OFFICERS AND GENTLEMEN 
BY MAURICE BARR'S 
I. THE LAST DAYS OF COLONEL DRIANT 
DEPUTY FOR NANCY 
Colonel Driant was killed before 
Verdun, at the head of his superb bat¬ 
talion of chasseurs-a-pied, in February, 
1916, on the first day of the terrible 
German offensive. 
Driant was my friend and my col¬ 
league in the Chamber of Deputies. He 
represented Nancy — the same district 
for which I sat before I was chosen 
Deputy for Paris. 
He wrote some excellent books. His 
work as an author was an extension 
of his military and national activity. 
During twenty-five years, in some 
thirty volumes, he strove to prepare 
our young men to face the new German 
invasion which some of us could see 
approaching. 
When he fell, I went to Verdun. I 
talked much about him with his com¬ 
rades in arms. Their words, like the 
numerous letters from his men, are 
stones in the monument of his glory. 
I began at once to collect this useful 
material; it was the fitting way to be 
of service to a hero. Thus in my nar¬ 
rative I shall include so far as possible 
the very words that have remained 
graven in my memory. In the glowing 
tales of his comrades, they were mag¬ 
nificent; and if, scattered through my 
text, they may sound awkward, what 
does it matter? they preserve some¬ 
thing of the last impressions which he 
made upon his soldiers and his friends. 
We know that the two battalions 
758 
of chasseurs-a-pied which Driant com¬ 
manded formed one of the links in the 
chain which covered Verdun to the 
north; one of the links in the -- 
Corps under General-. 
For a long time Driant was free 
from anxiety. I have been rereading 
his letters. On November 2, 1914, he 
wrote me from Samogneux: ‘We are 
holding them here, twenty kilometres 
from Verdun, so that they can’t possi¬ 
bly place their heavy batteries within 
range, and they will never take Verdun.’ 
But for more than a year he witnessed 
the constant augmentation of the ene¬ 
my’s stock of munitions, and called 
constantly for works of consolidation 
on our side. 
During the last weeks he was firmly 
convinced of the imminence of an as¬ 
sault. ‘We have numerous and un¬ 
questionable indications,’ he said; ‘the 
statements of prisoners agree with our 
information, but there are those who 
still doubt.’ On February 16, he wrote 
to Paul Sordoillet at Nancy, ‘The 
Boches are working like ants all about 
us. The hour of the assault cannot be 
far away. Never did the phrase, “By 
God’s grace,” seem to me less common¬ 
place.’ 
One evening about this time, when 
Driant was returning from Verdun to 
Mormont farm, he said to one of his 
men, who was with him, — 
‘ Thus far the fates have been kind 
