LAND & WATER 
April 6, itjif 
THE ENEMY OBJECT AT VERDUN 
By Hilaire Belloo 
THE one question wliirh Wrdnn is suijgcsting 
tliroughout ICuropo now is this : W'liat is the 
(ierman object in continuing tin- attack ? 
Upon Saturday, tiie Kjtii February last, the 
Germans — after a preparation in the way of bringing up 
heavy pieces and accunuilating heavy niunitionni<nl, 
resting tlieir men, training six'cia! bodies, etc., for about 
two months — opened the attack not upon the " I'ortress 
of Verdini," for there is no such thing, but upon tiie 
\'erdun sector of the western front. Tiiey delivered 
on that day upon tlie lines from Malancourt eastward for 
twenty miles, but especially on the eight or nine miles 
between the Mcuse and Ornos, the first shells of an inten- 
sive bombardment. 
Upon ^[onday, February 21st, they launched their 
infantry after the 48 hours' preparatory artillery work 
against this eight to nine mile front : the number of 
divisions employed in this shock being no less than 
fourteen. 
These lines are written upon Tuesday, the 4th of April. 
T-"orty-six days have already elapsed in the pursuit of a 
task which originally — if we may judge by the attempted 
rate of advance upon the one hand and the reasonable 
calculation of delay to French reinforcements upon the 
other — was designed for about four days. 
We all know the changes which have passed over the 
great action and over the conception of the German 
( ieneral Staff in that period. There have been two main 
phases. 
The first shock was intended to crush back the French 
troops beyond the Meuse, and in the heat of that victory 
possibly, or probably, to break the French line imme- 
diately beyond. This original scheme, for which every- 
thing had' been designed, broke down altogether, and 
the uijoment of its failure was the French counter-attack 
on the plateau of Douaumont, a little before noon on 
Saturday, February 26th. 
The battle of Verdun, as the Germans had designed it 
and as their General Staff had conceived its objective, 
was lost within the fust week. 
On the analogy of all the other great offensives launched 
in the course of this war, since the role of heavy artillery 
became clear (the Chaiupagne offensive a year ago, the 
Artois last May, Xeuve Chapelle, the two great attacks 
upon the Warsaw lines. Loos, the great offensive on the 
Tsonzo some w-eeks ago, the French great offensive in 
Champagne, etc.), the German attack should at this point 
have ceased. 
There is a clear reason why it should ha\'e ceased, a 
reason familiar to every student of the war, and a common- 
place in the descriptions given by the higher commands 
of their task. It is simply this ; that these great efforts 
are. against the modern entrenched defensive, so e.\- 
]>ensive in material and in men that you gamble upon a 
rapid breaking of the front (such as has once been effected 
in this war, to wit on the Dunajec last year), and if 
you fail to do that you must cut your losses at once. 
Supposing, for instance, that (ieneral de Castelnau had 
gone on and oil through October against the German lines 
in Champagne in the saiue fashion as that of his first great 
assault on September 23th and 26th. it would have meant 
perhaps half a million of losses and tite jjutting of a very 
large number of guns out of action for scjuie time, as well 
as the squandering of accumulated anununition. J'or no 
Industrial nation can turn out shell at the rate at which 
it is spent in these tremendous efforts. 
But the Germans, having lost their battle in the first 
week, continued the effort in the shape of a new and 
different series of actions. This— that is, all the iin- 
mensely e.xpensive struggle of the last six weeks — is in 
tactical practice and theorv a distinct, novel, and second 
affair. It has been prolonged up to the present moment 
—that is for nearly six weeks — and will probably be 
prolonged for luany days more. This new phase is 
marked by the following cliaracters : 
(I) fhe front which is being attacked is struck here 
and there, not in a general assault but upon \t'ry narrow. 
specially selected fronts : never more than 2,000 yards, 
often only 500. 
(2) Facii of these local actions is prepared with a 
specially intense bombardment, very costly in munitions. 
Each involves the use? of from one division upwards. 
It is very rarely that any of them arc flelivered with less. 
(.;) The special sectors so selected have each a fairly 
obvious tactical value (as will be exjilained in a moment). 
There is no element of surprise. There is a contiiuied 
eft'ort to dri\e in at one of four or five points, each of 
which is ob\iously a jjpint where success would be of 
ultimate \alue to the enemy, and eacli of which the 
I'rench now know by heart. 
'fherefore — as the points are few, specially selected, 
and of narrf)w front — failure upon them does not cause 
the abandonment of the effort. Tlie troops broken at 
the first or the second effort are witiidrawn, new troops 
sent up, and when these are broken in their turn, new 
troops again — and so on. At Vaux, for instance, where 
there is barely room to deploy a division in full strength, 
something like half-a-dozen divisions have been identified, 
if 1 am not mistaken, from first to last ; and it is the same 
with all the other points. 
(3) Against this prolonged system of very intense, very 
dense local attacks, conlined to particular, points upon a 
general line of 30 miles in length, the French oppose 
nothing but what has been well called in one of their 
military phrases, " dynamjc resistance." It is not a 
wall — that metaphor is bad. It is a hot iron against 
which nmch of the attacking material, often all the 
attacking material, melts away. 
(6) Therefore the whole effort has become one quite 
outrageously more expensive in men for the attacking 
side than for the defenders and this question oj com- 
parative expense is the cctpilal factor in the whole matter. 
Modern war like primitive or savage w'ar thus con- 
ducted eats up, not the old, small, renewable armies, 
but the available force of whole nations : not in a genera- 
tion but in a score of months. 
Having got all this clear, let us proceed to the mam 
question which has puzzled all observers in this war : 
the German conception lying behind this prolonged 
action. \\'hat is their object in going on for forty days 
and more after failing in their initial effort ? 
I have said that this cjuestion is the capital question of 
the moment. It is one I cannot presume to answer : 
no one can enter the enemy's mind. To do so thoroughh' 
in any military conflict would be to ensure victory : 
conjecture alone is possible. But one thing is clear. 
There is an immediate objective — which is self-evidently 
insuflicient — and there is an ultimate one. The imme- 
diate objective anyone can see. The Germans are 
obviously trying to get troops into the geographical area 
marked by the houses of Verdun. To gi\'e their eft'ort 
more meaning by changing the phrase, to call it " taking 
Verdim," for instance, would be misleading. There is 
nothing to take. They are not dealing with a fortress 
'ilicy ii-e not in\esting a beleaguered anuy. I'hcy are 
trying to compel the retireiuent of troops upon a par- 
ticular sectiT of the front from lines they at present 
occupy to lines some miles further east. In the process 
they could put their troo])s into the area of Verdun — 
and no luore. They are continuing in such effort because 
they believe that it will not cost them more in armed 
men than the ultimate result will cost the French. For 
\ictory only means the disarming of one's enemy in so 
nuich greater proportion than one's own troops are 
disarmed during the process, that he will at last fall intc 
a hopeless inferiority and give up the struggle. 
What is that ultimate result which the enemy sees af 
the consequence of a mere French retirement bcyont 
Verdun ? 
fhat second main question is the undecided kernel ol 
the whole thing. Before approaching it let us answei 
the first and much simpler point : the manner of th< 
attack and its cost. 
When wr have 'studied how the enemv is trving to reacf 
