bardment 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