Chapter 5 ALSACE-LORRAINE

THE GLORY OF VERDUN

Before we left Strasbourg on our way to the "front de Champagne," armed with General Gouraud's maps and directions, an hour or two of most interesting conversation threw great light for me on that other "field of victory"-Alsace-Lorraine.

We brought an introduction to Dr. Pierre Bucher, a gentleman in whom Alsatian patriotism, both before the war and since the Armistice, has found one of its most effective and eloquent representatives. A man of a singularly winning and magnetic presence,-with dark, melancholy eyes, and the look of one in whom the flame of life has burnt in the past with a bitter intensity, fanned by winds of revolt and suffering. Before the war Dr. Bucher was a well-known and popular doctor in Strasbourg, recognised by Alsatian and German alike as a champion of the French spirit and French traditions in the lost provinces. He belonged to that jeunesse of the nineties, which, in the absence of any reasonable grounds for expecting a reversal of the events of 1871, came to the conclusion that autonomous liberties would be at any rate preferable to the naked repression, at the hands of Bismarck and Manteuffel, of the eighties and early nineties. The young men of his date decided that the whole government of the province could not any longer be left to the German bureaucrat, and a certain small number of them entered the German administration, which was imposed on the province after 1871 and had been boycotted thence-forward up to nearly the end of the century by all true Alsatians. But this line of action, where it was adopted, was taken entirely without prejudice to the national demand, which remained as firm as ever, supposing circumstances should ever admit of reunion with France.

Two causes in particular contributed to the irreconcilable attitude of the provinces:-first, the liberal tendencies of the population, the general sympathy, especially in Alsace, with the revolutionary and Napoleonic doctrines of Liberal France from 1789 onward; and secondly, the amazing lack of political intelligence shown by their new masters. "Even if you could ever have annexed us with success"-said Dr. Bucher long before the war, to a German publicist with whom he was on friendly terms-"you came, as it was, a hundred years too late. We had taken our stand with France at the Revolution. Her spirit and her traditions were ours. We were not affected by her passing fits of reaction, which never really interfered with us or our local life. Substantially the revolutionary and Napoleonic era laid the foundations of modern France, and on them we stand. They have little or nothing in common with an aristocratic and militarist Germany. Our sympathies, our traditions, our political tendencies are all French-you cannot alter them."

"But, finally-what do you expect or wish for?" said the German man of letters, after he and Dr. Bucher had talked through a great part of the night, and the German had listened to the Alsatian with an evident wish to understand Alsatian grievances.

Dr. Bucher's answer was prompt and apparently unexpected.

"Reunion with France," he said quietly-"no true Alsatian wishes anything else."

The German first stared and then threw himself back with a good-natured laugh.

"Then indeed there's nothing to be done." (Dann ist ja freilich gar nichts zu machen!)

The tone was that of a strong man's patience with a dreamer; so confident did the Germans feel in their possession of the "Reichsland."

But whatever chance the Germany of Bismarck and William II. might have had of winning over Alsace-Lorriane-and it could never have been a good one-was ruined by the daily and tyrannous blundering of the German Government. The prohibition of the teaching of French in the primary schools, the immediate imposition of German military service on the newly-annexed territories, the constant espionage on all those known to hold strong sympathies with France, or views antagonistic to the German administration, the infamous passport regulations, and a hundred other grievances, deepened year by year the regret for France, and the dislike for Germany. After the first period of "protestation," marked by the constant election of "protesting" deputies to the Reichstag, came the period of repression-the "graveyard peace" of the late eighties and early nineties-followed by an apparent acquiescence of the native population. "Our young people in those years no longer sang the 'Marseillaise,'" said Dr. Bucher. Politically, the Alsatians despaired and-"we had to live together, bon gré, mal gré. But deep in our hearts lay our French sympathies. When I was a young student, hating my German teachers, the love for France beat in my pulses, like a ground wave" (comme une vague de fond).

Then after 1900 the Germans "changed greatly." They became every year richer and more arrogant; Germany from beyond the Rhine developed every year an increasing appétit for the native wealth and commerce of Alsace; and the methods of government became increasingly oppressive and militarist. By this time some 400,000 native Alsatians had in the course of years left the country, and about the same number of immigrant Germans had taken their places. The indifference or apathy of the old population began again to yield to more active feelings. The rise of a party definitely "Anti-Allemand," especially among the country people, made itself felt. And finally came, in Dr. Bucher's phrase, the period of "la haine" after the famous Saverne incident in 1912. That extraordinary display of German military insolence seemed to let loose unsuspected forces.

"All of a sudden, and from all sides, there was an explosion of fury against the Germans."

And as the Doctor spoke, his sensitive, charming face kindling into fire, I remembered our slow passage the day before, through the decorated streets of the beautiful old town of Saverne, in the wake of a French artillery division, and amid what seemed the spontaneous joy of a whole population!

Through all these years Dr. Bucher was a marked man in the eyes of the German authorities, but he was careful to give them no excuse for violence, and so great was his popularity, owing clearly to his humanity and self-devotion as a doctor, that they preferred to leave him alone. The German prefect once angrily said to him: "You are a real poison in this country, Herr Doctor!"-and not very long before the war a German official to whom he was applying for leave to invite M. Andre Tardieu to lecture in Strasbourg, broke out with pettish exasperation: "For twenty years you have been turning my hair grey, M. le Docteur!"-and permission was refused. At the outbreak of war, he naturally escaped from Strasbourg, and joined the French army; while during the latter part of the struggle, he was French military attache at Berne, and, as I understand, the head of a most successful secret service. He was one of the first Frenchmen to re-enter Strasbourg, and is now an invaluable liaison official between the restored French Government and the population.

The practical difficulty of the moment, in January last, was how to meet the Alsatian impatience to get rid of their German masters, bag and baggage, while at the same time maintaining the ordinary services. Every night, meetings were being held in the Strasbourg squares to demand the immediate departure of the Germans. "Qu'ils partent-qu'ils partent tous-et tout de suite!" The French officials could only reply that if an immediate clearance were made of the whole German administration-"we can't run your trains-or carry your posts-or deliver your goods." But the German employés were being gradually and steadily repatriated-no doubt with much unavoidable hardship to individuals. Strasbourg contained then about 65,000 Germans out of 180,000. Among the remaining German officials there was often a curious lack of realisation of what had happened to Germany and to them. "The Germans are very gauche-their tone is still just the same!" And the Doctor described a scene he had witnessed in one of the bureaux of the prefecture only the day before. A German official was at his desk. Enter an Alsatian to make an inquiry about some point in a bankruptcy case. The German answered him with the curt rudeness which was the common official tone in old days, and finally, impatiently told the applicant to go. The Alsatian first opened his eyes in astonishment, and then-suddenly-flamed up. "What!-you think nothing is changed?-that you are the masters here as you used to be-that you can treat us as you used to treat us? We'll show you? We are the masters now. Get out of that chair!-Give it me!-while I talk to you. Behave civilly to me, ou je vais vous flanquer un coup dans le dos!" And the Alsatian went threateningly forward. But the German looked up-grew white-and said slowly-"Monsieur-you are right! I am at your service. What is your business?"

I asked about the amount of inter-marriage that had taken place during the forty years. Dr. Bucher thought it had been inconsiderable-and that the marriages, contracted generally between German subalterns and girls of the inn-keeping or small farming class, had been rarely happy. The Alsatian strain was the stronger, and the wife's relations despised the German intruder. "Not long before the war I came upon two small boys fighting in a back street." The boy that was getting the worst of it was abusing the other, and Dr. Bucher caught the words-"dirty Prussian!" (sale Prussien!) The boy at whom this was hurled, stopped suddenly, with a troubled face, as though he were going to cry. "No-no!-not me!-not me! my father!" Strange, tragic little tale!

As to the Church, a curious situation existed at that moment in Strasbourg. The Archbishop, a good man, of distinguished German birth, was respected and liked by his clergy, who were, however, French in sympathies almost to a man. The Archbishop, who had naturally excused himself from singing the victors' Te Deum in the Cathedral, felt that it would be wiser for him to go, and proposed to Rome that he should resign his see. His clergy, though personally attached to him, were anxious that there should be no complications with the French Government, and supported his wish to resign. But Rome had refused. Why? No doubt because the whole position of the Church and of Catholicism in these very Catholic provinces represents an important card in the hand of the Vatican, supposing the Papacy should desire at any time to reopen the Church and State question with Republican France. What is practically the régime of the Napoleonic Concordat still obtains in the recovered provinces. The clergy have always been paid by the State, and will be still paid, I understand, in spite of the Combes laws, by a special subvention, for the distribution of which the bishops will be responsible. And M. Clemenceau, as the French Prime Minister, has already nominated one or more bishops, as was the case throughout France itself up to 1905.

Everything indeed will be done to satisfy the recovered provinces that can be done. They are at present the spoiled children of France; and the poor devastated North looks on half enviously, inclined to think that "Paris forgets us!"-in the joy of the lost ones found. But Paris knows very well that there are difficulties ahead, and that the French love of symmetry and logic will have to make substantial concessions here and there to the local situation. There are a number of institutions, for instance, which have grown up and covered the country since 1871, which cannot be easily fitted to the ordinary cadre of French departmental government. The department would be too small a unit. The German insurance system, again, is far better and more comprehensive than the French, and will have, in one way or another, to be taken over.

But my own strong impression is that goodwill, and the Liberal fond, resting on the ideas of 1789, which, in spite of their Catholicism, has always existed in these eastern provinces (Metz, however, has been much more thoroughly Germanised than Strasbourg since the annexation), will see France through. And meanwhile the recovery of these rich and beautiful countries may well comfort her in some degree for her desolate fields and ruined towns of the North and Centre. The capital value of Alsace-Lorraine is put roughly at a thousand millions, and the Germans leave behind them considerable additions to the wealth of the province in the shape of new railway-lines and canals, fine stations, and public buildings, not to speak of the thousands of fruit-trees with which, in German fashion, they have lined the roads-a small, unintentional reparation for the murdered fruit-trees of the North.

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A few days after our Strasbourg visit we drove, furnished with General Gouraud's notes and maps, up into the heart of the "front de Champagne." You cross the wide, sandy plains to the north of Chalons, with their scanty pine-woods, where Attila met his over-throw, and where the French Army has trained and manoeuvred for generations. And presently, beyond the great military camp of pre-war days, you begin to mount into a region of chalk hills, barren and lonely enough before the war, and now transformed by the war into a scene which almost rivals the Ypres salient and Verdun itself in tragic suggestiveness. Standing in the lonely graveyard of Mont Muret, one looks over a tortured wilderness of trenches and shell-holes. Close by are all the places famous through years of fighting-Souain, Navarin Farm, Tahure, the Butte de Tahure, and, to the north-west, Somme-Py, Ste. Marie-Py, and so on to Moronvilliers and Craonne. In the south-western distance I could just descry the Monts de Champagne, while turning to the north one faced the slopes of Notre Dame des Champs, and recalled the statement of General Gouraud that on that comparatively open ground the fiercest fighting of last October had taken place.

And now, not a soul, not a movement! Everywhere lay piles of unused shell, German and French, small heaps of hand-grenades and bundles of barbed wire. The camouflaged battery positions, the deep dug-outs and strong posts of the enemy were all about us; a dead horse lay not far away; and in front, the white crosses of the graveyard. A grim scene, under the January sky! But in the very middle of the little cemetery some tender hand had just recently fastened a large bunch of white narcissus to one of the crosses. We had passed no one that I could remember on the long ascent; yet the flowers were quite fresh and the thought of them-the only living and beautiful thing for miles in that scarred wilderness, over which a creeping fog was beginning to gather-stayed with me for days.

The Champagne-battle-field is indeed deeply interwoven with the whole history of the war. The flower of the French Army and almost all the leading French Generals-Castelnau, Pétain, Nivelle, Gouraud, have passed through its furnace. But famous as it is, and for ever associated with the remarkable and fascinating personality of General Gouraud, which gives to it a panache of its own, it has not the sacredness of Verdun.

We had spent the day before the expedition to Champagne at St. Mihiel and Verdun. To St. Mihiel I will return in my next chapter. Verdun I had never seen, and the impression that it makes, even in a few hours, is profound. In March, 1916, I well remember at Havre, at Boulogne, at St. Omer, how intent and absorbed a watch was kept along our front over the news from Verdun. It came in hourly, and the officers in the hotels, French and English, passed it to each other without much speech, with a shrug, or a look of anxiety, or a smile, as the case might be. When we arrived on March 6th at the Visitors' Chateau at G.H.Q.-then, of course, at St. Omer-our first question was: "Verdun?" "All right," was the quick reply. "We have offered help, but they have refused it."

No-France, heroic France, trod that wine-press alone; she beat back her cruel foe alone; and, at Verdun, she triumphed alone. Never, indeed, was human sacrifice more absolute; and never was the spiritual force of what men call patriotism more terribly proved. "The poilu of Verdun," writes M. Joseph Reinach, "became an epic figure"-and the whole battle rose before Europe as a kind of apocalyptic vision of Death and Courage, staged on a great river, in an amphitheatre of blood-stained hills. All the eyes in the world were fixed on this little corner of France. For a Frenchman-"Verdun was our first thought on waking, and was never absent from us through the day."

The impression made by the battle-or rather, the three battles-of Verdun does not depend on the numbers engaged. The British Battle of the Somme, and the battles of last year on the British front far surpassed it in the number of men and guns employed. From March 21st last year to April 17th, the British front was attacked by 109 divisions, and the French by 25. In the most critical fighting at Verdun, from February 21st to March 21st, the French had to face 21 divisions, and including the second German attack in June and the triumphant French advance in December, the total enemy forces may be put at 42 divisions. But the story is incomparable! Everything contributed-the fame of the ancient fortress, the dynastic and political interests involved, the passion of patriotism which the struggle evoked in France, the spendthrift waste of life on the part of the German Command.

After the French rally, indeed, from the first terrific bombardment, which nearly gave the German Command its coveted prey, the thing became a duel, watched by all Europe, between Pétain and the Crown Prince; between the dynastic interests of the Hohenzollerns, served by a magnificent army, and the finest military and patriotic traditions of France. From day to day the public in this country watched the fluctuations of the struggle with an interest so absorbing that the names of Douaumont, Vaux, Mort Homme, Cumières, the Goose's Crest, came to ring in our ears almost as the names of Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte, La Belle Alliance, rang in those of an earlier time.

Verdun, from a distance, produces the same illusion as Rheims. The Cathedral and the town are apparently still in being. They have not lost their essential outlines, and the veils of grey and purple haze between the spectator and the reality disguises what both have suffered. Then one draws nearer. One enters the famous fortress, through the old Vauban fortifications, and over the Vauban bridge-little touched, to all appearance. And presently, as one passes along the streets, one sees that here is not a town, but only the ghost, the skeleton of a town. The roofless, windowless houses, of which the streets still keep, as in Rheims, their ancient lines, stare at you like so many eyeless skulls-the bare bones of a city. Only the famous citadel, with its miles of underground passages and rooms, is just as it was before the battle, and as it will be, one may hope, through the long years to come; preserved, not for any active purpose of war, but as the shrine of immortal memories. Itself, it played a great part in the struggle. For here, in these dormitories and mess-rooms and passages so far underground that even the noise of the fierce struggle outside never reached them, it was possible for troops worn out by the superhuman ordeal of the battle, to find complete rest-to sleep-without fear.

We entered through a large mess-room full of soldiers, with, at its further end, a kitchen, with a busy array of cooks and orderlies. Then someone opened a door, and we found ourselves in a small room, very famous in the history of the war. During the siege, scores of visitors from Allied and neutral countries-statesmen, generals, crowned heads-took luncheon under its canopy of flags, buried deep underground, while the storm of shell raged outside. There, in the visitors' book, one might turn to the two signatures-one of them then only a fortnight old-that all France knows:

"March, 1916-On les aura! Pétain"

"January, 1918-On les a! Pétain"

A courteous Commandant, telephoned to from below, came from some upper region to greet us and to show us something of the endless labyrinth of rooms, passages and dormitories, which during the siege often sheltered thousands of men. The veteran Colonel Duhay, who was in command of the citadel during the greater part of the year-long battle-a splendid, square-built tower of a man-I saw later in Paris. It was ill-luck not to have been able to walk with him over the tragic battle-field itself, for few men can have memories of it at once so comprehensive and so close. From the few words I had with him I retain a shuddering impression as of a slaughter-house; yet nothing could be cheerfuller or humaner than the broad soldier-face. But our talk turned on the losses of Verdun, and although these losses-i.e., the proportion of death to the square yard-were probably exceeded in several later battles, in none, it seems to me, has the massacre of men on both sides left so terrible a mark on the survivors. There came a time when the French were sick of slaying, and the German dead were piled mètres high on the slopes of Mort Homme and Cumières; in those weeks at the end of May, when the Germans, conscious that their prestige had suffered irreparably in the hundred days-which were to have been four!-of desperate and indecisive fighting, were at the opening of that fierce last effort which gave them Fort Vaux and its hero-commander, Commandant Raynal, on June 7th-put them in short-lived possession of Thiaumont and Fleury later-and was then interrupted at the end of the month by the thunder of the Allied attack on the Somme.

After leaving the citadel and the much-injured cathedral, beneath the crypt of which some of the labyrinthine passages of the old fortress are hewn, we drove through the eastern section of the battle-field, past what was once Fort Souville, along an upper road, with Vaux on our right, and Douaumont on the northern edge of the hill in front of us; descending again by Froide Terre, with the C?te de Poivre beyond it to the north; while we looked across the Meuse at the dim lines of Mort Homme, of the Bois des Corbeaux and the Crête de l'Oie, of all that "chess-board" of hills which became so familiar to Europe in those marvellous four months from February to June, 1916. Every yard of these high slopes has been fought over again and again, witnessing on the part of the defenders a fury of endurance, a passion of resolve, such as those, perhaps, alone can know who hear through all their being the mystic call of the soil, of the very earth itself, the actual fatherland, on which they fight. "We are but a moment of the eternal France:"-such was once the saying of a French soldier, dying somewhere amid these broken trenches over which we are looking. What was it, asks M. Reinach, that enabled the French to hold out as they did? Daring, he replies-the daring of the leaders, the daring of the troops led. The word hardly renders the French "audace" which is equally mis-translated by our English "audacity." "Audace" implies a daring which is not rashness, a daring which is justified, which is, in fact, the military aspect of a great nation's confidence in itself. It was the spirit of the "Marseillaise," says M. Reinach again-it was the French soul-l'ame fran?aise-the soul of country and of freedom, which triumphed here.

And not for France alone. At the moment when the attack on Verdun began, although the British military power was strengthening month by month, and the Military Service Act of May, 1916, which put the finishing touch to Lord Kitchener's great work, was close at hand, the French Army was still not only the principal, but the essential element in the Western campaign. France, at Verdun, as in the Battle of the Marne, was defending not only her own freedom, but the freedom of Europe. A few months later, when the British Army of the Somme went over its parapets at daybreak on July 1st, Verdun was automatically relieved, and it was clear to all the world that Britain's apprenticeship was past, and that another great military power had been born into Europe, on whom, as we now know, the main responsibilities of final victory were to rest. But at Verdun France fought for us-for England and America no less than for herself; and that thought must always deepen the already deep emotion with which English eyes look out upon these tortured hills.

That dim line on the eastern ridge, which marks the ruins of Fort Vaux, stands indeed for a story which has been entrusted by history to the living memory of France's Allies, hardly less than to that of France herself. As we pause among the crumbling trenches and shell-holes to look back upon the height of Vaux, I seem to see the lines of French infantry creeping up the hill, through the communication trenches, in the dark, to the relief of their comrades in the fort; the runners-eager volunteers-assuring communications under the incessant hail of shell; the carrier-pigeons, when the fort is altogether cut off, bringing their messages back to Headquarters; the red and green signal lights shooting up from the ridge into the night. One of these runners, when the siege was nearing its end, arrived at an advance post, having by a miracle got through a terrible barrage unhurt. "You might have waited a few instants," said the Colonel, kindly. But the runner, astonished, showed the envelope. "My Colonel, look-it is written-'urgent!'"

That was the spirit. Or listen to this fragment from the journal of Captain Delvert, defending one of the redoubts that protect Fort Vaux:

"Six o'clock-the bombardment has just begun again. The stretcher-bearer, L___, has just been leaning a few moments-worn out-against the wall of my dug-out. His good, honest face is hollow, his eyes, with their blue rims, seem starting out of his head. 'Mon Capitaine, I'm used up. There are only three stretcher-bearers left. The others are dead or wounded. I haven't eaten for three days, or drunk a drop of water.' His frail body is only held together by a miracle of energy. Talk of heroes-here is a true one!

"Eight o'clock. We are relieved.

"Eleven o'clock. Message from the Colonel. 'Owing to circumstances the 101st cannot be relieved.'

"Merci!

"What a disappointment for my poor fellows! Lieutenant X____ is lost in admiration of them. I daresay-but I have only thirty-nine of them left."

Eighteen hours later.

"The order for relief has come. We shall leave our dead behind us in the trench. Then-comrades have carefully placed them out of the passage-way.... There they are-poor sentinels, whom we leave behind us, in a line on the parados, in their blood-stained uniforms-solemn and terrible guardians of this fragment of French soil, which still in death they seem to be holding against the enemy."

But the enemy advances inexorably, and within the fort the dead and dying multiply.

"Captain Tabourot fought like a lion," says another witness. "He was taller than any of us. He gave his orders briefly, encouraged us, and placed us. Then he plunged his hand into the bag of bombs, and, leaning back, threw one with a full swing of the arm, aiming each time. That excited us, and we did our best."

But meanwhile the enemy is stealing up behind, between the trench and the fort. Captain Tabourot is mortally hit, and is carried into the dressing-station within the fort. Commandant Raynal, himself wounded, comes to see him. "No word of consolation, no false hope. The one knows that all is over; the other respects him too deeply to attempt a falsehood." A grasp of the hand-a word from the Commandant: "Well done, mon ami!" But the Captain is thinking of his men. "Mon Commandant-if the Boches get through, it is not the fault of my company. They did all they could." Then a last message to his wife. And presently his name is carried through the dark by a carrier-pigeon down to the Headquarters below: "The enemy surrounds us. I report to you the bravery of Captain Tabourot, seriously wounded. We are holding out." And a few hours later: "Captain Tabourot of the 142nd has died gloriously. Wound received in defending the north-eastern breach. Demand for him the Legion of Honour."

For five days the heroic defence goes on. All communications are cut, the passages of the fort are choked with wounded and dying men, the water is giving out. On the 4th, a wounded pigeon arrives at Headquarters. It brings a message, imploring urgently for help.

"This is my last pigeon." The following day communication is partly re-established, and a few fragmentary messages are received. "The enemy"-signals the fort-"is working on a mine to the west of the fort. Turn on the guns-quick." ... "We don't hear your artillery. Are attacked by gas, and flame throwers. Are at the last extremity." Then one message gets through from below-"Courage! we shall soon attack." The fort waits, and at night another fragmentary message comes from Raynal asking for water and relief. "I am nearly at the end of my powers. The troops-men and officers-have in all circumstances done their duty.... You will come, no doubt ... before we are completely exhausted. Vive la France!"

But death and thirst-thirst, above all-are victors. On the 6th, a few hours before the inevitable end, Marshal Joffre flashed his message to the heights-in the first place, a message of thanks to troops and Commander for their "magnificent defence," in the next, making Commandant Raynal a Commander of the Legion of Honour.

On the 7th a last heroic effort was made to relieve the fort. It failed, and Raynal-wounded, with a handful of survivors-surrendered, the Germans, in acknowledgment of the heroism of the defence, allowing the Commandant to retain his sword.

What manner of men were they that fought this fight? What traditions did they represent? What homes did they come from?

M. Henri Bordeaux, himself an eye-witness, to whose admirable and moving book on The Last Days of Fort Vaux, I am indebted for the preceding details, to some extent answers the question by quoting a letter, addressed by his mother to the stretcher-bearer, Roger Vamier, decorated in 1915 by General Joffre himself.

"Et toi, mon trésor-you must have a great deal to do.... Well, do all you can to save those poor wounded!-left there in the snow and blood. My blood boils to be staying on here, when there is so much to do over there, in picking up those poor fellows. Why won't they have a woman?-there, where she could really help! It is the business of mothers to pick up those poor lads, and give them a good word. Well, you must replace the mothers, you, mon chéri, you must do all you can-do the impossible-to help. I see you running-creeping along-looking for the wounded. If I could only be there too!-Yes, it is my place, mon petit, near you. Courage, courage!-I know it is the beginning of the end-and the end will be grand for all those who have fought in the just cause."

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A month later thousands of English, Scotch, Welsh and Irish lads, men from Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia, were passing on the Somme through a similar furnace of death and suffering to that borne by the French at Verdun. But the English ways of expression are not the French; and both differ from the American. The instinct for ringing and dramatic speech rarely deserts the Frenchman-or Frenchwoman. It is present in the letter written by Roger Vamier's mother, as in the Ordres du Jour of Castelnau or Pétain. Facility of this kind is not our forte. Our lack of it suggests the laughter in that most delightful of recent French books, Les Silences du Colonel Bramble, which turns upon our national taciturnities and our minimising instinct in any matter of feeling, an instinct which is like the hiding instinct, the protective colouring of birds-only anxious to be mistaken for something else. The Englishman, when emotion compels him, speaks more readily in poetry than prose; it is the natural result of our great poetic tradition; and in the remarkable collections of war poetry written by English soldiers we have the English counterpart to the French prose utterance of the war-so much more eloquent and effective, generally, than our own.

* * *

One more look round the slopes over which the light is fading. The heroism of the defence!-that, here, is the first thought. But on the part of the attackers there was a courage no less amazing, though of another sort; the effect of an iron discipline hypnotising the individual will, and conferring on the soldier such superhuman power of dying at another man's will as history-on such a scale-has scarcely seen equalled. In the first battle of Verdun, which lasted forty-eight days (February 21st to April 9th), the German casualties were over 200,000, with a very high proportion of killed. And by the end of the year the casualties at Verdun, on both sides, had reached 700,000. Opinion in Germany, at first so confident, wavered and dropped. Why not break off? But the dynasty was concerned. Fortune, toute entière à sa proie attachée, drove the German Army again and again through lanes of death, where the French 75's worked their terrible will-for no real military advantage. "On the 10th of March," says M. Henri Bordeaux, "the enemy climbed the northern slopes of Fort Vaux. He was then from two to three hundred mètres from the counter-scarp. He took three months to cross these two to three hundred mètres-three months of superhuman effort, and of incredible losses in young men, the flower of the nation." The German strategic reserves were for the first time seriously shaken, and by the end of this wonderful year Pétain, Nivelle, and Mangin between them had recovered from the assailants all but a fraction of what had been lost at Verdun. Meanwhile, behind the "shield" of Verdun, which was thus attracting and wasting the force of the enemy, the Allied Armies had prepared the great offensive of the summer. Italy struck in the Trentino on the 25th of June, Russia attacked in June and July, the British attacked on the Somme on July 1st. The "wearing-down" battle had begun in earnest. "Soldiers of Verdun," said Marshal Joffre, in his order of the 12th of June, "the plans determined on by the Coalition are in full work. It is your heroic resistance that has made this possible. It was the indispensable condition, and it will be the foundation, of our coming victories." "Germany"-says M. Reinach-"during ten months had used her best soldiers in furious assaults on Verdun.... These troops, among the finest in the world, had in five of these months gained a few kilometres of ground on the road to the fortress. This ground, watered with blood as no field of carnage had ever been, which saw close upon 700,000 men fall, was lost in two actions (October 24th-November 3rd and December 15th-18th), and Germany was brought back to within a few furlongs of her starting point.... Douaumont and Louvemont were certainly neither Rocroy nor Austerlitz; but Verdun, from the first day to the last, from the rush stemmed by Castelnau to the battles won by Nivelle and Mangin; Verdun, with her mud-stained poilu, standing firm in the tempest, who said: "They shall not pass!" (passeront pas!), and they have not passed; Verdun, for the Germans a charnel-house, for us a sanctuary, was something greater by far."

* * *

With these thoughts in mind we dropped down the long hill to Verdun again, and so across the bridge and on to that famous road, the Voie Sacrée, up which Pétain, "the road-mender" (Le Cantonnier), brought all his supplies-men, food, guns, ammunition-from Bar-le-Duc by motor-lorry, passing and repassing each other in a perpetual succession-one every twenty seconds. The road was endlessly broken up, sometimes by the traffic, sometimes by shell, and as endlessly repaired by troops specially assigned to the task. And presently we are passing the Moulin des Regrets, where Castelnau and Pétain met on the night of the 25th, and the resolution was taken to counter-attack instead of withdrawing. Verdun, indeed, is the classic illustration of the maxim that attack is the best defence, or, as the British Commander-in-Chief puts it in his latest dispatch, that "defensive success in battle can be gained only by a vigorous offensive." The long battle on the Meuse, "the greatest single action in history," was in one aspect a vast school, in which a score of matters belonging to the art of war were tested, illustrated, and explained, with the same general result as appears throughout the struggle, a result insisted on by each great commander, British or French, in turn; i.e., that in the principles of war there is nothing new to be learnt. Discipline, training, co-operation, attack; these are the unchanging forces the great general has at command. It depends on his own genius what he makes of them.

Verdun fades behind us, and we are on our way to the Marne. In the strange isolation of the car, passing so quickly, as the short winter twilight comes on, through country one has never seen before and will perhaps never see again, the war becomes a living pageant on the background of the dark. Then, with the lights of Chateau-Thierry, thought jumps in a moment from the oldest army in the war to the youngest. This old town, these dim banks of the Marne, have a long history. But in the history of last year, and the closing scenes of the Great War, they belong specially to America. This is American ground.

To realise what that means, we must retrace our steps a little.