o 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 a