L A X D cS: W A T E R 
AFav IT, lorr) 
no development of heavj' artillery action against any 
new part of the front. 
It is perfectly clear from these six points that the 
enemy was doinp no more than continuing an attack 
which he knew to be, in a military sense, already a failure. 
It is comparable to his last efforts against Ypres in the 
second week of November, 1914. If he hoped at all for 
a miracle at the end of his effort he would at least have 
concentrated the largest possible body and made his last 
blow as strong as it could be. Just as in front of Ypres, 
at the end of that tremf-ndous effort he put forward for 
the close what he believed to be his best troops, on that 
occasion the tiuards, on this occasi(m jjicked regiments. 
Just as in front of Ypres, he admitted failure at the end of 
such a sacrirtce. Again, just as at Ypres. he attempted 
nothing novel towards the end of his last action. I'ov 
that matter you have another still more striking parallel 
in the case of the Grand Couronne, at the beginning of the 
war, where, having laid his plan for an attack in force 
upon a defensive position, and having tried, now here, now 
there, along its length to obtain a decision, 1»' struck during 
the last days exactly where he had been striking beforr, 
without any attempt at surprise or at maU'euvrc. 
Apparently his calculations luul been too minute or his 
confidence in subordinate command ton doubtful to j^ht- 
mit of change. Hut there is this great difference between 
Ypres and (irand Couronne on the one hand and Verdmi 
upon the other, that the (irand Couronne lasted a week, 
Ypres three weeks. Verdun has lasted eleven. 
There were lulls before the last Hicker of the failure at 
Ypres. There were lulls of a day or a day and a half or 
two days. Earlier, at the Grand Couronne, there had 
been lulls of half a day, or a few hours. Here at Verdun 
there has been a lull of something like a month in major 
operations and of a fortnight even in minor operations. 
What does all that mean ? 
It means in the first place, that Verdun has been upon 
such a scale as would seem to prove the enemy's deter- 
mination to stake all upon it. 
Opinion is divided as to whether he can find the re- 
sources for one more great offensi\-e before he reluctantly 
determines upon a concentration of strength and the 
admitted entry into the last phase of the war. Class 
1917 has not yet been used on a large scale by him, so 
far as (iermany is concerned (it has all been called up in 
Austria). Class 1016 alone has been absorbed. He yet 
has to call upon class icjiS, which has been warned in 
Austria, but which has not, I believe, yet been warned in 
North (iermany. There has been a rumour of its being 
warned, but no more. He may have the material left 
in his own judgment for one more throw. At any rate, 
this continued return to the Verdun sector without any 
rearrangement of heavy guns, and at increasingly long 
inten'als for recuperation, shows upon what a scale he 
had planned his attempted success — and gives us a 
measure of his corresponding failure. 
The next point the affair suggests, is this : 
Was not an effort, so futile in the military sense (it 
has been futile for weeks), connected with the enemy's 
present political demand for peace } 
The Enemy Demand for Peace 
That the enemy does now desire some spectacular 
fffect in connection with his demand for peace cannot be 
doubted by any careful observer of the war. I do not 
mean his general demand — that has been in progress 
ever since last October, when hej knew that he was at 
the maximum of his territorial expansion in the East, 
when he had just failed to obtain his decision against 
the Russians at \'ilna. and when he threatened if the 
advances he had made were not favonrably received to 
raise the East against lis ; when, I may add, he very 
thoroughly frightened a certain section of our own press, 
which, upon his futile advance in the Bcdkans, published 
maps showing the imminence of a triinnphant (German 
march upon India and Egypt. That he has thought an 
inconclusive peace necessary to him has been clear from 
at least that date, even in his open manoeuvres; his 
private advances when the history of the thing is written 
will be conclusive evidence. 
But, 1 now refer to the particular demand which he is 
certainly making at this moment. 
We liave evidence of that uarticnlar demand in several 
places. It is set down in black and white in the Note to 
America. It appears in the rumours set afloat with 
regard to the intervention of the Vatican ; but m uch 
more clearly docs it appear in the German press which 
is controlled and in part written by the political authori- 
ties of the country. The whole tone of that press may 
be summed up in the words which one of the so-called 
" Socialist deputies " (called by their comrades " the 
tame men," who act as go-betweens for the Government), 
used probably upon Government order " neither-side can 
now win this war." 
Exactly the same note has been struck by a man 
who is upon the whole the ablest of the paid agents in 
the service of Prussia, the Poli.sh Jew Witowski, better 
known to the public of this country under the convenient 
alias of " Maximihen Harden." 
This man is invaluable to the German authorities in 
the r6le of the " candid friend." He has been theatrically 
" exiled," so that men may say, " he at least is indepen- 
dent." He has returned, and the German censorship 
prints his repeated declarations that the war is really 
getting very horrible, and that the time has come for it to 
stop. Nothing of that sort passed the censor at Spandau. or 
to be more accurate, nothing of that sort proceeded from 
his office, when the .Allies were still in doubt of victory ! 
The German communiques themselves are illuminating 
in this connection, especially those which concern the 
last o{)erations in front of Verdun. They are directly 
calculated to affect neutral and domestic civilian opinion 
even at the expense of hurting their own side in the eyes 
of the soldiers opposed to them. What other possible 
meaning can there be in the use of calculatedly false 
jihrases like " we hold the height." when they do not 
happen to hold the summit? What is the "sense of 
saying that their troops are in a particular position when 
no one knows better than the Command opposed to them 
that they are not in that position. 
Or take again the remarks upon the French rotation of 
troops in front of Verdun. If there is one thing of which 
an offensive should be proud and upon which in a military 
sense it should insist if it wants to show that it is winning, 
it is surely the exhaustion of the defence. 
In such a defence as that of Verdun, where there is no 
investment and where the defending troops are known 
to be superior in number to the attack, the power to 
refresh those troops by continual rotation is an essential 
test of the strength the defensive has at its dipsosal. 
Where on earth is the point of noting the case with which 
the French can thus use fresh troops in rotation if it is 
not to impress uninistructed opinion with the idea that 
the lo.sses of such a defensive are actually higher than 
the losses of the corresponding offensive ? There may 
be opinion so uninstructed that it is capable of 
entertaining that idea. Probably the German Intelli- 
gence Department, or at any rate the German Publicity 
Bureaux is acquainted with such sections of opinion, 
or it would not waste energy in playing upon them. 
But what a confession ! To be reduced to impressing 
the kind of people who think that a defensive easily 
drawing upon 50 divisions for short periods of strain is 
weaker than an offensive using j2 divisions subjected to 
impossible strains on the offence, broken, recruited, sent 
forward again, broken again in nearly three months of a 
hopeless effort ! 
It is conceivable that the enemy in his present effort 
for peace is not uninfluenced by noting that sort of false 
news, or false emphasis upon true news, in the AUied press 
which arises out of domestic intrigue or political am- 
bition. 
A curious example of the way in which opinion can 
thus be misled, was afforded .some" Httle time ago by the 
publication in the Times of the General Staff Map estab- 
lishing the German units in front of the British line in 
France. 
The map was accurate, and people concluded from it as 
they vyere meant to conclude— that in spite of all the 
enemy's efforts upon the Verdun sector he had been under 
no necessity to draw men from parts of his line to the 
north of that sector. On the other hand, the French 
command in front of the Verdun sector had identified 
the presence of divisions undoubtedly drawn from 
northern portions of the line and even from in front of 
the British. 
How is this discrepancy accounted for > 
