LAND AND WATER 
March 23, 1916. 
THE MORT HOMME 
By Hilaire Belloc 
THOUGH there has been" a slackening in the 
tremendous fighting for the salient of Verdun 
during the last week, tiie enemy's efforts have 
none the less turned upon an attack which, 
if we examine it closely, helps us to understand their 
present aim. 
They have tried hard to carry the Mort Homme, 
their last effort this week near Avocourt on the 20th as 
much as their efforts of the 14th and i6th on the Bethin- 
court road has the Mort Homme for its object ; and 
we must try and understand what the advantage of 
such a success, had they attained it, would have been. 
The original plan of the battle is now fairly clear. 
Suppose your enemy to hold what is called a salient 
— that is a bulge — about 12 miles across like this 
and to have in that bulge a great mass of material, 
a great number of men, both on the line and behind it, 
and further within' it a town which has for centuries 
been famous as a fortress, and which, up to within 18 
months ago, was one of the great modern strongholds — ■ 
so that its reputation as a fortress is still very Strong in 
the general imagination of Europe, although in reality 
it now forms a part of the general line and is no longer a 
special fortress in any true sense. 
Such was the situation of Verdun and its saUent. ^ 
Further, suppose that salient stands at a sort of 
:orner or bend in your general line like this, so 
that it is obviously an advanced point menacing 
you with a forward thrust from it to the north or to the 
iiorth-east — which would make yoiir general situation all 
round the big bend at S impossible. That was the 
menace of the Verdun point to the Germans. 
But to go back to Sketch I. Your enemy is holding 
this big salient at Verdun. Yon detennine to try your 
luck with him there and see whether you can there 
break him, possibly getting right through his front and 
anyhow damaging him so much more seriously than you 
hurt yourself in the process that you will come out 
heavily the winner. How in such a situation would you 
act? 
There are two things you might do. You might 
try and pinch off the neck of the salient. That is 
what you normally try to do with any large salient, 
whether you have created it by your own pressure, or 
whether it has just " happened," or whether it is due to 
the deliberate forward policy of your opponent. To cut 
off the neck of such a salient was the object of all the 
allied forces at Tourcoing in 1793. It was the object 
of each of the si.x great failures of the Austro-Germans 
against the l^ussians during the big advance last summer. 
On each occasion they tried to pinch off the neck of the 
salient, hoping so to capture huge bodies of the Russians 
within and almost certainly to break the line beyond in 
the process. The last, and most nearly successful of these ' 
attempts was the effort against the great sahent of Vilna. 
According to this, which 1 have called the obvious and 
normal plan, the Ciermans would have struck as hard as 
they could at the French upon the points A and B in 
Sketch I, and particularly at A, because A was better 
and drier ground and less easily defendable. 
But there was another way of going to work, which, 
as a matter of fact, the Germans chose. 
There runs through the town of Verdun itself and 
across the whole salient an obstacle — the river Meuse. 
It was an obstacle particularly formidable six weeks 
to a month ago from the fact that the river had risen and 
was flowing very rapid!}' and had further flooded great 
portions of its valley. Now imder such circumstances 
the enemy might achieve a prodigious result and possibly 
even get right through the line if, instead of getting 
round behind the salient and trying to pinch its neck oft, 
they were simply to hammer as hard as they could at 
all that part of it which lay exposed beyond the obstacle 
M M, the river Meuse. 
For an army overwhelmed by numbers of men and a 
superior concentration of artillery will normally retire. 
But with an obstacle behind it it cannot retire as it 
would retire upon open country. There will be terrible 
congestion upon the few roads (perhaps a single road 
leading to a single pernianent bridge across the river), 
and upon any temporary bridges it may throw for its 
retirement across the stream. Further, each of these 
bridges and the few roads leading to them and the gates 
leading out of the town and the narrow streets of the 
town (since a road system in time of peace always con- 
verges upon and passes through a town) are exact marks 
which' the air service can discover and which can be 
shelled at fixed ranges by the heavy guns of the attack. 
. A blow delivered with fair rapidity, even if it occupy 
several days in its full development, might well give you 
as a prize nearly all the troops lying beyond the river 
with nearly all their material and guns, and even so 
disorganise all that lav on the far side of the stream as to 
give you a chance of br(>aking through altogether. 
That was undoubtedlv the plan which the Germans 
had made. For they did not strike at the neck of the 
salient by .\ and B"(in Sketch I.) in those first days of 
the action which they intended to-be decisive. They 
struck all round it at "C. C. C. and did, as a fact, get the 
line back to about the line of crosses on diagram I. 
But they did not go anywhere near to pushing it 
back on to the river. Therefore, their plan completely 
failed. .Xnd when this first chapter of the story was 
over they had lost a very much larger number of men than 
they had caused the French to lose. 
This first assault, regarded as one action covering 
about a week (the bombardment opened on the T)th 
of February, the 'first infantry attack wa:; on the 21st, 
and the most violent blow of all, that which got on the 
