or 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
Sacree_, up which Petain, "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 Petain 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.

CHAPTER VI

AMERICA IN FRANCE

On March 2nd, 1917, I found myself lunching at Montreuil, then the
General Headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force, with the
Staff of the Intelligence Departmen