LAND & ^^' A T E R 
May 4, 191C 
THE BATTLE OF VERDUN IS WON 
By Hilaire Belloc 
IT is characteristic of this tremendous war that from 
its very scale we miss its pr(3portions. Things near 
to lis, either in sentiment or in mere distance, 
become grotesquely exaggerated, and what is 
equally natural and equally a vice in judgment, things 
limited in the scale of time are also distorted. Something 
which happens (piirkly and sharply appears far greater 
than it is. Something long drawn out grows stale in the 
mind and is forgotten. 
The local disturbance, which you may call at will a 
very serious riot or a small local rebellion, costs in DubHn 
casualties that do not reach four figures. A garrison, 
the British elements of which were not 3,000 men — not a 
mile of the Western front — surrenders. The two events 
fill the public mind, and there are even some who, in the 
midst of so tremendous a struggle for national existence 
find the occasion useful for the working of personal 
intrigues and the advance of petty individual ambitions 
in professional politics. 
Meanwhile the greatest battle ever fought, an action 
with consequences that will affect the whole future of man- 
kind almost as much as the original victory of the Marne, 
has been won by the French upon the sector of Verdun. 
Put down the mere figures of this past action^ — by far 
the greatest in scale, whether we consider the numbers of 
men, or the munitionment, or the time employed that 
has ever taken place in the recorded history of the world 
— and see what they signify. Verdun means to the 
enemy a loss over and above the loss he has inflicted 
upon his opponent, certainly of four army corps, pro- 
bably of five. It means the sacrifice of those numbers 
at the most critical moment of all, when he has already 
called upon the whole of one of his last two classes 
and is beginning to call upon the last of all. It means 
that an effort on which he had concentrated the whole 
of his available resources, for which he had spent some 
months in preparation, in which he had such confidence 
that he risked open declarations of victory and deliberate 
and definite prophecies of success, has resulted for him in 
a bloody and irreparable defeat. 
Moral Effect on Germany 
It means upon the moral side that all his millions 'at 
home who have read in a thousand daily sheets the official 
statements rejjeated day after day in a thousand forms, 
have now to know that those statements were false, and 
that the confidence based upon them must be abandoned. 
No public, however stupid, or however nervously exalted, 
can read day after daj* that an obje'tt is in process of attain- 
ment and then find it abandoned, without suffering a very 
serious moral effect indeed. No one knows this better 
than the British public, which has had to suffer such 
things in connection with subsidiary expeditions in 
this war. What would it be if a disappointment of this 
sort had attached, not to a subsidiary expedition but to 
what was rightly regarded as the main operation of the 
whole campaign ? 
There are, of course, other reasons, beside its mere 
scale in time and numbers which prevents the profound 
significance of Verdun from receiving full recognition in 
this countrj'. The authorities here neglect to issue those 
regular statements of the general position of which the 
I'rench now give such excellent models. The silliest 
(ierman lie goes uncorrected and the enemy is naturally 
tempted to increase the effect which he rightlj' judges 
attaches to falsehoods about the number of prisoners he 
takes and grotesquely belittling his own casualties. 
Further, you cannot expect lay opinion to be as much 
struck by the victory of a successful defensive as it is 
by a forward movement upon the map. 
If a couple of (ierman corps had got themselves sur- 
rounded in the Balkans, let us say, and had had to lay 
down their arms after an action costing the Allies an almost 
equal number of casualties, we should have had the wildest 
excitement in the press and a public impression of victory 
such as we have not had since the beginning of the war. 
Verdun, wliich is something three times as big as that, 
three times as large a success for us, has no such effect 
upon the imagination. 
Yet one may presume that with the passage of a few 
weeks the great news will begin to be digested, and if not 
the full meaning of Verdim, yet at least its colossal pro- 
portions will begin to receive their due. When the time 
comes for the offensive {and when movement appears 
upon the map) the very obvious fact that Verdun will 
have laid the foundations for all the concluding phases 
of the war will not escape the general eye. 
One can write thus strongly about this tremendous 
and decisi\'e battle, because, although the enemy con- 
tinues the same dull business of breaking his own head 
and has not yet begun to mask the nature of his failure 
by the undertaking of another in adifferent field, military 
judgment throughout the world, not only with tlie 
French command, which has full intelligence of the 
enemy's movements, but in the matter written to order 
throughout the German press, confirms one in the con- 
viction that the great offensive upon the salient of Verdun 
has reached its turn and has ended in disaster for the 
enemy. 
The Last Great Attack 
The mere chain of dates leads one to that conclusion. 
These words are written upon the and cf May. It was 
upon the 9th of April that the enemy launched his men 
upon the last of his general assaults. It was an attack 
second only in scale to that of the first four days, now 
ten weeks gone, upon which he staked his future. It 
was utterly defeated, and on the evening of that Sunday 
the General commanding the French troops in the sector 
of Verdun issued his Order of the Day, telling them that 
they could now be confident that the victory was won. 
Already ten days earlier, when the decline in quality 
of the German attack had become clear, the critic whoso 
judgment carries most weight in Europe, Colonel Feyler, 
had risked the words, " the French have won the battle 
of Verdun." There has followed since that disaster 
of theirs upon the gth of April no enemy effort com- 
parable to it. A week later came what was certainh' 
a considerable bid for the Mort Homme, defeated again, 
of course, in what had become a regular routine ; but since 
that date for more than a fortnight, those who (including 
the present writer) still expected a further general de- 
velopment, have only seen the enemy's effort die down. 
We are upon the seventeenth day from that Monday when 
he last attacked in any strength and during all that 
interval we have had no more than purely local offensives 
easily dealt with and delivered with apparently no hope 
of success. 
Strategic Victory 
Even at this date it is not possible to say that the enemy 
will not go on again. We must pray that he may — ■ 
and the longer the better. Prussian stupidity and 
Prussian vanity, its colleague, are here our powerful 
allies — and they rarely fail us. There may be domestic 
reasons too for his continuing to bleed himself to death. 
He may yet find himself under some political necessity, 
or suffering from the command of some authority, 
not wholly military, and thus be condemned to lose 
another thirty thousand or so in the continuation of his 
blunder. It is unlikely, because the situation has become 
quite obvious and glaring, but it is possible. It is also 
indifferent to the general result of the campaign. The 
battle of Verdun is won. And Verdun can certainly go 
down to history as the greatest example of woodenness 
in strategical judgment that any command has evei 
afforded. 
Only the future can show what the fruits will be, but 
we know already what they should be. And when the 
harvesting of them begins we owe it to those who died 
between Vaux and Avocourt to call them more than any 
other men the victors of the great war. 
