March 23, 1916. 
LAND AND WATER. 
Tuesday and the Thursday advanced machine-gun-posts 
l)y the French. Fur at least one of the German hues as 
it charged was enfiladed. 
Tin; great mass of the attack broke, the whistles 
.sounded, and a retirement was ordered back again into 
the wood, suffering heavily as it ran. On Friday, St. 
Patrick's day, there was nothing but an artillery duel. 
No further German infantry upon the Mort Homme 
being attempted. 
Up to the Friday right, then, the sum total of the 
German effort was as follows. The Mort Homme posi- 
tion, which is the object of the whole business, and the 
loss of which would mean the loss of a French hrst 
covering line, was intact and securely held. The space 
between the Crows' Wood and the French main trench 
lying across the shoulder-hummock called " 265 " was 
a no man's land. But the enemy retained two vvvy small 
advance points in two separate sections projecting from 
the French main trench just under hill " 265 " Tiiese 
by this time, it is to be presumed, are not isolated, but 
communicate with the main German body by one or two 
communication trenches. 
After nightfall of that same Thursday last, March 
16th, the Germans directed yet another attack against the 
extreme opposite wing of the defence twelve miles off at 
Vaux. It was launched at about 8 o'clock in the evening, 
and consisted in live separate movements. 
Two of these movements were successive assaults 
to carry the ruins of the village of Vaux beyond the 
church. Botli were completely broken up. It will be 
remembered that the Germans reached the church and 
the ruins of the three or four houses east of it ten days 
ago. Their attempt to carry the rest of the ruins is made 
with the object of following up the ravine and taking 
both the Douaumont and tlic Vaux heights in reverse, 
l.ong before midnight the fighting in the ravine was over 
without a gain of a yard of ground to the enemy. 
Domxuniotit 
--■ ■ » 
w-J 
^E 
t 
Trench Line ^ 
1000 3.000 3000^^''tOS 
Scale 
Meanwhile during that same darkness three separate 
assaults were being made upon the he'ghts south of the 
village with the object of reaching the crest on which the 
abandoned fort of Vaux stands. The two first of these 
were broken up altogether imder the searchlights and 
the star shells. A third attack did not even develop 
fully. The concentration was made apparently in the 
turn of the road just east of the cemetery at Vaux, which 
is here sunk below the level of the fields and forms a sort 
of natural trench or hollow way. The forces gathered 
there were discovered just as they began to dcbijuch 
and were broken uj), mainly by h'rench lield gun lire. 
F^riday, Saturday and Sunday found another lull. 
But the Saturday afternoon and Sunday the general 
bombardment grew more intense towards Avocourt, well 
west of the Mort Homme, and on Monday, the 20th, the 
Germans — in what numbers or at what < xpense we do not 
yel kno v — seized tlie fringe of the Avoronrt wo<m1, till then 
in French ha ids. As I ha\-e already pointed out, this 
advance of their's slightly emphasised the Bethincourt — 
Avocourt salient and brought them a trifle nearer to the 
back of hill 304, and so to an ultimate turning of the Mort 
Homme by the west. But the whole meaning of the 
move is only to be estimated in comparative loss of men, 
and of that we know notliing yet. There the attack 
stands at the last advices. 
The New German Tone 
There is not only a new tone in the falsehoods of 
the German communiques, but there is also a new tone 
observable in those rare independent comments upon the 
war to be discovered in the German Press. That Press, 
as a whole, has been contemutible in its miUtary conmient 
from first to last ; largely Ixjcausc the most of it is not 
(ierman at all but owned and run by cosmopolitan 
financiers— the worst example is the Cologne Gazette* 
But amongst the exceptions to this nonsense we have 
continually noted the sober learning and often accurate 
prediction of the military critic of the Berhn daily journal, 
the TageUcM. This paper is also financial and cosmo- 
politan in ownership and direction, but that has not 
prevented its using the services of a very capable man. 
Now it is significant that this student of the war for 
the first time, I think, in twenty months, has lashed out 
like any nervous or sensational hack. He tells the 
military students of the Allies that they are stuffed 
pigs (a fair translation of the French slang " bouche.") 
He swears that nothing was further from the intentions of 
the German commanders than a political effect, he insists 
that the whole object of the great offensive against Verdun 
sector was not the. occupation of certain areas, but the 
defeat of, the breaking of, the F'rench army, and he 
ends by prophesying success in that venture. 
Now to prophecy success on the western front as 
though one knew the future is excusable, though laugh- 
able, when it is made in the neutral press to order, whether 
to influence credit or policy. Bernhardi, for instance, 
said def'n'tely in so many words in an American paper 
some months ago that the next German move would be 
the breaking of the French line and the consequent 
" over-running of France." Serious students of war 
pay no attention to such rubbish. It is absolutely im- 
possible to foretell the future. It is possible only to show 
what future alternatives are present and possible and 
what are not. Still the boasting has some effect on 
neutrals. 
But the fact that the best and most capable of the 
German military writers in the German Press should be 
now stung to exaggeration or folly is very significant 
indeed, and the cause is very simple. The cause is 
" Verdun." For unless the French fine is broken the 
whole of Europe can see— let alone a conspicuously 
able writer upon military affairs like the critic of the 
Beriin Tageblatt—that the failure is a really bad strategic 
defeat. It was a deliberate gamble from the beginning, 
it was a gamble deliberately continued, and it was a 
gamble with a very large fraction of the remaining avail- 
able capital. Gambles of that sort when they fail have 
a way of becoming turning points in military ventures. 
Note 
I have been asked by correspondents what the evi- 
dence is for the generally accepted figures that tiie 
German army permanently maintain nearer four millions 
than three and a half, and further why I have ridiculed 
the statement that the wastage of an English infantry 
battalion is 15 per cent, per month. 
To these queries I should reply, that one's estimate 
of the German army i)ermanently maintained is based 
upon the very reasonable supposition that the forces per 
unit are kept up to full strength, and that auxiliary 
services cannot be less than three-quarters of a million of 
men and probably nearer the million. Though no new 
formations have, I belio\'e, been voted for more than a 
year, the existing units discovered and fixed upon the two 
fronts would allow for German forces there (excluding 
Austro-Hungarian, of course) of not less than three 
million men, distributed, very roughly speaking, and 
allowing, of cou'-se, for special concentration now on the 
east and now on the west, in the j^roportion of about two- 
• I'or instance, the German edort.s on the Verdun front arc now 
compared in the German Press to " Sebastopol." in order to explain 
their length and inordinate expenditure. You might as well compare 
Austerhtz to Killiecrankic. 
