April 6, 1916 
LAND &WATER 
Verdun and how far he is succeeding and at ^vhat rate, 
we can turn to thc^ much more tundamental aspect of 
the question — why he sfiould desire to effect this change 
and at what cost he seems prepared to pursue it. 
The present method of attaining the 
immediate object 
Tlie s'jctor of tiie Western front witii wliich the enemy 
is deahng is a sahent not ver\- prominent and of the 
N character expressed in the details of Sketch I. 
If the reader will look at this Sketch I he will see that 
the line, starting at the edge of the Argonne at Boueillcs 
and curving round to a point within a mile of St. Mihicf 
upon the Meuse, stands forward at its most extreme point 
about 14 English miles beyond the nearest point which the 
line would occupy if it were normally drawn instead of 
forming a salient. In other words, the extreme depth of 
the salient is 14 miles. Its width across what would be 
the neck of it, if it were a salient more defined, but to 
which it is rather ridiculous to apply that metaphor in so 
very slightly pronounced a bulge, is just over .50 English 
miles. 
StlVtthid 
If the enemy can get the hne back to the river Meuse 
above Verdun, and if he can get it back behind Verdun 
itself, he will apparently have effected his immediate 
design 
It sounds sillv. It seems, at first sight, to have rio 
very definite military meaning, I know. But- that is 
quite clearly what he is doing, and we must examine 
later why he is doing it. 
Now tiiis being clearly the object in the enemy's mind, 
whether wise or unwise, what does it suggest to the 
French as the object they should aim at ? The answer 
is obvious. The weak point in the enemy's scheme is 
that he is trying to get something of debatable value 
at a price which must be exceedingly high, and which 
mav pro\-e disastrously too high. It is the object of the 
French to make him pay the very highest price possible. 
So long as he ])a\s that price territory — within reason, 
territory of 'a fe\v miles breadth— matters nothing. If 
the enemy captures at an expense of 20,000 men, a few 
acres which can lead to nothing more, save a similar 
small advance sc\-c;ral days later at a similar cost, the 
In-ench merely consider the difference between his losses 
and theirs as a price ]5aid. And his losses are normally 
from four to four and a half times theirs. If the few 
acres which he captures would from tlieir position lead to 
some immediate and more important result — for instance, 
if they include a dominating height for observation or 
make dangerously narrow the neck of a salient, or give 
some other advantage which might immediately procure 
fmllier and much larger results -then it is worth while 
lowering the [jruportion of loss ; in other words, it is worth 
while in that particular instance to counter-attack and to 
rciover what vou have lost even if in so doing you lose 
not the usual quarter or fifth, but half as many men as 
your opponent, or even more. Such -counter-attacks 
have been the exception in the long story of these six 
weeks, e\x'r since the (iermans reached upon the east of 
ihe Meuse the main defences and ever since they began 
upon the west of the Jleuse their long struggle for the 
Mort Homme. 
We must remember in all this that the great war is 
novel in nothing so much as in its scale ; both of time and 
of ninnbers. 
It is within measurable distance of exhausting; the 
]K)wers of certain of the chief combatants ; it has more 
nearly exhausted the powers of the Central Empires than 
it has those of the Allies — even of the French. It permits 
by its mere continuation and by the mere further ex- 
liausting of the (\'ntral Empires of a reserve of man- 
power coming in from this country, from Italy and from 
Russia. Therefori' in any sober judgment the debate 
nmst be a debate on numbers, as has been said here a 
hundred times ; and the (".crnian Empire in particular, 
whenever it gives us an opportunity to bleed it will, in 
the bleeding of it, give us ultimate results of exactly the 
same character as the more dramatic and vivid results 
obtained in a local rapid and dccisi\e action. 
We have, then, the French noting the enemy's deter- 
mination to occupy a certain geographical area and his 
readiness to spend a very large number of men in the 
process : a very large excess indeed over the correspond- 
ing French losses : an excess of, say, 4 or 4.I to one. 
He is deliberately spending this capital for a future 
return : an ultimate purpose still to be discussed. We 
have the French therefore doing everything not to keep 
the Germans out of the geographical area called " Ver- 
dun," emphatically not to do anything so meaningless in a 
military sense, but making him pay just the very maximum 
price possible ; and the test of the price is the contrast 
between his losses and theirs. \\'e have the enemy, for 
whatever reasons, pounding steadily a.way in his desire 
ultimately — apparently at a calculated but exceedingly 
high price — to occupy that area. Let lis ask first what 
tactical method the enemy is pursuing to achieve that 
result. 
The method he is pursuing is the one with which his 
former work on the eastern front has made us familiar, 
the creation of salients, or the attacking of particular 
salients already existing and the attempt to flatten out 
such salients, each such attempt when successful in- 
volving the occupation of the area the salient formed. 
Now it is quite clear on a mere inspection of the broad- 
est points on the map that the salient of Verdun is not of 
a pronounced kind. There is no hope whatsoever of 
*' cutting it off at the neck." Indeed, as I have said, there • 
is no " neck," properly speaking, at all ; there is, rather, 
a very broad base thirty miles long, across which, even 
before the attack began, fairly good lines of supply ran. 
and w'liich now, with innumerable newly-hardened and 
even newly-constructed roads and many light railways 
can feed any number of men and guns at the fighting 
front. 
Upon Sketch Map I we see the main double lines of 
railway of normal gauge, the northern one from Ste. 
Menehould to Verdun, being the main line from Paris to 
Metz and Central Germany, the southern one through 
Revigny and Bar-le-Duc being the main line from Paris to 
Southern Germany and Vienna by way of Strasbourg. 
While the lateral line joining Revigny and St. Jlenehould, 
connecting them to the northern of thesQ two lines, is 
at all points vulnerable to long range fire, the southern is 
immune. There are further light railways (one metre 
gauge) shown upon tlie Sketch. There is a whole net- 
work of excellent roads to which others have been added 
in the last few weeks, and many new 60 centimetre gauge 
field railways serving the front in every direction. The 
three great railheads, as the French have told us, and as 
is indeed obvious, are Ste. Menehould. Revigny and Bar- 
le-Duc, and from them munitions and .stores, and even 
reinforcements, when the\- are needed, pour into the fight- 
ing front. 
But while the enemy can hope for nothing by attacking 
the existing corners of the salient he can effect something 
by flattening out one after the other the smaller subsidiary 
salients appearing upon the general trace of the front and 
so getting nearer to and further threatening Verdun 
itself ; since wc continue to premise that his immediate 
