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--