his reward in an autographed photograph
from Father Joffre; and the men of that charge had theirs in the
gratitude of a people.

Fort Vaux, on another crest at the right, was still in German hands, but
that, too, was to be regained with the next rush. Yes, it was good to
be at Verdun after Douaumont had been retaken, standing where you would
have been in range of a German sniper a week before. Turning as on a
pivot, you could identify through the glasses all the positions whose
names are engraved on the French mind. Not high these circling hills,
the keystone of a military arch, but taken together it was clear how, in
this as in other wars, they were nature's bastion at the edge of the
plain that lay a misty line in the distance.

Either in front or to the rear of Souville toward Verdun the surprising
thing was how few soldiers you saw and how little transport within range
of German guns; which impressed you with the elastic system of the
French, who are there and are not there. Let an attack by the Germans
develop and soldiers would spring out of the earth and the valleys echo
with the thunder of guns. A thrifty people, the French.

When studying those hills that had seen the greatest German offensive
after I had seen the offensive on the Somme, I thought of all that the
summer had meant on the Western front, beginning with Douaumont lost and
ending with Douaumont regained and the sweep over the conquered Ridge;
and I thought of another general, Sir Douglas Haig, who had had to train
his legions, begin with bricks and mortar to make a house under shell
fire and, day by day, with his confidence in "the spirit that
quickeneth" as the great asset, had wrought with patient, far-seeing
skill a force in being which had never ceased attacking and drawing in
German divisions to hold the line that those German divisions were meant
to break.

Von Falkenhayn was gone from power; the Crown Prince who thirsted for
war had had his fill and said that war was an "idiocy." It was the
sentiment of the German trenches which put von Falkenhayn out; the
silent ballots of that most sensitive of all public opinion, casting its
votes with the degree of its disposition to stand fire, which no officer
can control by mere orders.

With the Verdun offensive over, the German soldiers struggling on the
Ridge had a revelation which was translated into a feeling that
censorship could not stifle of the failure of the campaign to crush
France. T