0 1,250,000 4,000,000

Civilian employees 2,920,000 750,000 8,670,000

Sundries, including recruiting,
censors, customs dues, etc. 3,000,000 --- 3,000,000

Overseas printing and stationery --- 300,000 300,000

General expenses overseas --- 1,800,000 1,800,000

Maintenance of troops in France
at 9s. 4d. each per day --- 115,000,000 115,000,000
----------- ------------ ------------
Total $217,887,500 $225,162,500 $443,050,000

CHAPTER VIII

IMMORTAL VERDUN

France was revealed to herself, to Germany and to the world as the
heroic defender of civilization, as a defender defying death in the
victory of Verdun. There, with the gateway to Paris lying open at its
back, the French army, in the longest pitched battle in all history,
held like a cold blue rock against the uttermost man power and resources
of the German army.

General von Falkenhayn, Chief of the German General Staff and military
dictator of the Teutonic allies, there met disaster and disgrace. There
the mettle of the Crown Prince was tested and he was found to be merely
a thing of straw, a weak creature whose mind was under the domination of
von Falkenhayn.

For the tremendous offensive which was planned to end the war by one
terrific thrust, von Falkenhayn had robbed all the other fronts of
effective men and munitions. Field Marshal von Hindenburg and his crafty
Chief of Staff, General Ludendorf, had planned a campaign against Russia
designed to put that tottering military Colossus out of the war. The
plans were upon a scale that might well have proved successful. The
Kaiser, influenced by the Crown Prince and by von Falkenhayn, decreed
that the Russian campaign must be postponed and that von Hindenburg must
send his crack troops to join the army of the Crown Prince fronting
Verdun. Ludendorf promptly resigned as Chief of Staff to von Hindenburg
and suggested that the Field Marshal also resign. That grim old warrior
declined to take this action, preferring to remain idle in East Prussia
and watch what he predicted would be a useless effort on the western
front. His warning to the General Staff was explicit, but von Falkenhayn
coolly ignored the message.

[Illustration: Map: Verdun in the Southwest corner, to Maucourt toward
the Northeast.]
IMMORTAL VERDUN, WHERE THE FR