our victory."

"But, my dear good fool, what about the French losses? Don't they get
killed, too? The German artillery is flogging them with shell-fire from
seventeen-inch guns, twelve-inch, nine-inch, every bloody and monstrous
engine. The French are weak in heavy artillery. For that error, which
has haunted them from the beginning, they are now paying with their
life's blood--the life blood of France."

"You are arguing on emotion and fear. Haven't you learned yet that the
attacking side always loses more than the defense?"

"That is a sweeping statement. It depends on relative man-power and
gun-power. Given a superiority of guns and men, and attack is cheap.
Defense is blown off the earth. Otherwise how could we ever hope to
win?"

"I agree. But the forces at Verdun are about equal, and the French have
the advantage of position. The Germans are committing suicide."

"Humbug! They know what they are doing. They are the greatest soldiers
in Europe."

"Led by men with bone heads."

"By great scientists."

"By the traditional rules of medievalism. By bald--headed vultures in
spectacles with brains like penny-in--the-slot machines. Put in a penny
and out comes a rule of war. Mad egoists! Colossal blunderers! Efficient
in all things but knowledge of life."

"Then God help our British G.H.Q.!"

A long silence. The silence of men who see monstrous forces at work, in
which human lives are tossed like straws in flame. A silence reaching
back to old ghosts of history, reaching out to supernatural aid. Then
from one speaker or another a kind of curse and a kind of prayer.

"Hell!... God help us all!"

So it was in our mess where war correspondents and censors sat
down together after futile journeys to dirty places to see a bit of
shell-fire, a few dead bodies, a line of German trenches through a
periscope, a queue of wounded men outside a dressing station, the
survivors of a trench raid, a bombardment before a "minor operation,"
a trench-mortar "stunt," a new part of the line... Verdun was the only
thing that mattered in March and April until France had saved herself
and all of us.

XIII

The British army took no part in that battle of Verdun, but rendered
great service to France at that time. By February of 1915 we had taken
over a new line of front, extending from our positions round Loos
southward to the country round Lens and Arras. It was to this movement
in February that Marshal Joffre made allu