it would be quite as serious as if
+they broke through at other points, but no more so. There was no
+fortress of Verdun and the Verdun position commanded nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The Battle of Verdun, as it is disclosed to an observer who stands on
+Fort de la Chaume, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>a mile or two west and above Verdun and in the
+mouth of the trough we have described, was this: On the west bank of
+the Meuse, four or five miles northwest of the town, there is a steep
+ridge going east and west and perhaps 1,100 feet high. This is the
+crest of Charny, and it rises sharply from the flat valley and marches
+to the west without a break for some miles. On it are the old forts of
+the rim.</p>
+
+<p>Three or four miles still to the north is a line of hills which are
+separated from each other by deep ravines leading north and south. Two
+of these hills, Le Mort Homme (Dead Man's Hill) and Hill 304, have
+been steadily in the reports for many weeks. They are the present
+front of the French. Between one and two miles still to the north are
+other confused and tangled hills facing north, and it was here that
+the French lines ran when the great attack began in the third week of
+February. On this side the Germans have advanced rather less than two
+miles; they have <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>not reached the Charny Ridge, which is the true and
+last line of defence of the Verdun position, and they have not
+captured the two hills to the north, which are the advanced position,
+now the first line.</p>
+
+<p>When I was in Paris before I went to Verdun there was a general belief
+that the French might ultimately abandon the two outer hills, Dead
+Man's and 304, and come back to the Charny Ridge, which is a wall
+running from the river west without a break for miles. Apparently this
+has not been found necessary, but what is worth noting is that if
+these hills were evacuated it would not mean the withdrawal from
+Verdun but only to the best line of defence (the last line, to be
+sure), which includes the town itself.</p>
+
+<p>Now, east of the river the situation is materially different. Between
+the Meuse and the level plateau, which appears in the dispatches from
+the front as the Woevre, is a long, narrow ridge, running from north
+to south for perhaps thirty-five or forty miles. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>This is the C&ocirc;te de
+Meuse, or, translated, the Hills of the Meuse. The range is never more
+than ten miles wide and at many points less than half as wide. On the
+west it rises very sharply from the Meuse and on the east it breaks
+down quite as abruptly into the Woevre Plain. It cannot be effectively
+approached from the Woevre, because the Woevre is an exceedingly
+marshy plain, with much sub-surface water and in spring a mass of
+liquid clay.</p>
+
+<p>Now the French, when the German drive began, stood on this ridge some
+eight miles, rather less, perhaps, to the north of the town of Verdun;
+their line ran from the Meuse straight east along this ridge and then
+turned at right angles and came south along the eastern edge of the
+Meuse Hills and the shore of the Woevre Plain until it touched the
+river again at St. Mihiel, twenty miles to the south, where the
+Germans had broken through the Meuse Hills and reached the river. The
+German attack came south along the crest <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>of this ridge because the
+German heavy artillery could not be brought over the Woevre.</p>
+
+<p>About halfway between the French front and Verdun, on a little crest
+somewhat higher than the main ridge, the French had erected a line of
+forts, just as they had on the Charny Ridge, Forts Douaumont and Vaux,
+familiar names now, were the forts most distant from Verdun. But the
+French here, as on the other side of the river, had come out of these
+forts, abandoned and dismantled them, and taken to trenches much to
+the north. It was upon these trenches that the main German attack
+fell, and in the first days the French were pushed back until their
+trench line followed the crests that bear the old forts, and at one
+point, at Douaumont, the Germans had actually got possession of one of
+the old forts; but the French trenches pass in front of this fort at a
+distance of but a few hundred yards.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in the first days of the battle the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>position of the French on
+the east bank of the Meuse was just this: the troops facing north were
+meeting and slowly yielding to a terrific drive coming south and
+southwest; the rest of the troops that faced east toward the Woevre
+were not attacked severely. But as the Germans came south, and when
+they took Douaumont, they were able to reach the bridges across the
+Meuse behind the French troops on the Meuse Hills and to destroy them
+by indirect fire, and these French troops, more than a hundred
+thousand probably, were fighting with their backs to a deep river and
+exposed to destruction in case their lines did not hold.</p>
+
+<p>In this situation Joffre proposed to take his troops behind the Meuse
+and on the hills to the west and above the city, leaving the city to
+the Germans. The French line would thus come north behind the Meuse
+from St. Mihiel and then turn west above Verdun, following either the
+Charny Ridge or else the Hills of Regret and Chaume, on either side
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>of the trough, described above, which the road to Paris follows.</p>
+
+<p>If Verdun were a fortress actually; if either the old town or the
+circle of forts outside had been of value, Joffre would not have
+proposed this thing. But they were of no value. Verdun was once a
+fortress barring the way to the Plain of Ch&acirc;lons, but the Germans were
+in the plain, having come through Belgium by the back door, as it
+were. The forts outside the city on the rim of the basin had already
+been abandoned because they could have been destroyed by German heavy
+artillery, as were those of Li&egrave;ge and Antwerp. Verdun was just a
+position; but it was a difficult position to defend because of the
+river, which cut off one-half the army and could be crossed only by
+bridges, which were under indirect fire.</p>
+
+<p>If the French had come back to the Charny Ridge, or even to the Regret
+Hills south of the trough followed by the Paris-Metz road, they would
+have stood on hills of patent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>military value; the trough is a natural
+ditch in front. These hills are all trenched and prepared for defence.
+The French would merely have shortened their lines and taken an easy
+position to defend, instead of holding a bad position. But ultimately
+this would have meant the relinquishing of Verdun, the little town
+down in the valley below, now become a heap of ruins and having lost
+its military value thirty years earlier, when heavy artillery began
+its decisive success over the old fortifications.</p>
+
+<p>The French did not retire, because the civil government overruled the
+military; decided that the moral effect of the withdrawal from Verdun
+would be disastrous to the French and advantageous to the Germans.
+Instead of retiring, the French stood and held the hills beyond the
+Charny Ridge, Dead Man's and 304; they hold them still and seem
+determined to keep them. But remember that they can still retire to
+the Charny Ridge if they choose, and only then find their best line
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>west of the Meuse, if they mean to hold on to the city of Verdun.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, east of the River Meuse the French are
+approximately in their last line. The hills and crests they hold upon
+the Meuse Hills are some three or four miles from Verdun, but if the
+French retired far they would begin to come down hill, with a deep
+river at their backs. In consequence, whenever you hear that the
+Germans have made some slight gain, taken a trench about Douaumont or
+Vaux, you are certain to hear at once that the French have counter
+attacked and retaken the lost ground.</p>
+
+<p>The essential thing to remember is that the defence of Verdun is not
+the defence of a position that has a great military value. The French
+would be better off, would lose fewer men and run smaller risk of
+considerable losses if they should quit the east bank of the Meuse and
+occupy the hills back of Verdun on the west bank. On the west bank the
+Germans have never made any material <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>gain, and they have not come
+within reach of the hills that bear the old forts. But the French
+Government has decided that for political reason, for reasons that
+affect the moral, not the military, situation, Verdun must not be
+surrendered; hence the army is holding it at a cost of men less than
+the Germans are paying to take it, but at a far greater cost than
+would be necessary to hold the better positions west of the river.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans have not made any gain of importance in nearly two months.
+The French are very sure they will not come farther south. They are as
+confident as men could be. But if the Germans should come farther
+south and at last force the French to come back behind the river and
+to the hills above the town, they would only win a moral victory. The
+military situation would not be changed, unless they should also
+pierce the French lines on the west of the river, and this is
+absolutely unthinkable now.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>If you think of Verdun city as a fortress you will put yourself in the
+eighteenth century. It is just an abandoned town, mostly ashes and
+completely ruined by a useless bombardment after the main German
+advance had been checked. If you think of Verdun as a fortified
+position, like Li&egrave;ge, which, if it fell, would bring disaster, as did
+the fall of Li&egrave;ge, you are thinking in terms of the situation before
+the war. The forts of this position have all been abandoned and the
+French are fighting in trenches in all points save one outside this
+circle of forts. If you think of Verdun as the gateway to anything,
+you are thinking of something that doesn't exist. It was a gateway to
+Central France, to the Plain of Ch&acirc;lons, from the German frontier
+before the Germans came down into the Plain of Ch&acirc;lons from the north
+through Belgium.</p>
+
+<p>But if you think of Verdun as a place which has a great sentimental
+value for both the French and the Germans; if you think <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>of it as a
+place which by reason of its importance in other days still preserves
+a value in the minds of the mass of the French and German publics, a
+town the taking of which would as a result of this wholly false
+appraisal be reckoned in Germany as a great victory, which would
+vastly encourage German masses and would be accepted in France as a
+great defeat which would equally depress the French public, you will
+think of the battle for Verdun as it is.</p>
+
+<p>If you go to Verdun you will see that the estimate that the world has
+placed upon it is illusory. You will see it is an abandoned town. You
+will see, as I did, that great and famous forts are without guns, and
+you will see, as I did, that the positions which the French have
+prepared behind the Meuse and above the town are vastly stronger than
+those which they have held successfully, in Lorraine or any other
+place where the attacks have been bitter, for nearly two years.</p>
+
+<p>There are no forts, fortifications, fortresses, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>in this war. There
+are just trenches, and the Verdun sector is no exception. Verdun is
+not surrounded; it is not invested. I went to the town from Bar-le-Duc
+in an automobile without difficulty, and I ran back to Paris by
+another road, through Ch&acirc;lons, with equal ease. The Germans have never
+got within three miles of the town on any side; to the west of the
+River Meuse they are not within six miles of it. They are not gaining,
+and have not been gaining for weeks; they are merely fighting a
+desperate trench campaign, and the French are fighting back, retaking
+trenches on the east of the river, because they are in their last line
+on this bank of the river, but paying less attention to German trench
+gains on the west because the Germans are still far from the Charny
+Ridge, their main position.</p>
+
+<p>If Verdun falls, that is, if the French are compelled under pressure
+or as a result of the cost of holding their present awkward position
+to go back behind the river, they will <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>lose fifty or a hundred square
+miles of French territory, they will lose all the tremendous value of
+the moral "lift" which the successful defence has brought, but they
+will lose nothing else; and when the Germans have taken Verdun, the
+ashes, the ruins, they will stop, because there is no object or value
+in further attack. They are fighting for moral values, and the French
+politician has overruled the French soldier and compelled him to
+accept battle on unfavorable ground for this same moral value, but
+against his military judgment. He has done it successfully. He expects
+and France expects that he will continue to do it successfully, but in
+the wholly remote contingency that he failed (I can only say that it
+is a contingency no longer considered in France), a loss in moral
+advantage would be the only consequence.</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<a name="V" id="V"></a><hr />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span><br />
+
+<h2>V</h2>
+
+<h3>IN SIGHT OF THE PROMISED LAND&mdash;<br />ON THE LORRAINE BATTLEFIELD<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>In the third week of August, 1914, a French army crossed the frontier
+of Alsace-Lorraine and entered the Promised Land, toward which all
+Frenchmen had looked in hope and sadness for forty-four years. The
+long-forgotten communiqu&eacute;s of that early period of the war reported
+success after success, until at last it was announced that the
+victorious French armies had reached Sarrebourg and Morhange, and were
+astride the Strassburg-Metz Railroad. And then Berlin took up the cry,
+and France and the world learned of a great German victory and of the
+defeat and rout of the invading army. Even Paris conceded that the
+retreat had begun and the "army of liberation" was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>crowding back
+beyond the frontier and far within French territory.</p>
+
+<p>Then the curtain of the censorship fell and the world turned to the
+westward to watch the terrible battle for Paris. In the agony and
+glory of the Marne the struggle along the Moselle was forgotten; the
+Battle of Nancy, of Lorraine, was fought and won in the darkness, and
+when the safety of Paris was assured the world looked toward the
+Aisne, and then toward Flanders. So it came about that one of the
+greatest battles of the whole war, one of the most important of the
+French victories, the success that made the Marne possible, the rally
+and stand of the French armies about Nancy, escaped the fame it
+earned. Only in legend, in the romance of the Kaiser with his cavalry
+waiting on the hills to enter the Lorraine capital, did the battle
+live.</p>
+
+<p>When I went to France one of the hopes I had cherished was that I
+might be permitted to visit this battlefield, to see the ground on
+which a great battle had been fought, that <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>was still unknown country,
+in the main, for those who have written on the war. The Lorraine field
+was the field on which France and Germany had planned for a generation
+to fight. Had the Germans respected the neutrality of Belgium, it is
+by Nancy, by the gap between the Vosges and the hills of the Meuse,
+that they must have broken into France. The Marne was a battlefield
+which was reached by chance and fought over by hazard, but every foot
+of the Lorraine country had been studied for the fight long years in
+advance. Here war followed the natural course, followed the plans of
+the general staff prepared years in advance. Indeed, I had treasured
+over years a plan of the Battle of Nancy, contained in a French book
+written years ago, which might serve as the basis for a history of
+what happened, as it was written as a prophecy of what was to come.</p>
+
+<p>When the Great General Staff was pleased to grant my request to see
+the battlefield of Nancy I was advised to travel by train to that
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>town accompanied by an officer from the General Staff, and informed
+that I should there meet an officer of the garrison, who would conduct
+me to all points of interest and explain in detail the various phases
+of the conflict. Thus it fell out, and I have to thank Commandant
+Leroux for the courtesy and consideration which made this excursion
+successful.</p>
+
+<p>In peace time one goes from Paris to Nancy in five hours, and the
+distance is about that from New York to Boston, by Springfield. In war
+all is different, and the time almost doubled. Yet there are
+compensations. Think of the New York-Boston trip as bringing you
+beyond New Haven to the exact rear of battle, of battle but fifteen
+miles away, with the guns booming in the distance and the aeroplanes
+and balloons in full view. Think also of this same trip, which from
+Hartford to Worchester follows the line of a battle not yet two years
+old, a battle that has left its traces in ruined villages, in
+shattered houses. On <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>either side of the railroad track the graves
+descend to meet the embankments; you can mark the advance and the
+retreat by the crosses which fill the fields. The gardens that touch
+the railroad and extend to the rear of houses in the little towns are
+filled with graves. Each enclosure has been fought for at the point of
+the bayonet, and every garden wall recalls the Ch&acirc;teau of Hougoumont,
+at Waterloo.</p>
+
+<p>All this was two years ago, but there is to-day, also. East of
+Bar-le-Duc the main line is cut by German shell fire now. From Fort
+Camp des Romains above St. Mihiel German guns sweep the railroad near
+Commercy, and one has to turn south by a long detour, as if one went
+to Boston by Fitchburg, travel south through the country of Jeanne
+d'Arc and return by Toul, whose forts look out upon the invaded land.
+Thus one comes to Nancy by night, and only by night, for twenty miles
+beyond there are Germans and a German cannon, which not so long ago
+sent a shell into the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>town and removed a whole city block beside the
+railroad station. It is the sight of this ruin as you enter the town
+which reminds you that you are at the front, but there are other
+reminders.</p>
+
+<p>As we ate our dinner in the caf&eacute;, facing the beautiful Place
+Stanislas, we were disturbed by a strange and curious drumming sound.
+Going out into the square, we saw an aeroplane, or rather its lights,
+red and green, like those of a ship. It was the first of several, the
+night patrol, rising slowly and steadily, and then sweeping off in a
+wide curve toward the enemy's line. They were the sentries of the air
+which were to guard us while we slept, for men do sentry-go in the air
+as well as on the earth about the capital of Lorraine. Then the
+searchlights on the hills began to play, sweeping the horizon toward
+that same mysterious region where beyond the darkness there is war.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning I woke with the sense of Fourth of July. Bang! Bang!
+Bang! Such <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>a barking of cannon crackers I had never heard. Still
+drowsy, I pushed open the French windows and looked down on the
+square. There I beheld a hundred or more men, women, and children,
+their eyes fixed on something in the air above and behind the hotel.
+Still the incessant barking of guns, with the occasional boom of
+something more impressive. With difficulty I grasped the fact. I was
+in the midst of a Taube raid. Somewhere over my head, invisible to me
+because of the wall of my hotel, a German aeroplane was flying, and
+all the anti-aircraft guns were shooting at it. Was it carrying bombs?
+Should I presently see or feel the destruction following the descent
+of these?</p>
+
+<p>But the Taube turned away, the guns fired less and less frequently,
+the people in the streets drifted away, the children to school, the
+men to work, the women to wait. It was just a detail in their lives,
+as familiar as the incoming steamer to the commuters on the North
+River ferryboats. Some portion of war <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>has been the day's history of
+Nancy for nearly two years now. The children do not carry gas masks to
+school with them as they do at Pont-&agrave;-Mousson, a dozen miles to the
+north, but women and children have been killed by German shells, by
+bombs, brought by Zeppelins and by aeroplanes. There is always
+excitement of sorts in the district of Nancy.</p>
+
+<p>After a breakfast, broken by the return of the aeroplanes we had seen
+departing the night before for the patrol, we entered our cars and set
+out for the front, for the near-front, for the lines a few miles
+behind the present trenches, where Nancy was saved but two years ago.
+Our route lay north along the valley of the Meurthe, a smiling broad
+valley, marching north and south and meeting in a few miles that of
+the Moselle coming east. It was easy to believe that one was riding
+through the valley of the Susquehanna, with spring and peace in the
+air. Toward the east a wall of hills shut out the view. This was the
+shoulder of the Grand Couronn&eacute;, the wall <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>against which German
+violence burst and broke in September, 1914.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we came to a long stretch of road walled in on the river
+side by brown canvas, exactly the sort of thing that is used at
+football games to shut out the non-paying public. But it had another
+purpose here. We were within the vision of the Germans, across the
+river, on the heights behind the forest, which outlined itself at the
+skyline; there were the Kaiser's troops and that forest was the
+Bois-le-Pr&ecirc;tre, the familiar incident in so many communiqu&eacute;s since the
+war began. Thanks to the canvas, it was possible for the French to
+move troops along this road without inviting German shells. Yet it was
+impossible to derive any large feeling of security from a canvas wall,
+which alone interposed between you and German heavy artillery.</p>
+
+<p>We passed through several villages and each was crowded with troops;
+cavalry, infantry, all the branches represented; it was still early
+and the soldiers were just beginning <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>their day's work; war is so
+completely a business here. Transport wagons marched along the roads,
+companies of soldiers filed by. Interspersed with the soldiers were
+civilians, the women and children, for none of the villages are
+evacuated. Not even the occasional boom of a gun far off could give to
+this thing the character of real war. It recalled the days of my
+soldiering in the militia camp at Framingham in Massachusetts. It was
+simply impossible to believe that it was real. Even the faces of the
+soldiers were smiling. There was no such sense of terribleness, of
+strain and weariness as I later found about Verdun. The Lorraine front
+is now inactive, tranquil; it has been quiet so long that men have
+forgotten all the carnage and horror of the earlier time.</p>
+
+<p>We turned out of the valley and climbed abruptly up the hillside. In a
+moment we came into the centre of a tiny village and looked into a row
+of houses, whose roofs had been swept off by shell fire. Here and
+there a whole house was gone; next door the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>house was undisturbed and
+the women and children looked out of the doors. The village was St.
+Genevi&egrave;ve, and we were at the extreme front of the French in August,
+and against this hill burst the flood of German invasion. Leaving the
+car we walked out of the village, and at the end of the street a sign
+warned the wayfarer not to enter the fields, for which we were bound:
+"War&mdash;do not trespass." This was the burden of the warning.</p>
+
+<p>Once beyond this sign we came out suddenly upon an open plateau, upon
+trenches. Northward the slope descended to a valley at our feet. It
+was cut and seamed by trenches, and beyond the trenches stood the
+posts that carried the barbed-wire entanglements. Here and there,
+amidst the trenches, there were graves. I went down to the barbed-wire
+entanglements and examined them curiously. They at least were real.
+Once thousands of men had come up out of the little woods a quarter of
+a mile below; they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>had come on in that famous massed attack, they
+had come on in the face of machine gun and "seventy-fives." They had
+just reached the wires, which marked high water. In the woods below,
+the Bois de Facq, in the fields by the river 4,000 Germans had been
+buried.</p>
+
+<div class="img">
+<a href="images/map.jpg">
+<img border="0" src="images/map.jpg" width="48%" alt="GERMAN LORRAINE (map)" /></a><br />
+</div>
+
+<p>Looking out from the trenches the whole country unfolded. Northward
+the little village of Atton slept under the steep slope of
+C&ocirc;te-de-Mousson, a round pinnacle crowned with an ancient ch&acirc;teau.
+From the hill the German artillery had swept the ground where I stood.
+Below the hill to the west was Pont-&agrave;-Mousson, the city of 150
+bombardments, which the Germans took when they came south and lost
+later. Above it was the Bois-le-Pr&ecirc;tre, in which guns were now booming
+occasionally. Far to the north was another hill, just visible, and its
+slope toward us was cut and seamed with yellow slashes: Those were the
+French trenches, then of the second or third line; beyond there was
+still another hill, it was slightly blurred in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>haze, but it was
+not over five miles away, and it was occupied by the Germans. From the
+slope above me on a clear day it is possible to see Metz, so near are
+French and German lines to the old frontier.</p>
+
+<p>Straight across the river to the west of us was another wood, with a
+glorious name, the Forest of the Advance Guard. It swept to the south
+of us. In that wood the Germans had also planted their guns on the day
+of battle. They had swept the trenches where I stood from three sides.
+Plainly it had been a warm corner. But the French had held on. Their
+commander had received a verbal order to retreat. He insisted that it
+should be put in writing, and this took time. The order came. It had
+to be obeyed, but he obeyed slowly. Reluctantly the men left the
+trenches they had held so long. They slipped southward along the road
+by which we had come. But suddenly their rear guards discovered the
+Germans were also retreating. So the French came back <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>and the line of
+St. Genevi&egrave;ve was held, the northern door to Nancy was not forced.</p>
+
+<p>Looking down again it was not difficult to reconstitute that German
+assault, made at night. The thing was so simple the civilian could
+grasp it. A road ran through the valley and along it the Germans had
+formed; the slope they had to advance up was gentle, far more gradual
+than that of San Juan. They had been picked troops selected for a
+forlorn hope, and they had come back four times. The next morning the
+whole forest had been filled with dead and dying. Not less than a
+division&mdash;20,000 men&mdash;had made the terrible venture. Now there was a
+strange sense of emptiness in the country; war had come and gone, left
+its graves, its trenches, its barbed-wire entanglements; but these
+were all disappearing already. On this beautiful spring morning it was
+impossible to feel the reality of what happened here, what was
+happening now, in some measure, five miles or more to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>north.
+Nature is certainly the greatest of all pacifists; she will not permit
+the signs of war to endure nor the mind to believe that war itself has
+existed and exists.</p>
+
+<p>From St. Genevi&egrave;ve we went to the Grand Mont d'Amance, the most famous
+point in all the Lorraine front, the southeast corner of the Grand
+Couronn&eacute;, as St. Genevi&egrave;ve is the northern. Here, from a hill some
+1,300 feet high, one looks eastward into the Promised Land of
+France&mdash;into German Lorraine. In the early days of August the great
+French invasion, resting one flank upon this hill, the other upon the
+distant Vosges, had stepped over the frontier. One could trace its
+route to the distant hills among which it had found disaster. In these
+hills the Germans had hidden their heavy guns, and the French, coming
+under their fire without warning, unsupported by heavy artillery,
+which was lacking to them, had broken. Then the German invasion had
+rolled back. You could follow the route. In the foreground <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>the little
+Seille River could be discerned; it marked the old frontier. Across
+this had come the defeated troops. They had swarmed down the low, bare
+hills; they had crossed and vanished in the woods just at my feet;
+these woods were the Forest of Champenoux. Into this forest the
+Germans had followed by the thousand, they were astride the main road
+to Nancy, which rolled white and straight at my feet. But in the woods
+the French rallied. For days there was fought in this stretch of trees
+one of the most terrible of battles.</p>
+
+<p>As I stood on the Grand Mont I faced almost due east. In front of me
+and to the south extended the forest. Exactly at my feet the forest
+reached up the hill and there was a little cluster of buildings about
+a fountain. All was in ruins, and here, exactly here, was the high
+water mark of the German advance. They had occupied the ruins for a
+few moments and then had been driven out. Elsewhere they had never
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>emerged from the woods; they had approached the western shore, but the
+French had met them with machine guns and "seventy-fives." The brown
+woods at my feet were nothing but a vast cemetery; thousands of French
+and German soldiers slept there.</p>
+
+<p>In their turn the Germans had gone back. Now, in the same woods, a
+French battery was shelling the Germans on the other side of the
+Seille. Under the glass I studied the little villages unfolding as on
+a map; they were all destroyed, but it was impossible to recognize
+this. Some were French, some German; you could follow the line, but
+there were no trenches; behind them French shells were bursting
+occasionally and black smoke rose just above the ground. Thousands of
+men faced each other less than four miles from where I stood, but all
+that there was to be detected were the shell bursts; otherwise one saw
+a pleasant country, rolling hills, mostly without woods, bare in the
+spring, which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>had not yet come to turn them green. In the foreground
+ran that arbitrary line Bismarck had drawn between Frenchmen forty-six
+years before&mdash;the frontier&mdash;but of natural separation there was none.
+He had cut off a part of France, that was all, and one looked upon
+what had been and was still a bleeding wound.</p>
+
+<p>I asked the French commandant about the various descriptions made by
+those who have written about the war. They have described the German
+attack as mounting the slope of the Grand Mont, where we stood. He
+took me to the edge and pointed down. It was a cliff almost as steep
+as the Palisades. "C'est une blague," he smiled. "Just a story." The
+Germans had not charged here, but in the forest below, where the Nancy
+road passed through and enters the valley of the Amezeule. They had
+not tried to carry but to turn the Grand Mont. More than 200,000 men
+had fought for days in the valley below. I asked him about the legend
+of the Kaiser, sitting on <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>a hill, waiting in white uniform with his
+famous escort, waiting until the road was clear for his triumphal
+entrance into the capital of Lorraine. He laughed. I might choose my
+hill; if the Emperor had done this thing the hill was "over there,"
+but had he? They are hard on legends at the front, and the tales that
+delight Paris die easily on the frontiers of war.</p>
+
+<p>But since I had asked so much about the fighting my commandant
+promised to take me in the afternoon to the point where the struggle
+had been fiercest, still farther to the south, where all the hills
+break down and there is a natural gateway from Germany into France,
+the beginning of the famous Charmes Gap, through which the German road
+to Paris from the east ran, and still runs. Leaving Nancy behind us,
+and ascending the Meurthe valley on the eastern bank, turning out of
+it before Saint Nicholas du Port, we came presently to the most
+completely war-swept fields that I have ever seen. On a perfectly
+level plain the little town of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>Haraucourt stands in sombre ruins. Its
+houses are nothing but ashes and rubble. Go out of the village toward
+the east and you enter fields pockmarked by shell fire. For several
+miles you can walk from shell hole to shell hole. The whole country is
+a patchwork of these shell holes. At every few rods a new line of old
+trenches approaches the road and wanders away again. Barbed-wire
+entanglements run up and down the gently sloping hillsides.</p>
+
+<p>Presently we came out upon a perfectly level field. It was simply torn
+by shell fire. Old half-filled trenches wandered aimlessly about, and
+beyond, under a gentle slope, the little village of Courbessaux stood
+in ruins. The commandant called my attention to a bit of woods in
+front.</p>
+
+<p>"The Germans had their machine guns there," said he. "We didn't know
+it, and a French brigade charged across this field. It started at
+8:15, and at 8:30 it had lost more than 3,000 out of 6,000. Then the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>Germans came out of the woods in their turn, and our artillery, back
+at Haraucourt, caught them and they lost 3,500 men in a quarter of an
+hour." Along the roadside were innumerable graves. We looked at one.
+It was marked: "Here 196 French." Twenty feet distant was another; it
+was marked: "Here 196 Germans." In the field where we stood I was told
+some 10,000 men are buried. They were buried hurriedly, and even now
+when it rains arms and legs are exposed.</p>
+
+<p>Two years had passed, almost two years, since this field had been
+fought for. The Germans had taken it. They had approached Haraucourt,
+but had not passed it. This was the centre and the most vital point in
+the Lorraine battle. What Foch's troops had done about La F&ecirc;re
+Champenoise, those of Castelnau had done here. The German wave had
+been broken, but at what cost? And now, after so many months, the
+desolation of war remained. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>But yet it was not to endure. Beside the
+very graves an old peasant was ploughing, guiding his plough and his
+horses carefully among the tombs. Four miles away more trenches faced
+each other and the battle went on audibly, but behind this line, in
+this very field where so many had died, life was beginning.</p>
+
+<p>Later we drove south, passing within the lines the Germans had held in
+their great advance, we travelled through Lun&eacute;ville, which they had
+taken and left unharmed, save as shell fire had wrecked an eastern
+suburb. We visited Gerb&eacute;viller, where in an excess of rage the Germans
+had burned every structure in the town. I have never seen such a
+headquarters of desolation. Everything that had a shape, that had a
+semblance of beauty or of use, lies in complete ruin, detached houses,
+a ch&acirc;teau, the blocks in the village, all in ashes. Save for Sermaize,
+Gerb&eacute;viller is the most completely wrecked town in France.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>You enter the village over a little bridge across the tiny Mortagne.
+Here some French soldiers made a stand and held off the German advance
+for some hours. There was no other battle at Gerb&eacute;viller, but for this
+defence the town died. Never was death so complete. Incendiary
+material was placed in every house, and all that thoroughness could do
+to make the destruction complete was done. Gerb&eacute;viller is dead, a few
+women and children live amidst its ashes, there is a wooden barrack by
+the bridge with a post-office and the inevitable postcards, but only
+on postcards, picture postcards, does the town live. It will be a
+place of pilgrimage when peace comes.</p>
+
+<p>From Gerb&eacute;viller we went by Bayon to the Plateau of Saffais, the ridge
+between the Meurthe and the Moselle, where the defeated army of
+Castelnau made its last and successful stand. The French line came
+south from St. Genevi&egrave;ve, where we had been in the morning, through
+the Grand Mont, across <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>the plain by Haraucourt and Corbessaux, then
+crossed the Meurthe by Dombasle and stood on the heights from
+Rossi&egrave;res south. Having taken Lun&egrave;ville, the Germans attempted to
+cross the Meurthe coming out of the Forest of Vitrimont.</p>
+
+<p>Standing on the Plateau of Saffais and facing east, the whole country
+unfolded again, as it did at the Grand Mont. The face of the plateau
+is seamed with trenches. They follow the slopes, and the village of
+Saffais stands out like a promontory. On this ridge the French had
+massed three hundred cannon. Their army had come back in ruins, and to
+steady it they had been compelled to draw troops from Alsace.
+M&uuml;lhausen was sacrificed to save Nancy. Behind these crests on which
+we stood a beaten army, almost routed, had in three days found itself
+and returned to the charge.</p>
+
+<p>In the shadow of the dusk I looked across the Meurthe into the brown
+mass of the Forest of Vitrimont. Through this had come <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>the victorious
+Germans. They had debouched from the wood; they had approached the
+river, hidden under the slope, but, swept by the hell of this
+artillery storm, they had broken. But few had lived to pass the river,
+none had mounted the slopes. There were almost no graves along these
+trenches. Afterward the Germans had in turn yielded to pressure from
+the south and gone back. Before the Battle of the Marne began the
+German wave of invasion had been stopped here in the last days of
+August. A second terrific drive, coincident with the Marne, had
+likewise failed. Then the Germans had gone back to the frontier. The
+old boundary line of Bismarck is now in many instances an actual line
+of fire, and nowhere on this front are the Germans more than three or
+four miles within French territory.</p>
+
+<p>If you should look at the map of the wholly imaginary Battle of Nancy,
+drawn by Colonel Boucher to illustrate his book, published before
+1910, a book describing the problem <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>of the defence of the eastern
+frontier, you will find the lines on which the French stood at Saffais
+indicated exactly. Colonel Boucher had not dreamed this battle, but
+for a generation the French General Staff had planned it. Here they
+had expected to meet the German thrust. When the Germans decided to go
+by Belgium they had in turn taken the offensive, but, having failed,
+they had fought their long-planned battle.</p>
+
+<p>Out of all the region of war, of war to-day and war yesterday, one
+goes back to Nancy, to its busy streets, its crowds of people
+returning from their day's work. War is less than fifteen miles away,
+but Nancy is as calm as London is nervous. Its bakers still make
+macaroons; even Taube raids do not excuse the children from punctual
+attendance at school. Nancy is calm with the calmness of all France,
+but with just a touch of something more than calmness, which forty-six
+years of living by an open frontier brings. Twenty-one months ago it
+was the gauge of battle, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>and half a million men fought for it; a new
+German drive may approach it at any time. Out toward the old frontier
+there is still a German gun, hidden in the Forest of B&eacute;zange, which
+has turned one block to ashes and may fire again at any hour.
+Zeppelins have come and gone, leaving dead women and children behind
+them, but Nancy goes on with to-day.</p>
+
+<p>And to-morrow? In the hearts of all the people of this beautiful city
+there is a single and a simple faith. Nancy turns her face toward the
+ancient frontier, she looks hopefully out upon the shell-swept Grand
+Couronn&eacute; and beyond to the Promised Land. And the people say to you,
+if you ask them about war and about peace, as one of them said to me:
+"Peace will come, but not until we have our ancient frontier, not
+until we have Metz and Strassburg. We have waited a long time, is it
+not so?"</p>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+
+<h4>THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK.</h4>
+
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+<div class="tr">
+<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Typographical errors corrected in text:</p>
+<br />
+Page &nbsp;&nbsp;56: &nbsp;Everywhere where replaced with Everywhere were<br />
+Page 128: &nbsp;alowly replaced with slowly<br />
+</div>
+
+<br />
+<hr />
+<br />
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of They Shall Not Pass, by Frank H. Simonds
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: They Shall Not Pass
+
+Author: Frank H. Simonds
+
+Release Date: February 24, 2009 [EBook #28171]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THEY SHALL NOT PASS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jeannie Howse and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+    | Transcriber's Note:                                       |
+    |                                                           |
+    | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For     |
+    | a complete list, please see the end of this document.     |
+    |                                                           |
+    +-----------------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THEY SHALL NOT PASS
+
+
+
+
+THEY
+SHALL NOT PASS
+
+
+BY
+FRANK H. SIMONDS
+AUTHOR OF "THE GREAT WAR"
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+GARDEN CITY     NEW YORK
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+1916
+
+
+
+
+_Copyright, 1916, by_
+DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
+
+_All rights reserved, including that of
+translation into foreign languages,
+including the Scandinavian_
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1916, THE TRIBUNE ASS'N.
+
+
+
+
+Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to the New York _Tribune_ for
+permission to reprint these articles in book form.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+PAGE
+
+  I. MY TRIP TO VERDUN--GENERAL PETAIN FACE TO FACE             3
+
+     The men who hold the line--what their faces told of the
+     past and the future of France.
+
+  II. MY TRIP TO VERDUN--A DYING, SHELL-RIDDEN CITY            43
+
+     The Vauban Citadel, in the shelter of which falling
+     shells cannot find you--houses and blocks that are
+     vanishing hourly--"but William will not come"--war
+     that is invisible--a luncheon underground with a toast
+     to America--the last courtesy from a general and a
+     host--nothing that was not beautiful.
+
+III. BATTLE OF VERDUN ANOTHER GETTYSBURG                       72
+
+     Failure of Crown Prince likened by French to "high tide"
+     of confederacy.
+
+ IV. VERDUN, THE DOOR THAT LEADS NOWHERE                       95
+
+     The battle and the topography of the battlefield--an
+     analysis of the attack and defence.
+
+  V. IN SIGHT OF THE PROMISED LAND--ON THE LORRAINE
+     BATTLEFIELD                                              116
+
+
+
+
+THEY SHALL NOT PASS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+MY TRIP TO VERDUN--GENERAL PETAIN FACE TO FACE
+
+    THE MEN WHO HOLD THE LINE--WHAT THEIR FACES TOLD OF THE PAST
+    AND THE FUTURE OF FRANCE
+
+
+My road to Verdun ran through the Elysee Palace, and it was to the
+courtesy and interest of the President of the French Republic that I
+owed my opportunity to see the battle for the Meuse city at close
+range. Already through the kindness of the French General Staff I had
+seen the Lorraine and Marne battlegrounds and had been guided over
+these fields by officers who had shared in the opening battles that
+saved France. But Verdun was more difficult; there is little time for
+caring for the wandering correspondent when a decisive contest is
+going forward, and quite naturally the General Staff turned a deaf ear
+to my request.
+
+Through the kindness of one of the many Frenchmen who gave time and
+effort to make my pilgrimage a success I was at last able to see M.
+Poincare. Like our own American President, the French Chief Magistrate
+is never interviewed, and I mention this audience simply because it
+was one more and in a sense the final proof for me of the
+friendliness, the courtesy, the interest that the American will find
+to-day in France. I had gone to Paris, my ears filled with the
+warnings of those who told me that it was hard to be an American in
+Europe, in France, in the present hour. I had gone expecting, or at
+least fearing, that I should find it so.
+
+Instead, from peasant to President I found only kindness, only
+gratitude, only a profound appreciation for all that Americans had
+individually done for France in the hour of her great trial. These
+things and one thing more I found: a very intense desire that
+Americans should be able to see for themselves; the Frenchman will not
+talk to you of what France has done, is doing; he shrinks from
+anything that might suggest the imitation of the German method of
+propaganda. In so far as it is humanly possible he would have you see
+the thing for yourself and testify out of your own mouth.
+
+Thus it came about that all my difficulties vanished when I had been
+permitted to express to the President my desire to see Verdun and to
+go back to America--I was sailing within the week--able to report what
+I had seen with my own eyes of the decisive battle still going forward
+around the Lorraine city. Without further delay, discussion, it was
+promised that I should go to Verdun by motor, that I should go cared
+for by the French military authorities and that I should be permitted
+to see all that one could see at the moment of the contest.
+
+We left Paris in the early afternoon; my companions were M. Henri
+Ponsot, chief of the Press Service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
+and M. Hugues le Roux, a distinguished Frenchman of letters well known
+to many Americans. To start for the battlefield from a busy, peaceful
+city, to run for miles through suburbs as quiet and lacking in martial
+aspect as the regions beyond the Harlem, at home, was a thing that
+seemed almost unreal; but only for a brief moment, for war has come
+very near to Paris, and one may not travel far in Eastern France
+without seeing its signs.
+
+In less than an hour we were passing the rear of the line held by the
+British at the Battle of the Marne, and barely sixty minutes after we
+had passed out through the Vincennes gate we met at Courtacon the
+first of the ruined villages that for two hundred miles line the
+roadways that lead from the capital to Lorraine and Champagne.
+Suddenly in the midst of a peaceful countryside, after passing a
+score of undisturbed villages, villages so like one to another, you
+come to one upon which the storm has burst, and instead of snug
+houses, smiling faces, the air of contentment and happiness that was
+France, there is only a heap of ruins, houses with their roofs gone,
+their walls torn by shell fire, villages abandoned partially or
+wholly, contemporary Pompeiis, overtaken by the Vesuvius of Krupp.
+
+Coincidentally there appear along the roadside, in the fields, among
+the plough furrows, on every side, the crosses that mark the graves of
+those who died for France--or for Germany. Along the slope you may
+mark the passage of a charge by these crosses; those who fell were
+buried as they lay, French and Germans with equal care. Indeed, there
+is a certain pride visible in all that the French do for their dead
+foes. Alongside a hamlet wantonly burned, burned by careful labor and
+with German thoroughness; in villages where you will be told of
+nameless atrocities and shameful killings, you will see the German
+graves, marked by neat crosses, surrounded by sod embankments, marked
+with plaques of black and white; the French are marked by plaques of
+red, white and blue, and the latter invariably decorated with a flag
+and flowers.
+
+Once you have seen these graves by the roadside going east you will
+hardly go a mile in two hundred which has not its graves. From the
+environs of Meaux, a scant twenty miles from Paris, to the frontier at
+the Seille, beyond Nancy, there are graves and more graves, now
+scattered, now crowded together where men fought hand to hand. Passing
+them in a swift-moving auto, they seem to march by you; there is the
+illusion of an army advancing on the hillside, until at last, beyond
+Nancy, where the fighting was so terrible, about little villages such
+as Corbessaux, you come to the great common graves, where a hundred or
+two hundred men have been gathered, where the trenches now levelled
+are but long graves, and you read, "Here rest 179 French soldiers," or
+across the road, "Here 196 Germans."
+
+Take a map of France and from a point just south of Paris draw a
+straight line to the Vosges; twenty or thirty miles to the north draw
+another. Between the two is the black district of the Marne and Nancy
+battles. It is the district of ruined villages, destroyed farms; it is
+the region where every hillside--so it will seem to the traveller--is
+marked by these pathetic crosses. It is a region in which the sense of
+death and destruction is abroad. Go forty miles north again and draw
+two more lines, and this is the region not of the death and
+destruction of yesterday, but of to-day; this is the front, where the
+graves are still in the making, the region of the Oise to the Meuse,
+from Noyon to Verdun.
+
+On this day our route led eastward through the villages which in
+September, 1914, woke from at least a century of oblivion, from the
+forgetting that followed Napoleon's last campaign in France to a
+splendid but terrible ten days: Courtacon, Sezanne, La-Fere
+Champenoise, Vitry-le-Francois, the region where Franchet d'Esperey
+and Foch fought, where the "Miracle of the Marne" was performed. Mile
+after mile the countryside files by, the never-changing impression of
+a huge cemetery, the hugest in the world, the stricken villages, now
+and then striving to begin again, a red roof here and there telling of
+the first counter offensive of peace, of construction made against the
+whirlwind that had come and gone.
+
+Always, too, nothing but old men and women, these and children,
+working in the broad fields, still partially cultivated, but no longer
+the fields of that perfectly cared for France of the other peace days.
+Women and children at the plough, old men bent double by age still
+spending such strength as is left in the tasks that war has set for
+them. This is the France behind the front, and, aside from the ruined
+villages and graves, the France that stretches from the Pyrenees to
+the Marne, a France from which youth and manhood are gone, in which
+age and childhood remain with the women. Yet in this land we were
+passing how much of the youth and manhood of France and Germany was
+buried in the graves the crosses demonstrated at every kilometre.
+
+But a hundred miles east of Paris there begins a new world. The
+graves, the shell-cursed villages, remain, but this is no longer the
+France of the Marne fighting and of the war of two years ago. At
+Vitry-le-Francois you pass almost without warning into the region
+which is the back of the front to-day, the base of all the line of
+fire from Rheims to the Meuse, and suddenly along the road appear the
+canvas guideposts which bear the terse warning, "Verdun." You pass
+suddenly from ancient to contemporary history, from the killing of
+other years to the killing that is of to-day--the killing and the
+wounding--and along the hills where there are still graves there begin
+to appear Red Cross tents and signs, and ambulances pass you bearing
+the latest harvest.
+
+And now every village is a garrison town. For a hundred miles there
+have been only women and old men, but now there are only soldiers;
+they fill the streets; they crowd the doorways of the houses. The
+fields are filled with tents, with horses, with all the impedimenta of
+an army. The whole countryside is a place of arms. Every branch of
+French service is about you--Tunisians, Turcos, cavalry, the black,
+the brown, and the white--the men who yesterday or last week were in
+the first line, who rest and will return to-morrow or next day to
+fight again.
+
+Unmistakably, too, you feel that this is the business of war; you are
+in a factory, a machine shop; if the product is death and destruction,
+it is no less a matter of machinery, not of romance, of glamour. The
+back of the front is a place of work and of rest for more work, but
+of parade, of the brilliant, of the fascinating there is just nothing.
+Men with bright but plainly weary faces, not young men, but men of
+thirty and above, hard bitten by their experience, patently fit, fed,
+but somehow related to the ruins and the destruction around them, they
+are all about you, and wherever now you see a grave you will discover
+a knot of men standing before it talking soberly. Wherever you see the
+vestiges of an old trench, a hill that was fought for at this time
+twenty months ago, you will see new practice trenches and probably the
+recruits, the "Class of 1917," the boys that are waiting for the call,
+listening to an officer explaining to them what has been done here,
+the mistake or the good judgment revealed by the event. For France is
+training the youth that remains to her on the still recent
+battlefields and in the presence of those who died to keep the ground.
+
+Just as the darkness came we passed St. Dizier and entered at last
+upon the road to Verdun, the one road that is the life line of the
+city. For to understand the real problem of the defence of Verdun you
+must realize that there is lacking to the city any railroad. In
+September, 1914, the Germans took St. Mihiel and cut the railway
+coming north along the Meuse. On their retreat from the Marne the
+soldiers of the Crown Prince halted at Montfaucon and Varennes, and
+their cannon have commanded the Paris-Verdun-Metz Railroad ever since.
+Save for a crazy narrow-gauge line wandering along the hill slopes,
+climbing by impossible grades, Verdun is without rail communication.
+
+It was this that made the defence of the town next to impossible.
+Partially to remedy the defect the French had reconstructed a local
+highway running from St. Dizier by Bar-le-Duc to Verdun beyond the
+reach of German artillery. To-day an army of a quarter of a million of
+men, the enormous parks of heavy artillery and field guns--everything
+is supplied by this one road and by motor transport.
+
+Coming north from St. Dizier we entered this vast procession. Mile
+after mile the caravan stretched on, fifty miles with hardly a break
+of a hundred feet between trucks. Paris 'buses, turned into vehicles
+to bear fresh meat; new motor trucks built to carry thirty-five men
+and travelling in companies, regiments, brigades; wagons from the hood
+of which soldiers, bound to replace the killed and wounded of
+yesterday, looked down upon you, calmly but unsmilingly. From St.
+Dizier to Verdun the impression was of that of the machinery by which
+logs are carried to the saw in a mill. You felt unconsciously, yet
+unmistakably, that you were looking, not upon automobiles, not upon
+separate trucks, but upon some vast and intricate system of belts and
+benches that were steadily, swiftly, surely carrying all this vast
+material, carrying men and munitions and supplies, everything human
+and inanimate, to that vast grinding mill which was beyond the hills,
+the crushing machine which worked with equal remorselessness upon men
+and upon things.
+
+Now and again, too, over the hills came the Red Cross ambulances; they
+passed you returning from the front and bringing within their
+carefully closed walls the finished product, the fruits of the day's
+grinding, or a fraction thereof. And about the whole thing there was a
+sense of the mechanical rather than the human, something that
+suggested an automatic, a machine-driven, movement; it was as if an
+unseen system of belts and engines and levers guided, moved, propelled
+this long procession upward and ever toward the mysterious front where
+the knives or the axes or the grinding stones did their work.
+
+Night came down upon us along the road and brought a new impression.
+Mile on mile over the hills and round the curves, disappearing in the
+woods, reappearing on the distant summits of the hills, each showing a
+rear light that wagged crazily on the horizon, this huge caravan
+flowed onward, while in the villages and on the hillsides campfires
+flashed up and the faces or the figures of the soldiers could be seen
+now clearly and now dimly. But all else was subordinated to the line
+of moving transports. Somewhere far off at one end of the procession
+there was battle; somewhere down below at the other end there was
+peace. There all the resources, the life blood, the treasure in men
+and in riches of France were concentrating and collecting, were being
+fed into this motor fleet, which like baskets on ropes was carrying it
+forward to the end of the line and then bringing back what remained,
+or for the most part coming back empty, for more--for more lives and
+more treasure.
+
+It was full night when our car came down the curved grades into
+Bar-le-Duc, halted at the corner, where soldiers performed the work
+of traffic policemen and steadily guided the caravan toward the road
+marked by a canvas sign lighted within by a single candle and bearing
+the one word, "Verdun." All night, too, the rumble of the passing
+transport filled the air and the little hotel shook with the jar of
+the heavy trucks, for neither by day nor by night is there a halt in
+the motor transport, and the sound of this grinding is never low.
+
+It was little more than daylight when we took the road again, with a
+thirty-mile drive to Verdun before us. Almost immediately we turned
+into the Verdun route we met again the caravan of automobiles, of
+camions, as the French say. It still flowed on without break. Now,
+too, we entered the main road, the one road to Verdun, the road that
+had been built by the French army against just such an attack as was
+now in progress. The road was as wide as Fifth Avenue, as smooth as
+asphalt--a road that, when peace comes, if it ever does, will delight
+the motorist. Despite the traffic it had to bear, it was in perfect
+repair, and soldiers in uniform sat by the side breaking stone and
+preparing metal to keep it so.
+
+The character of the country had now changed. We were entering the
+region of the hills, between the Aisne and the Meuse, a country
+reminiscent of New England. Those hills are the barrier which beyond
+the Meuse, under the names of the Cote de Meuse, have been the scene
+of so much desperate fighting. The roads that sidled off to the east
+bore battle names, St. Mihiel, Troyon, and the road that we followed
+was still marked at every turn with the magic word "Verdun." Our
+immediate objective was Souilly, the obscure hill town twenty miles,
+perhaps, south of the front, from which Sarrail had defended Verdun in
+the Marne days and from which Petain was now defending Verdun against
+a still more terrible attack.
+
+And in France to-day one speaks only of Verdun and Petain. Soldiers
+have their day; Joffre, Castelnau, Foch, all retain much of the
+affection and admiration they have deserved, but at the moment it is
+the man who has held Verdun that France thinks of, and there was the
+promise for us that at Souilly we should see the man whose fame had
+filled the world in the recent great and terrible weeks. Upward and
+downward over the hills, through more ruined villages, more hospitals,
+more camps, our march took us until after a short hour we came to
+Souilly, general headquarters of the Army of Verdun, of Petain, the
+centre of the world for the moment.
+
+Few towns have done less to prepare for greatness than Souilly. It
+boasts a single street three inches deep in the clay mud of the
+spring--a single street through which the Verdun route marches almost
+contemptuously, the same nest of stone and plaster houses, one story
+high, houses from which the owners had departed to make room for
+generals and staff officers. This and one thing more, the Mairie, the
+town hall, as usual the one pretentious edifice of the French hamlet,
+and before the stairway of this we stopped and got out.
+
+We were at headquarters. From this little building, devoted for
+perhaps a century to the business of governing the commune of Souilly,
+with its scant thousand of people, Petain was defending Verdun and the
+fate of an army of 250,000 men at the least. In the upstairs room,
+where the town councillors had once debated parochial questions,
+Joffre and Castelnau and Petain in the terrible days of the opening
+conflict had consulted, argued, decided--decided the fate of France,
+so the Germans had said, for they had made the fall of Verdun the
+assurance of French collapse.
+
+Unconsciously, too, you felt the change in the character of the
+population of this village. There were still the soldiers, the
+eternal gray-blue uniforms, but there were also men of a different
+type, men of authority. In the street your guides pointed out to you
+General Herr, the man who had designed and planned and accomplished
+the miracle of the motor transport that had saved Verdun--with the aid
+of the brave men fighting somewhere not far beyond the nearest hills.
+He had commanded at Verdun when the attack came, and without
+hesitation he had turned over his command to Petain, his junior in
+service and rank before the war, given up the glory and become the
+superintendent of transport. Men spoke to you of the fine loyalty of
+that action with unconcealed admiration.
+
+And then out of the remoteness of Souilly there came a voice familiar
+to an American. Bunau-Varilla, the man of Panama, wearing the uniform
+of a commandant and the Croix de Guerre newly bestowed for some
+wonderful engineering achievement, stepped forward to ask for his
+friends and yours of the old "_Sun_ paper." I had seen him last in the
+_Sun_ office in the days when the war had just broken out and he was
+about to sail for home; in the days when the Marne was still unfought
+and he had breathed hope then as he spoke with confidence now.
+
+Presently there arrived the two officers whose duty it was to take me
+to Verdun, Captain Henri Bourdeaux, a man of letters known to all
+Frenchmen; Captain Madelin, an historian, already documented in the
+history of the war making under his own eyes. To these gentlemen and
+their colleagues who perform this task that can hardly be agreeable,
+who risk their lives and give over their time with unfailing courtesy
+and consideration that the American newspaper correspondent may see,
+may report, it is impossible to return sufficient thanks, and every
+American newspaper reader who finds on his breakfast table the
+journal that tells him of the progress of the war owes something to
+some officer.
+
+"Were we to see Verdun?" This was the first problem. I had been warned
+two days before that the bombardment was raging and that it was quite
+possible that it would be unsafe to go farther. But the news was
+reassuring; Verdun was tranquil. "And Petain?" One could not yet say.
+
+Even as we spoke there was a stirring in the crowd, general saluting,
+and I caught a glimpse of the commander-in-chief as he went quickly up
+the staircase. For the rest we must wait. But not for very long; in a
+few minutes there came the welcome word that General Petain would see
+us, would see the stray American correspondent.
+
+Since I saw Petain in the little Mairie at Souilly I have seen many
+photographs of him, but none in any real measure give the true picture
+of the defender of Verdun. He saw us in his office, the bare upstairs
+room, two years ago the office of the Mayor of Souilly. Think of the
+Selectmen's office in any New England village and the picture will be
+accurate: a bare room, a desk, one chair, a telephone, nothing on the
+walls but two maps, one of the military zone, one of the actual front
+and positions of the Verdun fighting. A bleak room, barely heated by
+the most primitive of stoves. From the single window one looked down
+on the cheerless street along which lumbered the caravan of autos. On
+the pegs against the wall hung the General's hat and coat,
+weather-stained, faded, the clothes of a man who worked in all
+weathers. Of staff officers, of uniforms, of color there was just
+nothing; of war there was hardly a hint.
+
+At the door the commander-in-chief met us, shook hands, and murmured
+clearly and slowly, with incisive distinctness, the formal words of
+French greeting; he spoke no English. Instantly there was the
+suggestion of Kitchener, not of Kitchener as you see him in flesh, but
+in photographs, the same coldness, decision. The smile that
+accompanied the words of welcome vanished and the face was utterly
+motionless, expressionless. You saw a tall, broad-shouldered man, with
+every appearance of physical strength, a clear blue eye, looking
+straight forward and beyond.
+
+My French companion, M. Le Roux, spoke with Petain. He had just come
+from Joffre and he told an interesting circumstance. Petain listened.
+He said now and then "yes" or "no." Nothing more. Watching him
+narrowly you saw that occasionally his eyes twitched a little, the
+single sign of fatigue that the long strain of weeks of responsibility
+had brought.
+
+It was hard to believe, looking at this quiet, calm, silent man, that
+you were in the presence of the soldier who had won the Battle of
+Champagne, the man whom the war had surprised in the last of his
+fifties, a Colonel, a teacher of war rather than a soldier, a
+professor like Foch.
+
+No one of Napoleon's marshals had commanded as many men as obeyed this
+Frenchman, who was as lacking in the distinction of military
+circumstance as our own Grant. Napoleon had won all his famous
+victories with far fewer troops than were directed from the telephone
+on the table yonder.
+
+Every impression of modern war that comes to one actually in touch
+with it is a destruction of illusion: this thing is a thing of
+mechanism rather than of brilliance; perhaps Petain has led a
+regiment, a brigade, or a division to the charge. You knew
+instinctively in seeing the man that you would go or come, as he said,
+but there was neither dash nor fire, nothing of the suggestion of
+elan; rather there was the suggestion of the commander of a great
+ocean liner, the man responsible for the lives, this time of hundreds
+of thousands, not scores, for the safety of France, not of a ship, but
+the man of machinery and the master of the wisdom of the tides and
+the weather, not the Ney, or the Murat, not the Napoleon of Arcola.
+The impression was of a strong man whose life was a life beaten upon
+by storms; the man on the bridge, to keep to the rather ridiculously
+inadequate figure, but not by any chance the man on horseback.
+
+My talk, our talk with Petain was the matter of perhaps five minutes.
+The time was consumed by the words of M. Le Roux, who spoke very
+earnestly urging that more American correspondents be permitted to
+visit Verdun, and Petain heard him patiently, but said just nothing.
+Once he had greeted us his face settled into that grim expression that
+never changed until he smiled his word of good wishes as we left. Yet
+I have since found that apart from one circumstance which I shall
+mention in a moment I have remembered those minutes most clearly of
+all of my Verdun experience. Just as the photograph does not reveal
+the face of the man, the word does not describe the sense of
+strength, of responsibility, that he gives.
+
+In a childish sort of way, exactly as one thinks of war as a matter of
+dash and color and motion, one thinks of the French general as the
+leader of a cavalry charge or of a forlorn hope of infantry. And the
+French soldier of this war has not been the man of charge or of
+dash--not that he has not charged as well as ever in his history, a
+little more bravely, perhaps, for machine guns are new and something
+worse than other wars have had. What the French soldier has done has
+been to stand, to hold, to die not in the onrush but on the spot.
+
+And Petain in some curious way has fixed in my mind the impression of
+the new Frenchman, if there be a new one, or perhaps better of the
+French soldier of to-day, whether he wear the stars of the general or
+undecorated "horizon" blue of the Poilu. The look that I saw in his
+eyes, the calm, steady, utterly emotionless looking straight forward,
+I saw everywhere at the front and at the back of the front. It
+embodied for me an enduring impression of the spirit and the poise of
+the French soldier of the latest and most terrible of French
+struggles. And I confess that, more than all I saw and heard at the
+front and in Paris, the look of this man convinced me that Verdun
+would not fall, that France herself would not either weary or weaken.
+
+In Paris, where one may hear anything, there are those that will tell
+you that Joffre's work is done and that France waits for the man who
+will complete the task; that the strain of the terrible months has
+wearied the general who won the Battle of the Marne and saved France.
+They will tell you, perhaps, that Petain is the man; they will
+certainly tell you that they hope that the man has been found in
+Petain. As to the truth of all this I do not pretend to know. I did
+not see Joffre, but all that I have read of Joffre suggests that
+Petain is of his sort, the same quiet, silent man, with a certain
+coldness of the North, a grimness of manner that is lacking in his
+chief.
+
+There was a Kitchener legend in Europe, and I do not think it survives
+save a little perhaps in corners of England. There was a legend of a
+man of ice and of iron, a man who made victory out of human material
+as a man makes a wall of mortar and stone, a man to whom his material
+was only mortar and stone, even though it were human. This legend has
+perished so far as Kitchener is concerned, gone with so much that
+England trusted and believed two years ago, but I find myself thinking
+now of Petain as we all thought of Kitchener in his great day.
+
+If I were an officer I should not like to come to the defender of
+Verdun with the confession of failure. I think I should rather meet
+the Bavarians in the first line trenches, but I should like to know
+that when I was obeying orders I was carrying out a minor detail of
+something Petain had planned; I should expect it to happen, the thing
+that he had arranged, and I should feel that those clear, steel-blue
+eyes had foreseen all that could occur, foreseen calmly and utterly,
+whether it entailed the death of one or a thousand men, of ten
+thousand men if necessary, and had willed that it should happen.
+
+I do not believe Napoleon's Old Guard would have followed Petain as
+they followed Ney. I cannot fancy him in the Imperial uniform, and
+yet, now that war is a thing of machines, of telephones, of indirect
+fire and destruction from unseen weapons at remote ranges, now that
+the whole manner and circumstance of conflict have changed, it is but
+natural that the General should change, too. Patently Petain is of the
+new, not the old, but no less patently he was the master of it.
+
+We left the little Mairie, entered our machines and slid out swiftly
+for the last miles, climbed and curved over the final hill and
+suddenly looked down on a deep, trenchlike valley marching from east
+to west and carrying the Paris-Verdun-Metz Railroad, no longer
+available for traffic. And as we coasted down the hill we heard the
+guns at last, not steadily, but only from time to time, a distant
+boom, a faint billowing up of musketry fire. Some three or four miles
+straight ahead there were the lines of fire beyond the brown hills
+that flanked the valley.
+
+At the bottom of the valley we turned east, moved on for a mile, and
+stopped abruptly. The guns were sounding more clearly, and suddenly
+there was a sense not of soldiers, but of an army. On one side of the
+road a column was coming toward us, a column of men who were leaving
+the trenches for a rest, the men who for the recent days had held the
+first line. Wearily but steadily they streamed by; the mud of the
+trenches covered their tunics; here and there a man had lost his steel
+helmet and wore a handkerchief about his head, probably to conceal a
+slight wound that but for the helmet had killed him.
+
+These men were smiling as they marched; they carried their full
+equipment and it rattled and tinkled; they carried their guns at all
+angles, they wore their uniforms in the strangest of disorders; they
+seemed almost like miners coming from the depths of the earth rather
+than soldiers returning from a decisive battle, from the hell of
+modern shell fire.
+
+But it was the line on the other side of the road that held the eye.
+Here were the troops that were going toward the fire, toward the
+trenches, that were marching to the sound of the guns, and as one saw
+them the artillery rumble took on a new distinctness.
+
+Involuntarily I searched the faces of these men as they passed. They
+were hardly ten feet from me. Platoon after platoon, company after
+company, whole regiments in columns of fours. And seeing the faces
+brought an instant shock; they all wore the same calm, steady,
+slightly weary expression, but there was in the whole line scarcely a
+young man. Here were men of the thirties, not the twenties; men still
+in the prime of strength, of health, but the fathers of families, the
+men of full manhood.
+
+Almost in a flash the fact came home. This was what all the graves
+along the road had meant. This was what the battlefields and the
+glories of the twenty months had spelled--France had sent her youth
+and it was spent; she was sending her manhood now.
+
+In the line no man smiled and no man straggled; the ranks were closed
+up and there were neither commands nor any visible sign of authority.
+These men who were marching to the sound of the guns had been there
+before. They knew precisely what it meant. Yet you could not but feel
+that as they went a little wearily, sadly, they marched willingly.
+They would not have it otherwise. Their faces were the faces of men
+who had taken the full measure of their own fate.
+
+You had a sense of the loathing, the horror, above all the sadness
+that was in their hearts that this thing, this war, this destruction
+had to be. They had come back here through all the waste of ruined
+villages and shell-torn hillsides; all the men that you saw would not
+measure the cost of a single hour of trench fighting if the real
+attack began. This these men knew, and the message of the artillery
+fire, which was only one of unknown terrors for you, was intelligible
+to the utmost to each of them.
+
+And yet with the weariness there was a certain resignation, a certain
+patience, a certain sense of comprehending sacrifice that more than
+all else is France to-day, the true France. This, and not the empty
+forts, not even the busy guns, was the wall that defended France, this
+line of men. If it broke there would come thundering down again out
+of the north all the tornado of destruction that had turned
+Northeastern France into a waste place and wrecked so much of the
+world's store of the beautiful and the inspiring.
+
+Somehow you felt that this was in the minds of all these men. They had
+willed to die that France might live. They were going to a death that
+sounded ever more clearly as they marched. This death had eaten up all
+that was young, most of what was young at the least, of France; it
+might yet consume France, and so these men marched to the sound of the
+guns, not to martial music, not with any suggestion of dash, of
+enthusiasm, but quietly, steadily, all with the same look upon their
+faces--the look of men who have seen death and are to see it again.
+Instinctively I thought of what Kipling had said to me in London:
+
+"Somewhere over there," he had said, "the thing will suddenly grip
+your throat and your heart; it will take hold of you as nothing in
+your life has ever done or ever will." And I know that I never shall
+forget those lines of quiet, patient, middle-aged men marching to the
+sound of the guns, leaving at their backs the countless graves that
+hold the youth of France, the men who had known the Marne, the Yser,
+Champagne, who had known death for nearly two years, night and day,
+almost constantly. Yet during the fifteen minutes I watched there was
+not one order, not one straggler; there was a sense of the regularity
+with which the blood flows through the human arteries in this tide,
+and it was the blood of France.
+
+So many people have asked me, I had asked myself, the question before
+I went to France: "Are they not weary of it? Will the French not give
+up from sheer exhaustion of strength?" I do not think so, now that I
+have seen the faces of these hundreds of men as they marched to the
+trenches beyond Verdun. France may bleed to death, but I do not think
+that while there are men there will be an end of the sacrifice. No
+pen or voice can express the horror that these men, that all
+Frenchmen, have of this war, of all war, the weariness. They hate it;
+you cannot mistake this; but France marches to the frontier in the
+spirit that men manned the walls against the barbarians in the other
+days; there is no other way; it must be.
+
+Over and over again there has come the invariable answer; it would
+have come from scores and hundreds of these men who passed so near me
+I could have touched their faded uniforms if I had asked--"It is for
+France, for civilization; it must be, for there is no other way; we
+shall die, but with us, with our sacrifice, perhaps this thing will
+end." You cannot put it in words quite, I do not think even any
+Frenchman has quite said it, but you can see it, you can feel it, you
+can understand it, when you see a regiment, a brigade, a division of
+these men of thirty, some perhaps of forty, going forward to the war
+they hate and will never quiet until that which they love is safe or
+they and all of their race are swallowed up in the storm that now was
+audibly beating beyond the human walls on the nearby hillsides.
+
+Presently we moved again, we slipped through the column, topped the
+last incline, shot under the crumbling gate of the Verdun fortress,
+and as we entered a shell burst just behind us and the roar drowned
+out all else in its sudden and paralyzing crash. It had fallen, so we
+learned a little later, just where we had been watching the passing
+troops; it had fallen among them and killed. But an hour or two later,
+when we repassed the point where it fell, men were still marching by.
+Other regiments of men were still marching to the sound of the guns,
+and those who had passed were already over the hills and beyond the
+river, filing into the trenches in time, so it turned out, to meet the
+new attack that came with the later afternoon.
+
+I went to Verdun to see the forts, the city, the hills, and the
+topography of a great battle; I went in the hope of describing with a
+little of clarity what the operation meant as a military affair. I
+say, and I shall hereafter try to describe this. But I shall never be
+able to describe this thing which was the true Verdun for me--these
+men, their faces, seen as one heard the shell fire and the musketry
+rolling, not steadily but intermittently, the men who had marched over
+the roads that are lined with graves, through villages that are
+destroyed, who had come of their own will and in calm determination
+and marched unhurryingly and yet unshrinkingly, the men who were no
+longer young, who had left behind them all that men hold dear in life,
+home, wives, children, because they knew that there was no other way.
+
+I can only say to all those who have asked me, "What of France?" this
+simple thing, that I do not believe the French will ever stop. I do
+not believe, as the Germans have said, that French courage is
+weakening, that French determination is abating. I do not believe the
+Kaiser himself would think this if he had seen these men's faces as
+they marched _toward_ his guns. I think he would feel as I felt, as
+one must feel, that these men went willingly, hating war with their
+whole soul, destitute of passion or anger. I never heard a passionate
+word in France, because there had entered into their minds, into the
+mind and heart of a whole race, the belief that what was at stake was
+the thing that for two thousand years of history had been France.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+MY TRIP TO VERDUN--A DYING, SHELL-RIDDEN CITY
+
+    THE VAUBAN CITADEL, IN THE SHELTER OF WHICH FALLING SHELLS
+    CANNOT FIND YOU--HOUSES AND BLOCKS THAT ARE VANISHING
+    HOURLY--"BUT WILLIAM WILL NOT COME"--WAR THAT IS INVISIBLE--A
+    LUNCHEON UNDERGROUND WITH A TOAST TO AMERICA--THE LAST
+    COURTESY FROM A GENERAL AND A HOST--NOTHING THAT WAS NOT
+    BEAUTIFUL
+
+
+The citadel of Verdun, the bulwark of the eastern frontier in ancient
+days, rises out of the meadows of the Meuse with something of the
+abruptness of the sky-scraper, and still preserves that aspect which
+led the writers of other wars to describe all forts as "frowning." It
+was built for Louis XIV by Vauban. He took a solid rock and blasted
+out redoubts and battlements. The generations that followed him dug
+into the living rock and created within it a whole city of catacombs,
+a vast labyrinth of passages and chambers and halls; even an elevator
+was added by the latest engineers, so that one can go from floor to
+floor, from the level of the meadow to the level of the summit of the
+rock, possibly a hundred feet above.
+
+By reason of the fact that many correspondents have visited this
+fortress since the war began the world has come to know of the
+underground life in Verdun, to think of the city as defended by some
+wonderful system of subterranean works; to think of Verdun, in fact,
+as a city or citadel that is defensible either by walls or by forts.
+But the truth is far different: even the old citadel is but a deserted
+cave; its massive walls of natural rock resist the shells as they
+would repulse an avalanche; but the guns that were once on its
+parapets are gone, the garrison is gone, gone far out on the trench
+lines beyond the hills. The Vauban citadel is now a place where bread
+is baked, where wounded men are occasionally brought, where live the
+soldiers and officers whose important but unromantic mission it is to
+keep the roads through the town open, to police the ashes of the city,
+to do what remains of the work that once fell to the lot of the civil
+authorities.
+
+To glide swiftly to the shelter of this rock from a region in which a
+falling shell has served to remind you of the real meaning of Verdun
+of the moment, to leave the automobile and plunge into the welcome
+obscurity of this cavern--this was perhaps the most comfortable
+personal incident of the day. The mere shadow of the rock gave a sense
+of security; to penetrate it was to pass to safety.
+
+Some moments of wandering by corridors and stairways into the very
+heart of the rock brought us to the quarters of our host, General
+Dubois; to his kind attention I was to owe all my good fortune in
+seeing his dying city; to him, at the end, I was to owe the ultimate
+evidence of courtesy, which I shall never forget.
+
+Unlike Petain or Joffre, General Dubois is a little man, possibly a
+trifle older than either. A white-haired, bright-eyed, vigorous
+soldier, who made his real fame in Madagascar with Joffre and with
+Gallieni, and when the storm broke was sent to Verdun by these men,
+who knew him, to do the difficult work that there was to be performed
+behind the battle line. There is about General Dubois a suggestion of
+the old, as well as the new, of the French general. The private
+soldiers to whom he spoke as he went his rounds responded with a "Oui,
+mon General" that had a note of affection as well as of discipline; he
+was rather as one fancied were the soldiers of the Revolution, of the
+Empire, of the Algerian days of Pere Bugeaud whose memory is still
+green.
+
+Our salutations made, we returned through the winding corridors to
+inspect the bakeries, the water and light plant, the unsuspected
+resources of this rock. In one huge cavern we saw the men who provided
+30,000 men with bread each day, men working as the stokers in an ocean
+steamer labor amidst the glare of fires; we tasted the bread and found
+it good, as good as all French bread is, and that means a little
+better than all other bread.
+
+Then we slipped back into daylight and wandered along the face of the
+fortress. We inspected shell holes of yesterday and of last month; we
+inspected them as one inspects the best blossoms in a garden; we
+studied the angle at which they dropped; we measured the miniature
+avalanche that they brought with them. But always, so far, there was
+the subconscious sense of the rock between us and the enemy. I never
+before understood the full meaning of that phrase "a rock in a weary
+land."
+
+All this was but preliminary, however. Other automobiles arrived; the
+General entered one. I followed in the next and we set out to visit
+Verdun, to visit the ruins, or, rather, to see not a city that was
+dead, but a city that was visibly, hourly dying--a city that was
+vanishing by blocks and by squares--but was not yet fallen to the
+estate of Ypres or Arras; a city that in corners, where there were
+gardens behind the walls, still smiled; a city where some few brave
+old buildings still stood four square and solid, but only waiting what
+was to come.
+
+Before I visited Verdun I had seen many cities and towns which had
+been wholly or partially destroyed, either by shell fire or by the
+German soldiers in their great invasion before the Marne. One shelled
+town is much like another, and there is no thrill quite like that you
+experience when you see the first. But these towns had died nearly two
+years ago; indeed, in most the resurrection had begun: little red
+roofs were beginning to shine through the brown trees and stark
+ruins. Children played again in the squares. It was like the sense you
+have when you see an old peasant ploughing among the cross-marked
+graves of a hard-fought battle corner--the sense of a beginning as
+well as of death and destruction.
+
+But at Verdun it was utterly different. Of life, or people, of
+activity beginning again or surviving there was nothing. Some time in
+the recent past all the little people who lived in these houses had
+put upon wagons what could be quickly moved and had slipped out of
+their home, that was already under sentence of death. They were gone
+into the distance, and they had left behind them no stragglers. The
+city was empty save for a few soldiers who passed rapidly along the
+streets, as one marches in a heavy snowstorm.
+
+Yet Verdun was not wholly dead. Shell fire is the most inexplicable of
+all things that carry destruction. As you passed down one street the
+mark of destruction varied with each house. Here the blast had come
+and cut the building squarely; it had carried with it into ruin behind
+in the courtyard all that the house contained, but against the wall
+the telephone rested undisturbed; pictures--possibly even a looking
+glass--hung as the inhabitants had left it, hung as perhaps it had
+hung when the last woman had taken her ultimate hurried glance at her
+hat before she departed into the outer darkness.
+
+But the next house had lost only the front walls; it stood before you
+as if it had been opened for your inspection by the removal of the
+facade. Chairs, beds--all the domestic economy of the house--sagged
+visibly outward toward the street, or stood still firm, but open to
+the four winds. It was as if the scene were prepared for a stage and
+you sat before the footlights looking into the interior. Again, the
+next house and that beyond were utterly gone--side walls, front walls,
+everything swallowed up and vanished--the iron work twisted into
+heaps, the stone work crumbled to dust; the whole mass of ruin still
+smoked, for it was a shell of yesterday that had done this work.
+
+Down on the Riviera, where the mistral blows--all the pine trees lean
+away from the invariable track of this storm wind--you have the sense,
+even in the summer months, of a whole countryside bent by the gales.
+In the same fashion you felt in Verdun, felt rather than saw, a whole
+town not bent, but crumbled, crushed--and the line of fall was always
+apparent; you could tell the direction from which each storm of shells
+had come, you could almost feel that the storm was but suspended, not
+over, that at any moment it might begin again.
+
+Yet even in the midst of destruction there were enclaves of unshaken
+structures. On the Rue Mazel, "Main Street," the chief clothing store
+rose immune amid ashes on all sides. Its huge plate-glass window was
+not even cracked. And behind the window a little mannikin, one of the
+familiar images that wear clothes to tempt the purchaser, stood erect.
+A French soldier had crept in and raised the stiff arm of the mannikin
+to the salute, pushed back the hat to a rakish angle. The mannikin
+seemed alive and more than alive, the embodiment of the spirit of the
+place. Facing northward toward the German guns it seemed to respond to
+them with a "_morituri salutamus_." "The last civilian in Verdun," the
+soldiers called him, but his manner was rather that of the Poilu.
+
+We crossed the river and the canal and stopped by the ruin of what had
+once been a big factory or warehouse. We crawled through an open
+shell-made breach in the brick wall and stood in the interior. The
+ashes were still hot, and in corners there were smoking fires. Two
+days ago, at just this time, your guides told you, men had been
+working here; making bread, I think. At the same time we had come to
+the ruins--the same time of day, that is--the Germans had dropped a
+half-dozen incendiary shells into the building and it had burned in
+ten minutes. Most of the men who had been there then were still there,
+under the smoking mass of wreckage; the smell of burned human flesh
+was in the air.
+
+A few steps away there was a little house standing intact. On the
+floor there were stretched four rolls of white cloth. The General and
+those with him took off their hats as they entered. He opened one of
+the packages and you saw only a charred black mass, something that
+looked like a half-burned log taken from the fireplace. But two days
+ago it had been a man, and the metal disk of identification had
+already been found and had served to disclose the victim's name. These
+were the first bodies that had been removed from the ruins.
+
+Taking our cars again we drove back and stopped before the Mairie, and
+passing under the arch entered the courtyard. The building had fared
+better than most, but there were many shell marks. In the courtyard
+were four guns. Forty-six years before another German army had come
+down from the North, another whirlwind of artillery had struck the
+town and laid it in ashes, but even under the ashes the town had held
+out for three weeks. Afterward the Republic of France had given these
+guns to the people of Verdun in recognition of their heroism.
+
+In the courtyard I was presented to a man wearing the uniform and
+helmet of a fireman. He was the chief of the Verdun fire department.
+His mission, his perilous duty, it was to help extinguish the fires
+that flamed up after every shell. In all my life I have never seen a
+man at once so crushed and so patently courageous. He was not young,
+but his blue Lorraine eyes were still clear. Yet he looked at you, he
+looked out upon the world with undisguised amazement. For a generation
+his business had been to fight fires. He had protected his little town
+from conflagrations that might sometimes, perhaps once, possibly
+twice, have risen to the dignity of a "three alarm." For the rest he
+had dealt with blazes.
+
+Now out of the skies and the darkness and out of the daylight, too,
+fire had descended upon his town. Under an avalanche of incendiary
+shells, under a landslide of fire, his city was melting visibly into
+ashes. He had lived fire and dreamed fire for half a century, but now
+the world had turned to fire--his world--and he looked out upon it in
+dazed wonder. He could no longer fight this fire, restrain it, conquer
+it; he could only go out under the bursting shells and strive to
+minimize by some fraction the destruction; but it was only child's
+play, this work of his which had been a man's business. And there was
+no mistaking the fact that this world was now too much for him. He was
+a brave man; they told me of things he had done; but his little cosmos
+had gone to chaos utterly.
+
+We entered our cars again and went to another quarter of the city.
+Everywhere were ashes and ruin, but everywhere the sense of a
+destruction that was progressive, not complete: it still marched. It
+was as Arras had been, they told me, before the last wall had tumbled
+and the Artois capital had become nothing but a memory. We climbed the
+slope toward the cathedral and stopped in a little square still
+unscathed, the Place d'Armes, the most historic acre of the town.
+After a moment I realized what my friends were telling me. It was in
+this square that the Crown Prince was to receive the surrender of the
+town. Along the road we had climbed he was to lead his victorious army
+through the town and out the Porte de France beyond. In this square
+the Kaiser was to stand and review the army, to greet his victorious
+son. The scene as it had been arranged was almost rehearsed for you in
+the gestures of the French officers.
+
+"But William has not come," they said, "and he will not come now."
+This last was not spoken as a boast, but as a faith, a conviction.
+
+Still climbing we came to the cathedral. It is seated on the very top
+pinnacle of the rock of Verdun, suggesting the French cities of
+Provence. Its two towers, severe and lacking ornamentation, are the
+landmarks of the countryside for miles around. When I came back to
+America I read the story of an American correspondent whom the Germans
+had brought down from Berlin to see the destruction of Verdun. They
+had brought him to the edge of the hills and then thrown some
+incendiary shells into the town, the very shells that killed the men
+whose bodies I had seen. The black smoke and flames rushed up around
+these towers and then the Germans brought the correspondent over the
+hills and showed him the destruction of Verdun. He described it
+vividly and concluded that the condition of the town must be
+desperate.
+
+They are a wonderful people, these Germans, in their stage management.
+Of course this was precisely the thing that they desired that he
+should feel. They had sent their shells at the right moment, the whole
+performance had gone off like clockwork. Those poor blackened masses
+of humanity in the house below were the cost that was represented in
+the performance. And since there is much still left to burn in Verdun,
+the Germans may repeat this thing whenever they desire.
+
+But somewhere three or four miles from here, and between Verdun and
+the Germans, are many thousands of Frenchmen, with guns and cannon,
+and hearts of even finer metal. They cannot even know that Verdun is
+being shelled or is burning, and if it burns to ultimate ashes it will
+not affect them or their lines. This is the fallacy of all the talk of
+the destruction of Verdun city and the desperate condition of its
+defenders. The army left Verdun for the hills when the war began; the
+people left when the present drive began in February. Even the dogs
+and cats, which were seen by correspondents in earlier visits, have
+been rescued and sent away. Verdun is dead, it is almost as dead as
+are Arras and Ypres; but neither of these towns after a year and a
+half bombardment has fallen.
+
+The correspondent who was taken up on a hill by the Germans to see
+Verdun burn, after it had been carefully set on fire by shell fire,
+was discovered by French gunners and shelled. He went away taking with
+him an impression of a doomed city. This picture was duly transmitted
+to America. But two days later, when I visited the city, there was no
+evidence of desperation, because there was no one left to be
+desperate. Doubtless on occasion we shall have many more descriptions
+of the destruction of this town, descriptions meant to impress
+Americans or encourage Germans. The material for such fires is not
+exhausted. The cathedral on the top of the hill is hardly shell-marked
+at all, and it will make a famous display when it is fired as was
+Rheims, as were the churches of Champagne and Artois. But there is
+something novel in the thought of a city burned, not to make a Roman
+or even German holiday, but burned to make the world believe that the
+Battle of Verdun had been a German victory.
+
+For two hours we wandered about the town exploring and estimating the
+effect of heavy gunfire, for the Germans are too far from the city to
+use anything but heavy guns effectively. The impressions of such a
+visit are too numerous to recall. I shall mention but one more. Behind
+the cathedral are cloisters that the guide books mention; they inclose
+a courtyard that was once decorated with statues of saints. By some
+accident or miracle--there are always miracles in shelled towns--one
+of these images, perhaps that of the Madonna, has been lifted from its
+pedestal and thrown into the branches of a tree, which seems almost to
+hold it with outstretched arms.
+
+At length we left the town, going out by the Porte de France, which
+cuts the old Vauban ramparts, now as deserted as those of Paris,
+ramparts that had been covered with trees and were now strewn with the
+debris of the trees that had fallen under the shell fire. In all this
+time not a shell had fallen in Verdun; it was the first completely
+tranquil morning in weeks; but there was always the sense of impending
+destruction, there was always the sense of the approaching shell.
+There was an odd subconscious curiosity, and something more than
+curiosity, about the mental processes of some men, not far away, who
+were beside guns pointed toward you, guns which yesterday or the day
+before had sent their destruction to the very spot where you stood.
+
+Yet, oddly enough, in the town there was a wholly absurd sense of
+security, derived from the fact that there were still buildings
+between you and those guns. You saw that the buildings went to dust
+and ashes whenever the guns were fired; you saw that each explosion
+might turn a city block into ashes, and yet you were glad of the
+buildings and there was reassurance in their shadows. Now we travelled
+in the open country; we began to climb across the face of a bare hill,
+and it was the face that fronted the Germans.
+
+Presently the General's car stuck in the mud and we halted, for a
+minute perhaps; then we went on; we passed a dead horse lying in the
+road, then of a sudden came that same terrible grinding, metallic
+crash. I have never seen any description of a heavy shell explosion
+that fitted it. Behind us we could see the black smoke rising from the
+ground in a suburb through which we had just come. I saw three
+explosions. A moment later we were at the gate of Fort de la Chaume,
+and we were warned not to stop, but to hasten in, for the Germans,
+whenever they see cars at this point, suspect that Joffre has arrived,
+or President Poincare, and act accordingly. We did not delay.
+
+Fort de la Chaume is one of the many fortifications built since the
+Franco-Prussian War and intended to defend the city. Like all the
+rest, it ceased to have value when the German artillery had shown at
+Liege and at Namur that it was the master of the fort. Then the French
+left their forts and went out to trenches beyond and took with them
+the heavy guns that the fort once boasted. To-day Fort de la Chaume is
+just an empty shell, as empty as the old Vauban citadel in the valley
+below. And what is true of this fort is true of all the other forts of
+that famous fortress of Verdun, which is no longer a fortress, but a
+sector in the trench line that runs from the North Sea to Switzerland.
+
+From the walls of the fort staff officers showed me the surrounding
+country. I looked down on the city of Verdun, hiding under the shadow
+of its cathedral. I looked across the level Meuse Valley, with its
+little river; I studied the wall of hills beyond. Somewhere in the
+tangle on the horizon was Douaumont, which the Germans held. Down the
+valley of the river in the haze was the town of Bras, which was
+French; beyond it the village of Vachereauville, which was German.
+Beyond the hills in the centre of the picture, but hidden by them,
+were Le Mort Homme and Hill 304.
+
+Verdun is like a lump of sugar in a finger bowl, and I was standing on
+the rim. It seemed utterly impossible that any one should even think
+of this town as a fortress or count its ashes as of meaning in the
+conflict.
+
+Somewhere in the background a French battery of heavy guns was firing,
+and the sound was clear; but it did not suggest war, rather a blasting
+operation. The German guns were still again. There was a faint
+billowing roll of gunfire across the river toward Douaumont, but very
+faint. As for trenches, soldiers, evidences of battle, they did not
+exist. I thought of Ralph Pulitzer's vivid story of riding to the
+Rheims front in a military aeroplane and seeing, of war, just
+nothing.
+
+The geography of the Verdun country unrolled before us with absolute
+clarity; the whole relation of hills and river and railroads was
+unmistakable. But despite the faint sound of musketry, the occasional
+roar of a French gun, I might have been in the Berkshires looking down
+on the Housatonic. Six miles to the north around Le Mort Homme that
+battle which has not stopped for two months was still going on. Around
+Douaumont the overture was just starting, the overture to a stiff
+fight in the afternoon, but of all the circumstances of battle that
+one has read of, that one still vaguely expects to see, there was not
+a sign. If it suited their fancy the Germans could turn the hill on
+which I stood into a crater of ruin, as they did with Fort Loncin at
+Liege. We were well within range, easy range; we lived because they
+had no object to serve by such shooting, but we were without even a
+hint of their whereabouts.
+
+I have already described the military geography of Verdun. I shall not
+attempt to repeat it here, but it is the invisibility of warfare,
+whether examined from the earth or the air, which impresses the
+civilian. If you go to the trenches you creep through tunnels and
+cavities until you are permitted to peer through a peephole, and you
+see yellow dirt some yards away. You may hear bullets over your head,
+you may hear shells passing, but what you see is a hillside with some
+slashings. That is the enemy. If you go to an observation post back of
+the trenches, then you will see a whole range of country, but not even
+the trenches of your own side.
+
+From the Grand Mont east of Nancy I watched some French batteries
+shell the German line. I didn't see the French guns, I didn't see the
+German trenches, I didn't see the French line. I did see some black
+smoke rising a little above the underbrush, and I was told that the
+shells were striking behind the German lines and that the gunners were
+searching for a German battery. But I might as well have been
+observing a gang of Italians at blasting operations in the Montclair
+Mountains. And the officer with me said: "Our children are just
+amusing themselves."
+
+From Fort de la Chaume we rode back to the citadel; and there I was
+the guest of the General and the officers of the town garrison; their
+guest because I was an American who came to see their town. I shall
+always remember that luncheon down in the very depths of this rock in
+a dimly lighted room. I sat at the General's right, and all around me
+were the men whose day's work it was to keep the roads open, the
+machinery running in the shell-cursed city. Every time they went out
+into daylight they knew that they might not return. For two months the
+storm had beaten about this rock, it had written its mark upon all
+these faces, and yet it had neither extinguished the light nor the
+laughter; the sense of strength and of calmness was inescapable, and
+never have I known such charming, such thoughtful hosts.
+
+When the champagne came the old General rose and made me a little
+speech. He spoke in English, with absolute correctness, but as one who
+spoke it with difficulty. He welcomed me as an American to Verdun, he
+thanked me for coming, he raised his glass to drink to my country and
+the hope that in the right time she would be standing with France--in
+the cause of civilization. Always in his heart, in his thought, in his
+speech, the Frenchman is thinking of that cause of civilization;
+always this is what the terrible conflict that is eating up all France
+means to him.
+
+Afterward we went out of this cavern into daylight, and the officers
+came and shook hands with me and said good-bye. One does not say _au
+revoir_ at the front; one says _bonne chance_--"good luck; it may and
+it may not--we hope not." We entered our cars and were about to start,
+when suddenly, with a blinding, stunning crash, a whole salvo landed
+in the meadow just beyond the road, we could not see where, because
+some houses hid the field. It was the most suddenly appalling crash I
+have ever heard.
+
+Instantly the General ordered our drivers to halt. He explained that
+it might be the beginning of a bombardment or only a single trial, a
+detail in the intermittent firing to cut the road that we were to
+take. We sat waiting for several moments and no more shots came. Then
+the General turned and gave an order to his car to follow, bade our
+drivers go fast, and climbed into my car and sat down. The wandering
+American correspondent was his guest. He could not protect him from
+the shell fire. He could not prevent it. But he could share the
+danger. He could share the risk, and so he rode with me the mile until
+we passed beyond the danger zone. There he gave me another _bonne
+chance_ and left me, went back to his shell-cursed town with its ruins
+and its agonies.
+
+I hope I shall see General Dubois again. I hope it will be on the day
+when he is made Governor of Strassburg.
+
+As we left Verdun the firing was increasing; it was rolling up like a
+rising gale; the infantry fire was becoming pronounced; the Germans
+were beginning an attack upon Le Mort Homme. Just before sunset we
+passed through the Argonne Forest and came out beyond. On a hill to
+the north against the sky the monument of Valmy stood out in clear
+relief, marking the hill where Kellerman had turned back another
+Prussian army. Then we slipped down into the Plain of Chalons, where
+other Frenchmen had met and conquered Attila. At dark we halted in
+Montmirail, where Napoleon won his last victory before his empire
+fell. The sound of the guns we had left behind was still in our ears
+and the meaning of these names in our minds. Presently my French
+companion said to me: "It is a long time, isn't it?" He meant all the
+years since the first storm came out of the north, and I think the
+same thought is in every Frenchman's mind. Then he told me his story.
+
+"I had two boys," he said; "one was taken from me years ago in an
+accident; he was killed and it was terrible. But the other I gave.
+
+"He was shot, my last boy, up near Verdun, in the beginning of the
+war. He did not die at once and I went to him. For twenty days I sat
+beside him in a cellar waiting for him to die. I bought the last
+coffin in the village, that he might be buried in it, and kept it
+under my bed. We talked many times before he died, and he told me all
+he knew of the fight, of the men about him and how they fell.
+
+"My name is finished, but I say to you now that in all that experience
+there was nothing that was not beautiful." And as far as I can analyze
+or put in words the impression that I have brought away from France,
+from the ruin and the suffering and the destruction, I think it is
+expressed in those words. I have seen nothing that was not beautiful,
+too, because through all the spirit of France shone clear and bright.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+BATTLE OF VERDUN ANOTHER GETTYSBURG
+
+    FAILURE OF CROWN PRINCE LIKENED BY FRENCH TO "HIGH TIDE" OF
+    CONFEDERACY
+
+
+"The parallel between Gettysburg in your Civil War and Verdun in the
+present contest is unmistakable and striking." This was said to me by
+General Delacroix, one of Joffre's predecessors as chief of the French
+General Staff and the distinguished military critic of the Paris
+_Temps_ now that because of age he has passed to the retired list.
+
+What General Delacroix meant was patent and must have already
+impressed many Americans. Our own Gettysburg was the final bid for
+decision of a South which had long been victorious on the battlefield,
+which still possessed the armies that seemed the better organized and
+the generals whose campaigns had been wonderfully successful. But it
+was the bid for decision of a Confederacy which was outnumbered in
+men, in resources, in the ultimate powers of endurance, and was
+already beginning to feel the growing pinch both in numbers and
+credit.
+
+At Gettysburg Lee made his final effort to destroy the army which he
+had frequently defeated but never eliminated. Victory meant the fall
+of Washington, the coming of despair to the North, an end of the Civil
+War, which would bring independence and the prize for which they had
+contended to the Confederates. And Lee failed at Gettysburg, not as
+Napoleon failed at Waterloo or as MacMahon failed at Sedan, but he
+failed, and his failure was the beginning of the end. The victory of
+Gettysburg put new heart, new assurance into the North; it broke the
+long illusion of an invincible Confederacy; it gave to Europe, to
+London, and to Paris, even more promptly than to Washington, the
+unmistakable message that the North was bound to win the Civil War.
+
+I mean in a moment to discuss the military aspects of this conflict
+about the Lorraine fortress, but before the military it is essential
+to grasp the moral consequences of Verdun to France, to the Allies, to
+Germany. Not since the Marne, not even then--because it was only after
+a long delay that France really knew what had happened in this
+struggle--has anything occurred that has so profoundly, so
+indescribably, heartened the French people as has the victory at
+Verdun. It is not too much to say that the victory has been the most
+immediately inspiring thing in French national life since the disaster
+at Sedan and that it has roused national confidence, hope, faith, as
+nothing else has since the present conflict began.
+
+In this sense rather than in the military sense Verdun was a decisive
+battle and its consequences of far-reaching character. France as a
+whole, from the moment when the attack began, understood the issue;
+the battle was fought in the open and the whole nation watched the
+communiques day by day. It was accepted as a terrible if not a final
+test, and no Frenchman fails to recognize in all that he says the
+strength, the power, the military skill of Germany.
+
+And when the advance was checked, when after the first two weeks the
+battle flickered out as did the French offensive in Champagne and the
+former German drive about Ypres a year ago, France, which had held her
+breath and waited, hoped, read in the results at Verdun the promise of
+ultimate victory, felt that all that Germany had, all that she could
+produce, had been put to the test and had failed to accomplish the
+result for which Germany had striven--or any portion thereof.
+
+War is something beyond armies and tactics, beyond strategy and even
+military genius, and the real meaning of Verdun is not to be found in
+lines held or lost, not to be found even in the ashes of the old town
+that France and not Germany holds. It is to be found in the spirit of
+France, now that the great trial is over and the lines have held.
+
+It was Germany and not France that raised the issue of Verdun. The
+Germans believed, and all their published statements show this, that
+France was weary, disheartened, ready to quit, on fair terms. They
+believed that there was needed only a shining victory, a great moral
+demonstration of German strength to accomplish the end--to bring
+victorious peace. In this I think, and all with whom I talked in
+France felt, that the Germans were wrong, that France would have
+endured defeat and gone on. But conversely, the Germans knew, must
+have known, that to try and to fail was to rouse the whole heart of
+France, to destroy any pessimism, and this is precisely what the
+failure has done.
+
+The battle for Verdun was a battle for moral rather than military
+values, and the moral victory remains with the French. It was a
+deliberate and calculated effort to break the spirit of France, and it
+roused the spirit of France as perhaps nothing has raised the spirit
+of this people since Valmy, where other Frenchmen met and checked
+another German invasion, brought to a halt the army of Frederick the
+Great, which still preserved the prestige of its great captain who was
+dead, turned it back along the road that was presently to end at Jena.
+
+Beside the moral value of Verdun the military is just nothing. To
+appreciate its meaning you must understand what it has meant to the
+French, and you must understand it by recalling what Gettysburg meant
+to the North, invaded as is France, defeated at half a dozen struggles
+in Virginia as France has been defeated in the past months of this
+war. Gettysburg was and remains the decisive battle of our Civil War,
+although the conflict lasted for nearly two years more. For France
+Verdun is exactly the same thing. Having accepted the moral likeness,
+you may find much that is instructive and suggestive in the military,
+but this is of relatively minor importance.
+
+Now, on the military side it is necessary to know first of all that
+when the Germans began their gigantic attack upon Verdun the French
+high command decided not to defend the city. Joffre and those who with
+him direct the French armies were agreed that the city of Verdun was
+without military value comparable with the cost of defending it, and
+that the wisest and best thing to do was to draw back the lines to the
+hills above the city and west of the Meuse. Had their will prevailed
+there would have been no real battle at Verdun and the Germans would
+long ago have occupied the ashes of the town.
+
+Joffre's view was easily explicable, and it was hardly possible to
+quarrel with the military judgment it discloses. To the world Verdun
+is a great fortress, a second Gibraltar, encircled by great forts,
+furnished with huge guns, the gateway to Paris and the key to the
+French eastern frontier. And this is just what Verdun was until the
+coming of the present war, when the German and Austrian siege guns
+levelled the forts of Antwerp, of Maubeuge, of Liege. But after that
+Verdun ceased to be anything, because all fortresses lost their value
+with the revelation that they had failed to keep pace with the gun.
+
+After the Battle of the Marne, when the trench war began, the French
+took all their guns out of the forts of Verdun, pushed out before the
+forts, and Verdun became just a sector in the long trench line from
+the sea to Switzerland. It was defended by trenches, not forts. It was
+neither of more importance nor less than any other point in the line
+and it was a place of trenches, not of forts. The forts were empty and
+remain empty, monuments to the past of war, quite as useless as the
+walls of Rome would be against modern artillery.
+
+The decline of Verdun was even more complete. From the strongest point
+in French defence it became the weakest. When the Germans took St.
+Mihiel in September, 1914, they cut the north and south railroad that
+binds Verdun to the Paris-Nancy Railroad. When they retreated from the
+Marne they halted at Varennes and Montfaucon, and from these points
+they command the Paris-Verdun-Metz Railroad. Apart from a single
+narrow-gauge railroad of minor value, which wanders among the hills,
+climbing at prohibitive grades, Verdun is isolated from the rest of
+France. Consider what this means in modern war when the amount of
+ammunition consumed in a day almost staggers belief. Consider what it
+means when there are a quarter of a million men to be fed and
+munitioned in this sector.
+
+More than all this, when the lines came down to the trench condition
+Verdun was a salient, it was a narrow curve bulging out into the
+German front. It was precisely the same sort of military position as
+Ypres, which the Germans have twice before selected as the point for
+a great attack. In the Verdun sector the French are exposed to a
+converging fire; they are inside the German semicircle. Moreover, the
+salient is so narrow that the effect of converging fire is not to be
+exaggerated.
+
+When the French attacked the Germans in Champagne last fall they
+advanced on a wide front from a line parallel to the German line. As
+they pierced the first German lines they were exposed to the
+converging fire of the Germans, because they were pushing a wedge in.
+Ultimately they got one brigade through all the German lines, but it
+was destroyed beyond by this converging fire. But as the Germans
+advanced upon Verdun they were breaking down a salient and possessed
+the advantage they had had on the defensive in Champagne.
+
+Finally, one-half the French army of Verdun fought with its back to a
+deep river, connected with the other half only by bridges, some of
+which presently came under German fire, and there was every
+possibility that these troops might be cut off and captured if the
+German advance were pushed home far enough on the west bank of the
+Meuse and the German artillery was successful in interrupting the
+passage of the river. It was a perilous position and there were some
+days when the situation seemed critical.
+
+Accordingly, when the German drive at Verdun was at last disclosed in
+its real magnitude Joffre prepared to evacuate the town and the east
+bank of the river, to straighten his line and abolish the salient and
+give over to the Germans the wreck of Verdun. The position behind the
+river was next to impregnable; the lines would then be parallel; there
+would be no salient, and in the new position the French could
+concentrate their heavy artillery while the Germans were moving up the
+guns that they had fixed to the north of the old front.
+
+But at this point the French politician interfered. He recognized the
+wisdom of the merely military view of Joffre, but he saw also the
+moral value. He recognized that the French and the German public alike
+would not see Verdun as a mere point in a trench line and a point
+almost impossible to defend and destitute of military value. He saw
+that the French and German publics would think of Verdun as it had
+been thought of before the present war changed all the conditions of
+conflict. He recognized that the German people would be roused to new
+hope and confidence by the capture of a great fortress, and that the
+French would be equally depressed by losing what they believed was a
+great fortress.
+
+You had therefore in France for some hours, perhaps for several days,
+something that approximated a crisis growing out of the division of
+opinion between the civil and the military authorities, a division of
+opinion based upon two wholly different but not impossible equally
+correct appraisals. Joffre did not believe it was worth the men or the
+risk to hold a few square miles of French territory, since to
+evacuate would strengthen, not weaken, the line. The French
+politicians recognized that to lose Verdun was to suffer a moral
+defeat which would almost infallibly bring down the Ministry, might
+call into existence a new Committee of Public Safety, and would fire
+the German heart and depress the French.
+
+In the end the politicians had their way and Castelnau, Joffre's
+second in command, came over to their view and set out for Verdun to
+organize the defence for the position at the eleventh hour. He had
+with him Petain, the man who had commanded the French army in the
+Battle of Champagne and henceforth commanded the army that was hurried
+to the Verdun sector. France now took up definitely the gage of battle
+as Germany had laid it down. Verdun now became a battle in the
+decisive sense of the word, although still on the moral side. Nothing
+is more preposterous than to believe that there ever was any chance of
+a German advance through Verdun to Paris. One has only to go to
+Verdun and see the country and the lines behind the city and miles
+back of the present front to realize how foolish such talk is.
+
+Meantime the German advance had been steady and considerable. All
+these attacks follow the same course--Ypres, Artois, Champagne,
+Dunajec. There is first the tremendous artillery concentration of the
+assailant; then the bombardment which abolishes the first and second
+line trenches of the defenders; then the infantry attack which takes
+these ruined trenches and almost invariably many thousands of
+prisoners and scores of guns. But now the situation changes. The
+assailant has passed beyond the effective range of his own heavy
+artillery, which cannot be immediately advanced because of its weight;
+he encounters a line of trenches that has not been levelled, he has
+come under the concentrated fire of his foe's heavy and light
+artillery without the support of his own heavy artillery, and all the
+advantage of surprise has gone.
+
+What happened at Verdun is what happened in the Champagne. The German
+advance was quite as successful--rather more successful than the
+French last September; it covered three or four miles on a
+considerable front, and it even reached Douaumont, one of the old
+forts and the fort which was placed on the highest hill in the
+environs of Verdun. Thousands of prisoners had been captured and many
+guns taken. But at this point the French resistance stiffened, as had
+the German last year. French reserves and artillery arrived. Petain
+and Castelnau arrived. There was an end of the rapid advance and there
+began the pounding, grinding attack in which the advantage passed to
+the defender. It was just what happened at Neuve Chapelle so long ago
+when we first saw this kind of fighting exemplified completely.
+
+In the new attacks the Germans still gained ground, but they gained
+ground because the French withdrew from positions made untenable
+through the original German advance at other points. They
+consolidated their line, organized their new front. Ten days after the
+attack had begun it had ceased to be a question of Verdun, just as in
+a shorter time the French had realized last September that they could
+not break the German line in Champagne. But like the French in
+Champagne, like the British at Neuve Chapelle, the Germans persevered,
+and in consequence suffered colossal losses, exactly as the French and
+British had.
+
+To understand the German tactics you must recognize two things. The
+Germans had expected to take Verdun, and they had unquestionably known
+that the French military command did not intend at the outset to hold
+the town. They had advertised the coming victory far and wide over the
+world; they had staked much upon it. Moreover, in the first days, when
+they had taken much ground, when they had got Douaumont and could look
+down into Verdun, they had every reason to believe that they possessed
+the key to the city and that the French high command was slowly but
+steadily drawing back its lines and would presently evacuate the city.
+
+Knowing these things you can understand why the Germans were so
+confident. They did not invent stories of coming victory which they
+did not believe. They believed that Verdun was to fall because they
+knew, and the same thing was known and mentioned in London. I heard it
+there when the battle was in its earlier stages--that the French high
+command intended to evacuate Verdun. What they did not know and could
+not know was that the French politicians, perhaps one should say
+statesmen this time, had interfered, that the French high command had
+yielded and that Verdun was to be defended to the last ditch.
+
+When this decision was made the end of the real German advance was
+almost instantaneous. All that has happened since has been nothing but
+active trench war, violent fighting, desperate charge and counter
+charge, a material shortening of the French line at certain points,
+the abolition of minor salients, but of actual progress not the
+smallest. The advance stopped before lines on which Petain elected to
+make his stand when he came with his army to defend Verdun. The
+Germans are still several miles outside of Verdun itself, and only at
+Douaumont have they touched the line of the exterior forts, which
+before the war were expected to defend the city.
+
+In Paris and elsewhere you will be told that Douaumont was occupied
+without resistance and that it was abandoned under orders before there
+had been a decision to hold Verdun. I do not pretend to know whether
+this is true or not, although I heard it on authority that was wholly
+credible, but the fact that the map discloses, that I saw for myself
+at Verdun, is that, save for Douaumont, none of the old forts have
+been taken and that the Germans have never been able to advance a foot
+from Douaumont or reach the other forts at any other point. And this
+is nothing more or less than the French experience at Champagne, the
+German experience about Ypres in 1915.
+
+In a later chapter I hope to discuss the situation at Verdun as I saw
+it on April 6th, and also the miracle of motor transport which played
+so great a part in the successful defence of the position. But the
+military details are wholly subordinate to the moral. All France was
+roused by a successful defence of a position attacked by Germany with
+the advertised purpose of breaking the spirit of the French people.
+The battle was fought in the plain daylight without the smallest
+concealment, and the least-informed reader of the official reports
+could grasp the issue which was the fate of the city of Verdun.
+
+The fact, known to a certain number of Frenchmen only, that the
+defence was improvised after the decision had been made to evacuate
+the whole salient, serves for them to increase the meaning of the
+victory as it increases the real extent of the French exploit. But
+this is a detail. The Germans openly, deliberately, after long
+preparation, announced their purpose, used every conceivable bit of
+strength they could bring to bear to take Verdun, and told their own
+people not merely that Verdun would fall, but at one moment that it
+had fallen. They did this with the firm conviction that it would
+fall--was falling.
+
+The French were steadily aware that Verdun might be lost. They knew
+from letters coming daily from the front how terrible the struggle
+was, and it is impossible to exaggerate the tension of the early days,
+although it was not a tension of panic or fear. Paris did not expect
+to see the invader, and there was nothing of this sort of moonshine
+abroad. But it was plain that the fall of the town would bring a
+tremendous wave of depression and if not despair yet a real reduction
+of hope. Instead, Verdun defended itself, the lines were maintained
+several miles on the other side of the town and all substantial
+advance came to an end in the first two weeks. The army itself, the
+military observers, were convinced that all danger was over as early
+as the second week in March, when correspondents of French newspapers
+were being taken to Verdun to see the situation and tell the people
+the facts.
+
+All over Northern France, and I was in many towns and cities, the
+"lift" that Verdun had brought was unmistakable and French confidence
+was everywhere evident. It showed itself in a spontaneous welcome to
+Alexander of Serbia in Paris, which, I am told, was the first thing of
+the sort in the war period. Frenchmen did not say that Verdun was the
+beginning of the end, and they did not forecast the prompt collapse of
+Germany. They did not even forecast the immediate end of the fighting
+about Verdun. They did not regard the victory as a Waterloo or a Sedan
+or any other foolish thing. But they did rather coolly and quite
+calmly appraise the thing and see in it the biggest German failure
+since the Marne, and a failure in a fight which the Germans had laid
+down all the conditions in advance and advertised the victory that
+they did not achieve as promising the collapse of French endurance and
+spirit.
+
+The Battle of Verdun was a battle for moral values, and the possession
+of the town itself was never of any real military value. Verdun
+commands nothing, and behind it lie well-prepared fortifications on
+dominating heights, positions that are ten times as easy to defend as
+those which the French have defended. It was not a battle for Paris,
+and there was never a prospect of the piercing of the French line;
+Germany was never as near a great military success as she was at Ypres
+after the first gas attack a year ago. The French army leaders judged
+the Verdun position as not worth the cost of defending. They were
+overruled by the politicians and they defended it successfully. But
+their first decision is the best evidence of the wholly illusory value
+that has been attached to the possession of Verdun itself.
+
+The politicians were unquestionably right as to the moral value, and
+it is possible if not probable that the relinquishment of the city
+voluntarily might have precipitated the fall of the Briand Ministry
+and the creation of a Committee of Public Safety--not to make peace,
+but to make war successfully. The will to defend Verdun came from the
+French people, it imposed itself upon the army and it resulted in a
+moral victory the consequences of which cannot be exaggerated and have
+given new heart and confidence to a people whose courage and
+determination must make an enduring impression on any one who sees
+France in the present terrible but glorious time.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+VERDUN, THE DOOR THAT LEADS NOWHERE
+
+    THE BATTLE AND THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE BATTLEFIELD--AN ANALYSIS
+    OF THE ATTACK AND DEFENCE
+
+
+In a preceding article I have endeavored to explain the tremendous
+moral "lift" that the successful defence of the city of Verdun has
+brought to France, a moral "lift" which has roused French confidence
+and expectation of ultimate victory to the highest point since the war
+began. I have also tried to demonstrate how utterly without value the
+fortress of Verdun was, because the forts were of no use in the
+present war, were as useless against German heavy artillery as those
+of Antwerp and Maubeuge, and had been evacuated by the French a full
+eighteen months before the present battle began. Finally I have
+indicated that so little military value was attached to Verdun by the
+French high command that it was prepared to evacuate the whole
+position, which is the most difficult to defend on the whole French
+front, and was only persuaded to give over his purpose by the
+arguments of the politicians, who believed that the moral effect of
+the evacuation would be disastrous to France and inspiriting to
+Germany.
+
+I now desire to describe at some length the actual topographical
+circumstances of Verdun and later I shall discuss the fashion in which
+an automobile transport system was improvised to meet the situation
+created by the interruption of traffic by German artillery fire along
+the two considerable railroad lines. It was this system which actually
+saved the town and is the real "miracle of Verdun," if one is to have
+miracles to explain what brave and skilful men do.
+
+I saw Verdun on April 6th. I went through the city, which was little
+more than a mass of ashes, with General Dubois, the military governor
+of the town itself, and with him I went to Fort de la Chaume, on one
+of the highest hills near Verdun, and from this vantage point had the
+whole countryside explained to me. The day on which I visited Verdun
+was the first completely quiet day in weeks, and I was thus fortunate
+in being able to see and to go about without the disturbing or
+hindering circumstances which are incident to a bombardment.
+
+The city of Verdun is situated at the bottom of the Meuse Valley on
+both sides of the river. But the main portion of the town is on the
+west bank and surrounds a low hill, crowned by the cathedral and old
+Vauban citadel. The town is surrounded by old ramparts, long ago
+deprived of military value and belonging, like the citadel, to
+eighteenth century warfare. The Valley of the Meuse is here several
+miles wide, as flat as your hand, and the river, which is small but
+fairly deep, a real obstacle since it cannot be forded, wanders back
+and forth from one side of the valley to the other. Below Verdun it is
+doubled, as a military obstacle, by the Canal de l'Est.
+
+If you put a lump of sugar in a finger bowl you will pretty fairly
+reproduce the Verdun topography. The lump of sugar will represent
+Verdun, the rim of the bowl the hills around the city, the interior of
+the bowl the little basin in which the city stands. This rim of hills,
+which rise some five or six hundred feet above the town itself, is
+broken on the west by a deep and fairly narrow trough which comes into
+the Meuse Valley and connects it some thirty miles to the west with
+the Plain of Chalons. If you should look down upon this region from an
+aeroplane this furrow would look like a very deep gutter cutting far
+into the tangle of hills.
+
+Now in the warfare of other centuries the value of the Verdun fortress
+was just this: the furrow which I have described is the one avenue
+available for an invading army coming from the east out of Metz or
+south from Luxemburg and aiming to get into the Plain of Chalons to
+the west. It is the way the Prussians came in 1792 and were defeated
+at Valmy, at the western entrance of the trough about thirty miles
+away. They took Verdun on their way--so did the Germans in 1870.
+
+Verdun in French hands closed this trough to the invaders.
+
+It closed it because the low hill which bears the town was strongly
+fortified and was surrounded by lower ground. Such artillery as was in
+existence was not of a sufficiently long range to place upon the hills
+about Verdun which we have described as the rim of the bowl. The town
+of Verdun was situated on both sides of the river and commanded all
+the bridges. It was, in fact, the stopple in the mouth of the
+bottle-neck passage leading into North Central France, the passage
+through which ran the main road and, later, the railway from the
+frontier nearest Paris to the capital.
+
+But when the modern developments of artillery came, then Verdun, the
+old fortress that Vauban built for Louis XIV, lost its value. It was
+commanded by the surrounding hills and the French moved out of the
+town and the Vauban fortifications and built on the surrounding hills,
+on the rim, to go back to our figure, the forts which were the defence
+of the town when the present war began, forts arranged quite like
+those of Liege or Antwerp and some four or five miles away from the
+town. But bear in mind these forts were designed, like the old
+fortress and fortifications of the eighteenth century, to bar the road
+from the Meuse and from Germany to the Plain of Chalons and the level
+country west of the Argonne. When the Germans came south through
+Belgium and got into the Plain of Chalons from the north they had
+turned the whole Verdun position and had got into the region it
+barred by another route; they had come in by the back door; Verdun
+was the front. Not only that, but they are there now and have been
+there ever since the first days of September, 1914.
+
+When one hears about Verdun as the gateway to Paris or anything else
+one hears about the Verdun of the past. It was not the door to Paris
+but the outer door to the region around Paris, to the Plains of
+Champagne and Chalons. But as the Germans are already in these plains
+the taking of Verdun now would not bring them nearer to Paris; they
+are only fifty miles away at Noyon, on the Oise, and they would be 160
+at Verdun if they took the city. If they took Verdun they would get
+control of the Paris-Metz Railway, and if they then drove the French
+away from the trough we have been describing they would get a short
+line into France, and a line coming from German territory directly,
+not passing through Belgium. But they would not be nearer to Paris.
+
+When the French saw, in the opening days of the war, that forts were
+of no permanent value against the German guns they left the forts on
+the hills above Verdun as they had abandoned the Vauban works and
+moved north for a few miles. Here they dug trenches, mounted their
+guns in concealed positions, and stood on the defensive, as they were
+standing elsewhere from Belgium to Switzerland. There was now no
+fortress of Verdun, and Verdun city was nothing but a point behind the
+lines of trenches, a point like Rheims, or Arras. The forts of the rim
+were equally of no more importance and were now empty of guns or
+garrisons. If the Germans, by a sudden attack, broke all the way
+through the French trenches here it would be quite as serious as if
+they broke through at other points, but no more so. There was no
+fortress of Verdun and the Verdun position commanded nothing.
+
+The Battle of Verdun, as it is disclosed to an observer who stands on
+Fort de la Chaume, a mile or two west and above Verdun and in the
+mouth of the trough we have described, was this: On the west bank of
+the Meuse, four or five miles northwest of the town, there is a steep
+ridge going east and west and perhaps 1,100 feet high. This is the
+crest of Charny, and it rises sharply from the flat valley and marches
+to the west without a break for some miles. On it are the old forts of
+the rim.
+
+Three or four miles still to the north is a line of hills which are
+separated from each other by deep ravines leading north and south. Two
+of these hills, Le Mort Homme (Dead Man's Hill) and Hill 304, have
+been steadily in the reports for many weeks. They are the present
+front of the French. Between one and two miles still to the north are
+other confused and tangled hills facing north, and it was here that
+the French lines ran when the great attack began in the third week of
+February. On this side the Germans have advanced rather less than two
+miles; they have not reached the Charny Ridge, which is the true and
+last line of defence of the Verdun position, and they have not
+captured the two hills to the north, which are the advanced position,
+now the first line.
+
+When I was in Paris before I went to Verdun there was a general belief
+that the French might ultimately abandon the two outer hills, Dead
+Man's and 304, and come back to the Charny Ridge, which is a wall
+running from the river west without a break for miles. Apparently this
+has not been found necessary, but what is worth noting is that if
+these hills were evacuated it would not mean the withdrawal from
+Verdun but only to the best line of defence (the last line, to be
+sure), which includes the town itself.
+
+Now, east of the river the situation is materially different. Between
+the Meuse and the level plateau, which appears in the dispatches from
+the front as the Woevre, is a long, narrow ridge, running from north
+to south for perhaps thirty-five or forty miles. This is the Cote de
+Meuse, or, translated, the Hills of the Meuse. The range is never more
+than ten miles wide and at many points less than half as wide. On the
+west it rises very sharply from the Meuse and on the east it breaks
+down quite as abruptly into the Woevre Plain. It cannot be effectively
+approached from the Woevre, because the Woevre is an exceedingly
+marshy plain, with much sub-surface water and in spring a mass of
+liquid clay.
+
+Now the French, when the German drive began, stood on this ridge some
+eight miles, rather less, perhaps, to the north of the town of Verdun;
+their line ran from the Meuse straight east along this ridge and then
+turned at right angles and came south along the eastern edge of the
+Meuse Hills and the shore of the Woevre Plain until it touched the
+river again at St. Mihiel, twenty miles to the south, where the
+Germans had broken through the Meuse Hills and reached the river. The
+German attack came south along the crest of this ridge because the
+German heavy artillery could not be brought over the Woevre.
+
+About halfway between the French front and Verdun, on a little crest
+somewhat higher than the main ridge, the French had erected a line of
+forts, just as they had on the Charny Ridge, Forts Douaumont and Vaux,
+familiar names now, were the forts most distant from Verdun. But the
+French here, as on the other side of the river, had come out of these
+forts, abandoned and dismantled them, and taken to trenches much to
+the north. It was upon these trenches that the main German attack
+fell, and in the first days the French were pushed back until their
+trench line followed the crests that bear the old forts, and at one
+point, at Douaumont, the Germans had actually got possession of one of
+the old forts; but the French trenches pass in front of this fort at a
+distance of but a few hundred yards.
+
+Now, in the first days of the battle the position of the French on
+the east bank of the Meuse was just this: the troops facing north were
+meeting and slowly yielding to a terrific drive coming south and
+southwest; the rest of the troops that faced east toward the Woevre
+were not attacked severely. But as the Germans came south, and when
+they took Douaumont, they were able to reach the bridges across the
+Meuse behind the French troops on the Meuse Hills and to destroy them
+by indirect fire, and these French troops, more than a hundred
+thousand probably, were fighting with their backs to a deep river and
+exposed to destruction in case their lines did not hold.
+
+In this situation Joffre proposed to take his troops behind the Meuse
+and on the hills to the west and above the city, leaving the city to
+the Germans. The French line would thus come north behind the Meuse
+from St. Mihiel and then turn west above Verdun, following either the
+Charny Ridge or else the Hills of Regret and Chaume, on either side
+of the trough, described above, which the road to Paris follows.
+
+If Verdun were a fortress actually; if either the old town or the
+circle of forts outside had been of value, Joffre would not have
+proposed this thing. But they were of no value. Verdun was once a
+fortress barring the way to the Plain of Chalons, but the Germans were
+in the plain, having come through Belgium by the back door, as it
+were. The forts outside the city on the rim of the basin had already
+been abandoned because they could have been destroyed by German heavy
+artillery, as were those of Liege and Antwerp. Verdun was just a
+position; but it was a difficult position to defend because of the
+river, which cut off one-half the army and could be crossed only by
+bridges, which were under indirect fire.
+
+If the French had come back to the Charny Ridge, or even to the Regret
+Hills south of the trough followed by the Paris-Metz road, they would
+have stood on hills of patent military value; the trough is a natural
+ditch in front. These hills are all trenched and prepared for defence.
+The French would merely have shortened their lines and taken an easy
+position to defend, instead of holding a bad position. But ultimately
+this would have meant the relinquishing of Verdun, the little town
+down in the valley below, now become a heap of ruins and having lost
+its military value thirty years earlier, when heavy artillery began
+its decisive success over the old fortifications.
+
+The French did not retire, because the civil government overruled the
+military; decided that the moral effect of the withdrawal from Verdun
+would be disastrous to the French and advantageous to the Germans.
+Instead of retiring, the French stood and held the hills beyond the
+Charny Ridge, Dead Man's and 304; they hold them still and seem
+determined to keep them. But remember that they can still retire to
+the Charny Ridge if they choose, and only then find their best line
+west of the Meuse, if they mean to hold on to the city of Verdun.
+
+On the other hand, east of the River Meuse the French are
+approximately in their last line. The hills and crests they hold upon
+the Meuse Hills are some three or four miles from Verdun, but if the
+French retired far they would begin to come down hill, with a deep
+river at their backs. In consequence, whenever you hear that the
+Germans have made some slight gain, taken a trench about Douaumont or
+Vaux, you are certain to hear at once that the French have counter
+attacked and retaken the lost ground.
+
+The essential thing to remember is that the defence of Verdun is not
+the defence of a position that has a great military value. The French
+would be better off, would lose fewer men and run smaller risk of
+considerable losses if they should quit the east bank of the Meuse and
+occupy the hills back of Verdun on the west bank. On the west bank the
+Germans have never made any material gain, and they have not come
+within reach of the hills that bear the old forts. But the French
+Government has decided that for political reason, for reasons that
+affect the moral, not the military, situation, Verdun must not be
+surrendered; hence the army is holding it at a cost of men less than
+the Germans are paying to take it, but at a far greater cost than
+would be necessary to hold the better positions west of the river.
+
+The Germans have not made any gain of importance in nearly two months.
+The French are very sure they will not come farther south. They are as
+confident as men could be. But if the Germans should come farther
+south and at last force the French to come back behind the river and
+to the hills above the town, they would only win a moral victory. The
+military situation would not be changed, unless they should also
+pierce the French lines on the west of the river, and this is
+absolutely unthinkable now.
+
+If you think of Verdun city as a fortress you will put yourself in the
+eighteenth century. It is just an abandoned town, mostly ashes and
+completely ruined by a useless bombardment after the main German
+advance had been checked. If you think of Verdun as a fortified
+position, like Liege, which, if it fell, would bring disaster, as did
+the fall of Liege, you are thinking in terms of the situation before
+the war. The forts of this position have all been abandoned and the
+French are fighting in trenches in all points save one outside this
+circle of forts. If you think of Verdun as the gateway to anything,
+you are thinking of something that doesn't exist. It was a gateway to
+Central France, to the Plain of Chalons, from the German frontier
+before the Germans came down into the Plain of Chalons from the north
+through Belgium.
+
+But if you think of Verdun as a place which has a great sentimental
+value for both the French and the Germans; if you think of it as a
+place which by reason of its importance in other days still preserves
+a value in the minds of the mass of the French and German publics, a
+town the taking of which would as a result of this wholly false
+appraisal be reckoned in Germany as a great victory, which would
+vastly encourage German masses and would be accepted in France as a
+great defeat which would equally depress the French public, you will
+think of the battle for Verdun as it is.
+
+If you go to Verdun you will see that the estimate that the world has
+placed upon it is illusory. You will see it is an abandoned town. You
+will see, as I did, that great and famous forts are without guns, and
+you will see, as I did, that the positions which the French have
+prepared behind the Meuse and above the town are vastly stronger than
+those which they have held successfully, in Lorraine or any other
+place where the attacks have been bitter, for nearly two years.
+
+There are no forts, fortifications, fortresses, in this war. There
+are just trenches, and the Verdun sector is no exception. Verdun is
+not surrounded; it is not invested. I went to the town from Bar-le-Duc
+in an automobile without difficulty, and I ran back to Paris by
+another road, through Chalons, with equal ease. The Germans have never
+got within three miles of the town on any side; to the west of the
+River Meuse they are not within six miles of it. They are not gaining,
+and have not been gaining for weeks; they are merely fighting a
+desperate trench campaign, and the French are fighting back, retaking
+trenches on the east of the river, because they are in their last line
+on this bank of the river, but paying less attention to German trench
+gains on the west because the Germans are still far from the Charny
+Ridge, their main position.
+
+If Verdun falls, that is, if the French are compelled under pressure
+or as a result of the cost of holding their present awkward position
+to go back behind the river, they will lose fifty or a hundred square
+miles of French territory, they will lose all the tremendous value of
+the moral "lift" which the successful defence has brought, but they
+will lose nothing else; and when the Germans have taken Verdun, the
+ashes, the ruins, they will stop, because there is no object or value
+in further attack. They are fighting for moral values, and the French
+politician has overruled the French soldier and compelled him to
+accept battle on unfavorable ground for this same moral value, but
+against his military judgment. He has done it successfully. He expects
+and France expects that he will continue to do it successfully, but in
+the wholly remote contingency that he failed (I can only say that it
+is a contingency no longer considered in France), a loss in moral
+advantage would be the only consequence.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+IN SIGHT OF THE PROMISED LAND--ON THE LORRAINE BATTLEFIELD
+
+
+In the third week of August, 1914, a French army crossed the frontier
+of Alsace-Lorraine and entered the Promised Land, toward which all
+Frenchmen had looked in hope and sadness for forty-four years. The
+long-forgotten communiques of that early period of the war reported
+success after success, until at last it was announced that the
+victorious French armies had reached Sarrebourg and Morhange, and were
+astride the Strassburg-Metz Railroad. And then Berlin took up the cry,
+and France and the world learned of a great German victory and of the
+defeat and rout of the invading army. Even Paris conceded that the
+retreat had begun and the "army of liberation" was crowding back
+beyond the frontier and far within French territory.
+
+Then the curtain of the censorship fell and the world turned to the
+westward to watch the terrible battle for Paris. In the agony and
+glory of the Marne the struggle along the Moselle was forgotten; the
+Battle of Nancy, of Lorraine, was fought and won in the darkness, and
+when the safety of Paris was assured the world looked toward the
+Aisne, and then toward Flanders. So it came about that one of the
+greatest battles of the whole war, one of the most important of the
+French victories, the success that made the Marne possible, the rally
+and stand of the French armies about Nancy, escaped the fame it
+earned. Only in legend, in the romance of the Kaiser with his cavalry
+waiting on the hills to enter the Lorraine capital, did the battle
+live.
+
+When I went to France one of the hopes I had cherished was that I
+might be permitted to visit this battlefield, to see the ground on
+which a great battle had been fought, that was still unknown country,
+in the main, for those who have written on the war. The Lorraine field
+was the field on which France and Germany had planned for a generation
+to fight. Had the Germans respected the neutrality of Belgium, it is
+by Nancy, by the gap between the Vosges and the hills of the Meuse,
+that they must have broken into France. The Marne was a battlefield
+which was reached by chance and fought over by hazard, but every foot
+of the Lorraine country had been studied for the fight long years in
+advance. Here war followed the natural course, followed the plans of
+the general staff prepared years in advance. Indeed, I had treasured
+over years a plan of the Battle of Nancy, contained in a French book
+written years ago, which might serve as the basis for a history of
+what happened, as it was written as a prophecy of what was to come.
+
+When the Great General Staff was pleased to grant my request to see
+the battlefield of Nancy I was advised to travel by train to that
+town accompanied by an officer from the General Staff, and informed
+that I should there meet an officer of the garrison, who would conduct
+me to all points of interest and explain in detail the various phases
+of the conflict. Thus it fell out, and I have to thank Commandant
+Leroux for the courtesy and consideration which made this excursion
+successful.
+
+In peace time one goes from Paris to Nancy in five hours, and the
+distance is about that from New York to Boston, by Springfield. In war
+all is different, and the time almost doubled. Yet there are
+compensations. Think of the New York-Boston trip as bringing you
+beyond New Haven to the exact rear of battle, of battle but fifteen
+miles away, with the guns booming in the distance and the aeroplanes
+and balloons in full view. Think also of this same trip, which from
+Hartford to Worchester follows the line of a battle not yet two years
+old, a battle that has left its traces in ruined villages, in
+shattered houses. On either side of the railroad track the graves
+descend to meet the embankments; you can mark the advance and the
+retreat by the crosses which fill the fields. The gardens that touch
+the railroad and extend to the rear of houses in the little towns are
+filled with graves. Each enclosure has been fought for at the point of
+the bayonet, and every garden wall recalls the Chateau of Hougoumont,
+at Waterloo.
+
+All this was two years ago, but there is to-day, also. East of
+Bar-le-Duc the main line is cut by German shell fire now. From Fort
+Camp des Romains above St. Mihiel German guns sweep the railroad near
+Commercy, and one has to turn south by a long detour, as if one went
+to Boston by Fitchburg, travel south through the country of Jeanne
+d'Arc and return by Toul, whose forts look out upon the invaded land.
+Thus one comes to Nancy by night, and only by night, for twenty miles
+beyond there are Germans and a German cannon, which not so long ago
+sent a shell into the town and removed a whole city block beside the
+railroad station. It is the sight of this ruin as you enter the town
+which reminds you that you are at the front, but there are other
+reminders.
+
+As we ate our dinner in the cafe, facing the beautiful Place
+Stanislas, we were disturbed by a strange and curious drumming sound.
+Going out into the square, we saw an aeroplane, or rather its lights,
+red and green, like those of a ship. It was the first of several, the
+night patrol, rising slowly and steadily, and then sweeping off in a
+wide curve toward the enemy's line. They were the sentries of the air
+which were to guard us while we slept, for men do sentry-go in the air
+as well as on the earth about the capital of Lorraine. Then the
+searchlights on the hills began to play, sweeping the horizon toward
+that same mysterious region where beyond the darkness there is war.
+
+The next morning I woke with the sense of Fourth of July. Bang! Bang!
+Bang! Such a barking of cannon crackers I had never heard. Still
+drowsy, I pushed open the French windows and looked down on the
+square. There I beheld a hundred or more men, women, and children,
+their eyes fixed on something in the air above and behind the hotel.
+Still the incessant barking of guns, with the occasional boom of
+something more impressive. With difficulty I grasped the fact. I was
+in the midst of a Taube raid. Somewhere over my head, invisible to me
+because of the wall of my hotel, a German aeroplane was flying, and
+all the anti-aircraft guns were shooting at it. Was it carrying bombs?
+Should I presently see or feel the destruction following the descent
+of these?
+
+But the Taube turned away, the guns fired less and less frequently,
+the people in the streets drifted away, the children to school, the
+men to work, the women to wait. It was just a detail in their lives,
+as familiar as the incoming steamer to the commuters on the North
+River ferryboats. Some portion of war has been the day's history of
+Nancy for nearly two years now. The children do not carry gas masks to
+school with them as they do at Pont-a-Mousson, a dozen miles to the
+north, but women and children have been killed by German shells, by
+bombs, brought by Zeppelins and by aeroplanes. There is always
+excitement of sorts in the district of Nancy.
+
+After a breakfast, broken by the return of the aeroplanes we had seen
+departing the night before for the patrol, we entered our cars and set
+out for the front, for the near-front, for the lines a few miles
+behind the present trenches, where Nancy was saved but two years ago.
+Our route lay north along the valley of the Meurthe, a smiling broad
+valley, marching north and south and meeting in a few miles that of
+the Moselle coming east. It was easy to believe that one was riding
+through the valley of the Susquehanna, with spring and peace in the
+air. Toward the east a wall of hills shut out the view. This was the
+shoulder of the Grand Couronne, the wall against which German
+violence burst and broke in September, 1914.
+
+Presently we came to a long stretch of road walled in on the river
+side by brown canvas, exactly the sort of thing that is used at
+football games to shut out the non-paying public. But it had another
+purpose here. We were within the vision of the Germans, across the
+river, on the heights behind the forest, which outlined itself at the
+skyline; there were the Kaiser's troops and that forest was the
+Bois-le-Pretre, the familiar incident in so many communiques since the
+war began. Thanks to the canvas, it was possible for the French to
+move troops along this road without inviting German shells. Yet it was
+impossible to derive any large feeling of security from a canvas wall,
+which alone interposed between you and German heavy artillery.
+
+We passed through several villages and each was crowded with troops;
+cavalry, infantry, all the branches represented; it was still early
+and the soldiers were just beginning their day's work; war is so
+completely a business here. Transport wagons marched along the roads,
+companies of soldiers filed by. Interspersed with the soldiers were
+civilians, the women and children, for none of the villages are
+evacuated. Not even the occasional boom of a gun far off could give to
+this thing the character of real war. It recalled the days of my
+soldiering in the militia camp at Framingham in Massachusetts. It was
+simply impossible to believe that it was real. Even the faces of the
+soldiers were smiling. There was no such sense of terribleness, of
+strain and weariness as I later found about Verdun. The Lorraine front
+is now inactive, tranquil; it has been quiet so long that men have
+forgotten all the carnage and horror of the earlier time.
+
+We turned out of the valley and climbed abruptly up the hillside. In a
+moment we came into the centre of a tiny village and looked into a row
+of houses, whose roofs had been swept off by shell fire. Here and
+there a whole house was gone; next door the house was undisturbed and
+the women and children looked out of the doors. The village was St.
+Genevieve, and we were at the extreme front of the French in August,
+and against this hill burst the flood of German invasion. Leaving the
+car we walked out of the village, and at the end of the street a sign
+warned the wayfarer not to enter the fields, for which we were bound:
+"War--do not trespass." This was the burden of the warning.
+
+Once beyond this sign we came out suddenly upon an open plateau, upon
+trenches. Northward the slope descended to a valley at our feet. It
+was cut and seamed by trenches, and beyond the trenches stood the
+posts that carried the barbed-wire entanglements. Here and there,
+amidst the trenches, there were graves. I went down to the barbed-wire
+entanglements and examined them curiously. They at least were real.
+Once thousands of men had come up out of the little woods a quarter of
+a mile below; they had come on in that famous massed attack, they
+had come on in the face of machine gun and "seventy-fives." They had
+just reached the wires, which marked high water. In the woods below,
+the Bois de Facq, in the fields by the river 4,000 Germans had been
+buried.
+
+    [Illustration: GERMAN LORRAINE (map)]
+
+Looking out from the trenches the whole country unfolded. Northward
+the little village of Atton slept under the steep slope of
+Cote-de-Mousson, a round pinnacle crowned with an ancient chateau.
+From the hill the German artillery had swept the ground where I stood.
+Below the hill to the west was Pont-a-Mousson, the city of 150
+bombardments, which the Germans took when they came south and lost
+later. Above it was the Bois-le-Pretre, in which guns were now booming
+occasionally. Far to the north was another hill, just visible, and its
+slope toward us was cut and seamed with yellow slashes: Those were the
+French trenches, then of the second or third line; beyond there was
+still another hill, it was slightly blurred in the haze, but it was
+not over five miles away, and it was occupied by the Germans. From the
+slope above me on a clear day it is possible to see Metz, so near are
+French and German lines to the old frontier.
+
+Straight across the river to the west of us was another wood, with a
+glorious name, the Forest of the Advance Guard. It swept to the south
+of us. In that wood the Germans had also planted their guns on the day
+of battle. They had swept the trenches where I stood from three sides.
+Plainly it had been a warm corner. But the French had held on. Their
+commander had received a verbal order to retreat. He insisted that it
+should be put in writing, and this took time. The order came. It had
+to be obeyed, but he obeyed slowly. Reluctantly the men left the
+trenches they had held so long. They slipped southward along the road
+by which we had come. But suddenly their rear guards discovered the
+Germans were also retreating. So the French came back and the line of
+St. Genevieve was held, the northern door to Nancy was not forced.
+
+Looking down again it was not difficult to reconstitute that German
+assault, made at night. The thing was so simple the civilian could
+grasp it. A road ran through the valley and along it the Germans had
+formed; the slope they had to advance up was gentle, far more gradual
+than that of San Juan. They had been picked troops selected for a
+forlorn hope, and they had come back four times. The next morning the
+whole forest had been filled with dead and dying. Not less than a
+division--20,000 men--had made the terrible venture. Now there was a
+strange sense of emptiness in the country; war had come and gone, left
+its graves, its trenches, its barbed-wire entanglements; but these
+were all disappearing already. On this beautiful spring morning it was
+impossible to feel the reality of what happened here, what was
+happening now, in some measure, five miles or more to the north.
+Nature is certainly the greatest of all pacifists; she will not permit
+the signs of war to endure nor the mind to believe that war itself has
+existed and exists.
+
+From St. Genevieve we went to the Grand Mont d'Amance, the most famous
+point in all the Lorraine front, the southeast corner of the Grand
+Couronne, as St. Genevieve is the northern. Here, from a hill some
+1,300 feet high, one looks eastward into the Promised Land of
+France--into German Lorraine. In the early days of August the great
+French invasion, resting one flank upon this hill, the other upon the
+distant Vosges, had stepped over the frontier. One could trace its
+route to the distant hills among which it had found disaster. In these
+hills the Germans had hidden their heavy guns, and the French, coming
+under their fire without warning, unsupported by heavy artillery,
+which was lacking to them, had broken. Then the German invasion had
+rolled back. You could follow the route. In the foreground the little
+Seille River could be discerned; it marked the old frontier. Across
+this had come the defeated troops. They had swarmed down the low, bare
+hills; they had crossed and vanished in the woods just at my feet;
+these woods were the Forest of Champenoux. Into this forest the
+Germans had followed by the thousand, they were astride the main road
+to Nancy, which rolled white and straight at my feet. But in the woods
+the French rallied. For days there was fought in this stretch of trees
+one of the most terrible of battles.
+
+As I stood on the Grand Mont I faced almost due east. In front of me
+and to the south extended the forest. Exactly at my feet the forest
+reached up the hill and there was a little cluster of buildings about
+a fountain. All was in ruins, and here, exactly here, was the high
+water mark of the German advance. They had occupied the ruins for a
+few moments and then had been driven out. Elsewhere they had never
+emerged from the woods; they had approached the western shore, but the
+French had met them with machine guns and "seventy-fives." The brown
+woods at my feet were nothing but a vast cemetery; thousands of French
+and German soldiers slept there.
+
+In their turn the Germans had gone back. Now, in the same woods, a
+French battery was shelling the Germans on the other side of the
+Seille. Under the glass I studied the little villages unfolding as on
+a map; they were all destroyed, but it was impossible to recognize
+this. Some were French, some German; you could follow the line, but
+there were no trenches; behind them French shells were bursting
+occasionally and black smoke rose just above the ground. Thousands of
+men faced each other less than four miles from where I stood, but all
+that there was to be detected were the shell bursts; otherwise one saw
+a pleasant country, rolling hills, mostly without woods, bare in the
+spring, which had not yet come to turn them green. In the foreground
+ran that arbitrary line Bismarck had drawn between Frenchmen forty-six
+years before--the frontier--but of natural separation there was none.
+He had cut off a part of France, that was all, and one looked upon
+what had been and was still a bleeding wound.
+
+I asked the French commandant about the various descriptions made by
+those who have written about the war. They have described the German
+attack as mounting the slope of the Grand Mont, where we stood. He
+took me to the edge and pointed down. It was a cliff almost as steep
+as the Palisades. "C'est une blague," he smiled. "Just a story." The
+Germans had not charged here, but in the forest below, where the Nancy
+road passed through and enters the valley of the Amezeule. They had
+not tried to carry but to turn the Grand Mont. More than 200,000 men
+had fought for days in the valley below. I asked him about the legend
+of the Kaiser, sitting on a hill, waiting in white uniform with his
+famous escort, waiting until the road was clear for his triumphal
+entrance into the capital of Lorraine. He laughed. I might choose my
+hill; if the Emperor had done this thing the hill was "over there,"
+but had he? They are hard on legends at the front, and the tales that
+delight Paris die easily on the frontiers of war.
+
+But since I had asked so much about the fighting my commandant
+promised to take me in the afternoon to the point where the struggle
+had been fiercest, still farther to the south, where all the hills
+break down and there is a natural gateway from Germany into France,
+the beginning of the famous Charmes Gap, through which the German road
+to Paris from the east ran, and still runs. Leaving Nancy behind us,
+and ascending the Meurthe valley on the eastern bank, turning out of
+it before Saint Nicholas du Port, we came presently to the most
+completely war-swept fields that I have ever seen. On a perfectly
+level plain the little town of Haraucourt stands in sombre ruins. Its
+houses are nothing but ashes and rubble. Go out of the village toward
+the east and you enter fields pockmarked by shell fire. For several
+miles you can walk from shell hole to shell hole. The whole country is
+a patchwork of these shell holes. At every few rods a new line of old
+trenches approaches the road and wanders away again. Barbed-wire
+entanglements run up and down the gently sloping hillsides.
+
+Presently we came out upon a perfectly level field. It was simply torn
+by shell fire. Old half-filled trenches wandered aimlessly about, and
+beyond, under a gentle slope, the little village of Courbessaux stood
+in ruins. The commandant called my attention to a bit of woods in
+front.
+
+"The Germans had their machine guns there," said he. "We didn't know
+it, and a French brigade charged across this field. It started at
+8:15, and at 8:30 it had lost more than 3,000 out of 6,000. Then the
+Germans came out of the woods in their turn, and our artillery, back
+at Haraucourt, caught them and they lost 3,500 men in a quarter of an
+hour." Along the roadside were innumerable graves. We looked at one.
+It was marked: "Here 196 French." Twenty feet distant was another; it
+was marked: "Here 196 Germans." In the field where we stood I was told
+some 10,000 men are buried. They were buried hurriedly, and even now
+when it rains arms and legs are exposed.
+
+Two years had passed, almost two years, since this field had been
+fought for. The Germans had taken it. They had approached Haraucourt,
+but had not passed it. This was the centre and the most vital point in
+the Lorraine battle. What Foch's troops had done about La Fere
+Champenoise, those of Castelnau had done here. The German wave had
+been broken, but at what cost? And now, after so many months, the
+desolation of war remained. But yet it was not to endure. Beside the
+very graves an old peasant was ploughing, guiding his plough and his
+horses carefully among the tombs. Four miles away more trenches faced
+each other and the battle went on audibly, but behind this line, in
+this very field where so many had died, life was beginning.
+
+Later we drove south, passing within the lines the Germans had held in
+their great advance, we travelled through Luneville, which they had
+taken and left unharmed, save as shell fire had wrecked an eastern
+suburb. We visited Gerbeviller, where in an excess of rage the Germans
+had burned every structure in the town. I have never seen such a
+headquarters of desolation. Everything that had a shape, that had a
+semblance of beauty or of use, lies in complete ruin, detached houses,
+a chateau, the blocks in the village, all in ashes. Save for Sermaize,
+Gerbeviller is the most completely wrecked town in France.
+
+You enter the village over a little bridge across the tiny Mortagne.
+Here some French soldiers made a stand and held off the German advance
+for some hours. There was no other battle at Gerbeviller, but for this
+defence the town died. Never was death so complete. Incendiary
+material was placed in every house, and all that thoroughness could do
+to make the destruction complete was done. Gerbeviller is dead, a few
+women and children live amidst its ashes, there is a wooden barrack by
+the bridge with a post-office and the inevitable postcards, but only
+on postcards, picture postcards, does the town live. It will be a
+place of pilgrimage when peace comes.
+
+From Gerbeviller we went by Bayon to the Plateau of Saffais, the ridge
+between the Meurthe and the Moselle, where the defeated army of
+Castelnau made its last and successful stand. The French line came
+south from St. Genevieve, where we had been in the morning, through
+the Grand Mont, across the plain by Haraucourt and Corbessaux, then
+crossed the Meurthe by Dombasle and stood on the heights from
+Rossieres south. Having taken Luneville, the Germans attempted to
+cross the Meurthe coming out of the Forest of Vitrimont.
+
+Standing on the Plateau of Saffais and facing east, the whole country
+unfolded again, as it did at the Grand Mont. The face of the plateau
+is seamed with trenches. They follow the slopes, and the village of
+Saffais stands out like a promontory. On this ridge the French had
+massed three hundred cannon. Their army had come back in ruins, and to
+steady it they had been compelled to draw troops from Alsace.
+Muelhausen was sacrificed to save Nancy. Behind these crests on which
+we stood a beaten army, almost routed, had in three days found itself
+and returned to the charge.
+
+In the shadow of the dusk I looked across the Meurthe into the brown
+mass of the Forest of Vitrimont. Through this had come the victorious
+Germans. They had debouched from the wood; they had approached the
+river, hidden under the slope, but, swept by the hell of this
+artillery storm, they had broken. But few had lived to pass the river,
+none had mounted the slopes. There were almost no graves along these
+trenches. Afterward the Germans had in turn yielded to pressure from
+the south and gone back. Before the Battle of the Marne began the
+German wave of invasion had been stopped here in the last days of
+August. A second terrific drive, coincident with the Marne, had
+likewise failed. Then the Germans had gone back to the frontier. The
+old boundary line of Bismarck is now in many instances an actual line
+of fire, and nowhere on this front are the Germans more than three or
+four miles within French territory.
+
+If you should look at the map of the wholly imaginary Battle of Nancy,
+drawn by Colonel Boucher to illustrate his book, published before
+1910, a book describing the problem of the defence of the eastern
+frontier, you will find the lines on which the French stood at Saffais
+indicated exactly. Colonel Boucher had not dreamed this battle, but
+for a generation the French General Staff had planned it. Here they
+had expected to meet the German thrust. When the Germans decided to go
+by Belgium they had in turn taken the offensive, but, having failed,
+they had fought their long-planned battle.
+
+Out of all the region of war, of war to-day and war yesterday, one
+goes back to Nancy, to its busy streets, its crowds of people
+returning from their day's work. War is less than fifteen miles away,
+but Nancy is as calm as London is nervous. Its bakers still make
+macaroons; even Taube raids do not excuse the children from punctual
+attendance at school. Nancy is calm with the calmness of all France,
+but with just a touch of something more than calmness, which forty-six
+years of living by an open frontier brings. Twenty-one months ago it
+was the gauge of battle, and half a million men fought for it; a new
+German drive may approach it at any time. Out toward the old frontier
+there is still a German gun, hidden in the Forest of Bezange, which
+has turned one block to ashes and may fire again at any hour.
+Zeppelins have come and gone, leaving dead women and children behind
+them, but Nancy goes on with to-day.
+
+And to-morrow? In the hearts of all the people of this beautiful city
+there is a single and a simple faith. Nancy turns her face toward the
+ancient frontier, she looks hopefully out upon the shell-swept Grand
+Couronne and beyond to the Promised Land. And the people say to you,
+if you ask them about war and about peace, as one of them said to me:
+"Peace will come, but not until we have our ancient frontier, not
+until we have Metz and Strassburg. We have waited a long time, is it
+not so?"
+
+
+
+
+THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK.
+
+
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+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of They Shall Not Pass, by Frank H. Simonds
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