April 20, 1916 
LAND & W A T J:; K 
^ 
of their opeiatiuiis. It profoundly affected opinion at 
liome and abroad. 
How does \'crdun stand in this fifth category ? What 
economic, pohtical, strategic importance has it ? 
Economically it is worthless. 
Politically it is what we ha\e seen it to be : A place 
with an old reputation of being a fortress and a place upon 
which the eyes of the world have become fixed. It is a 
place the occupation of which would have an immense 
effect upon German opinion and a very great one upon 
neutral opinion. I will not deny that its occupation 
would have its effect upon instructed belligerent opinion 
as well. It is regrettable that this should be the case, 
but it is true. You cannot have the enemy tr5'ing to do 
a thing for weeks, even if the military value of that thing 
be doubtful, without his success impressing all opinion, 
even that of those whose business and capacity it is to 
isolate the purely military problem from all others. The 
phrase, " The Defence of Verdun " has become current 
witli the Allies. It is even occasionally implied in French 
orders of the day. 
What of tlie strategical value ? , 
The slight salient of Verdun comes at an importai^t 
point in the general line. It threatens directly one of the 
main (ierman communications, that through Metz, and it 
threatens almoL,t equally that through Lu.xemburg. 
It lies upon the Hank of that great German salient, the 
ape.x of which stands near Noyon. A French advance from 
this point in the future would jeopardise the German line 
if it could be made before that line were retired. The lines 
before \'erdun, the " corner " which the trenches here 
turn, is an offence to the enemy's plan. If it were wholly 
eliminated, if the French line had for the future to be 
drawn from the Argonne right down to opposite St. 
Mihiel, the Germans would be in a better posture. The 
mere occupation of the town of Verdun would effect no- 
thing like so much as that, but it would lose to the French 
something of the advantage hitherto given them by a 
bridgehead beyond the central Meuse. It would give 
the Germans the whole line of that river. To that extent 
there is a purely military object in the defence of the 
mere town. But it is not a capital object, it does not 
seriously affect the campaign. An advance (when the 
enemy is sufiiciently weakened) that should start from a 
few miles to the west or even to the south, would not be 
rendered impossible by the loss of the point of Verdun. 
Indeed, the great offensive of last September was at- 
tempt/i fifty miles away to the west. Still, the point has 
that amount of military importance, and it must be 
admitted. 
There is then reason here for the German offensive, 
and there is in some degree leason for the French defen- 
sive too ; I mean for its character and for its continued 
presence in jront of the little town. 
But the whole thing still remains a question of price. 
And the enemy has already paid a far higher price than 
the slight strategic advantage is worth. It is equally 
true that the French, by their strictly defensive tactics, are 
doing nuich more than merely defending tlie area of 
Verdun. I j they thought the msrc holding of Verdun a great 
essential, they could with their superSoiity of numbers 
design a very different fight. 
It is not conceivable" that the mere tenure of lines a 
few thousand yard;; in front of Verdun determines the 
French plan. It has another object and, so far as I can 
sec, that object is to compel the enemy to pay the very 
highest price for what the F"rcnch conceive to have been 
an error upon the part of his higher command. 
Sliort of that the metiujds adopted would seem to lose 
their military meaning. 
Consider wiial thos'- methods have been and then com- 
l>are then with the resources of the Allies. 
'I'he French through all these eight weeks have either 
retired very slowly or have been content to hold a pure 
defensive. Upon very rare occasions they have launched 
a local counter-offensive for the temporary regaining of 
one small point, which the local command found necessary 
to the j-ilans of the moment. They have never — with all 
their advantage in numbers — attcmptf^d a permanent 
regaining of ground. In the main, the whole thing has 
been, since February 26th, a series of deliberate and 
cautious retirements, coupled with an equally deliberate 
and lengthy stand upon chosen sections of line. They 
gave up all the ad\anced positions in the Woevre without 
reinforcing them, and before suffering serious pressure. 
They held Malancourt with one battalion against pretty 
well any odds, sacrificed the greater part of that battalion, 
did not reinforce it, ordered its remnant to fall back. 
Earlier they dealt in precisely the same way with the 
advanced post of Forges. They hold the eastern end of 
the Goose Crest with a comparatively small force, and 
allow it to receive the ultimately successful assault of a 
whole division. Only when an enemy advance threatens 
the continuity of the forward lines which for the moment 
they oppose to that advance, do they spend men in the 
temporary recovery of the area involved. And whenever 
they design such a recovery they invariably effect it. It 
was so with that last corner of the Avocourt Wood which 
laps up on to the first slopes of Hill 304. It was so with the 
Crows' Wood, six weeks ago ; it was so with the ruins of 
Vaux and the Caillettes Wood a fortnight ago. In the one 
case c f the Douamuont Plateau when there was a moment 
of real danger, at the very beginning of the operations, 
there was a really considerable expenditure involved in the 
recovery of a critical point. But take the thing in the 
mass and it is everywhere a strict defensive very slowly 
retiring before, for long periods immobile before, a succes- 
sion of violent and repeated movements. And all this 
is doneiaith forces superior in number, easily equal in 
machinery and munitionmcnt to the attack. 
That last is the capital point of the whole busines* 
If the Allies in the west were inferior in number, if 
their nmnitionment was now inferior or the handling of 
their artillerj' worse than the enemy's, or the quality of 
their troops lower than his, the thing would have a very 
different meaning. As things are with our knowledge of 
the numbers available, with our knowledge of the way in 
which the French maintain a continual rotation of fresh 
troops, with our knowledge of their consistent exposure of 
the very minimum number of men in advanced posts, it 
seems impossible to draw any other conclusion upon their 
method than that which is drawn here. This strange and 
highl}' disciplined anchoring of the Allies to a pure 
defensive ; this refusal to create a diversion though there 
has been ample time for that. This absolutely consistent 
" blocking " for now eight weeks without so much as the 
sign of " lashing out " can surely only have one meaning. 
It is designed to exhaust. I hav^e seen no other tenable 
hypothesis put forward. There may be one, but it is 
certainly not apparent. 
False Enemy Figures 
I know that I ha\'e had some difficulty in persuading a 
small but important minority of students of the war that 
figures officially issued by the German publicity buteaux 
are false. 
I have had here the same difficulty which one finds 
right through this campaign of combating a mood. 
Even positive evidence frequently repeated finds this 
sort of obstacle refractory. 
This mood of patient confidence in the enemy's loyal 
accuracy, in spite of his most glaringly obvious motives 
for being inaccurate in order to affect domestic and foreign 
opinion , is partly composed of a long established faith in 
(ierman pedantry and partly due to something which 
the enemy has very carefully thought out : the effect ol 
apparently minute detail in convincing people of the truth 
of something false. The plaj^wright Gilbert noted tliis 
piece of psychology long ago and spoke of such details as 
" adding \erisimilitude to an otherwise bald and uncon- 
vincing narrati\'e." 
I have dealt with this mood in the matter of the Gennan 
casualty lists over and over again. 
I ))ropose this week to bring forward a piece of evidence 
which is absolutely conclusive in another field if the rules 
of arithmetic have any value. 
I refer to the German lists of umcounded French 
prisoners taken before Verdun upon certain dates. 
A brief note has already appeared upon this in the Press 
but a detailed analysis will be of more value. 
When a force retires there is, over and above the killed 
and wounded who have been noted or brought back with 
the retirement, a much larger number of "missing"; 
because the men who. have fallen, killed or wounded, are 
as to a great number of them left where they fall, while 
a certain number will have been taken unvvoundcd by 
the enemy. The ground being subsequently occupied by 
