June I, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
order to " hook on " the enemy and make it impossible 
for him to stop his continued ruinously expensive and 
futile attack. 
It may be so. But I believe if one could get into the 
mind of the German General Staff one would find that the 
motives of the enemy's action were mainly based upon 
his own initiative. I believe that he is attacking of his 
own will for the most part. I believe from the long lulls 
with which he has interrupted the action that he could 
still break it off altogether without disaster. And I 
consider that this motive of his is made up of certain 
ingredients the proportion between which it is difficult 
for us to judge, but the presence of all of which we can 
confidently assume 
It is certain that among the ingredients of the enemy's 
thesis are : — - 
(i) The conception that the continued losses of the 
French though realtively far lighter than his own will ulti- 
mately shake French moral. 
(2) That the moral of his own army requires of the 
enemy the actual entry of German troops into the geo- 
graphical area called Verdun, or failing that the con- 
tinued advance at no matter what cost and no matter 
how slowly, from one point of territory to another upon 
the sector of Verdun. 
(3) That not only does the German army require such 
moral stistenance, but that the German domestic opinion 
also requires it. 
(4) That neutral opinion would be affected particu- 
larly in countries not military but economically powerful, 
by the " taking " of Verdun town and is in some degree 
aifected by the fact that the Cicrman armies in this sector 
advance from point to point. For one lay civilian ob- 
server who considers the nature of the offensive and the 
defensive and is acquainted with the now rapidly decHning 
man power of Germany, there are a thousand whose 
estimate of success or failure is simply a movement upon 
the map, however slight. 
I say that these ingredients in various proportions make 
up the (ierman thesis ; and of these it is clear thai the first 
is by far the most important. The Germans must believe 
that the continued strain, no matter at what cost to 
themselves, is likely to (?xhaust French civilian endurance 
and military vigour. He may be quite wrong. Per- 
sonally I believe him to be quite wrong. But my point is 
that he is working for a moral effect of which the chief 
part will be experienced, he imagines, in France itself. 
Upon the other side the French thesis is what we have 
so often described : That so long as the enemy continues 
under this erroneous impression h.e is playing the game 
of the Allies. 
Now it is very important, it we are to judge the value 
of eithci thesis, to discover what the nature of the enemy's 
sacrifice is. With this object I have given in detail the 
story of the third Corps, and I think the enemy's immense 
sacrifices may further be understood by considering the 
thing as a whole 
It is clear upon general principles that an offensive 
thus conducted win always lose very many more men than 
the defensive opposecT to it. Each party suffers roughly 
the same losses from artillery pounding before movement 
and the moment movement takes place the attacking 
party loses out of all proportion to the defence. 
\\'hcn movement has ceased the attacking party suiters 
again in 'one of two ways. Either he fails to enter any 
portion of the positions of the defence, in which case his 
swarm flows back suffering terribly heavy punishment 
from the opponent's artillery ; or he makes good, but 
makes good upon a spot u'kich the heavy guns behind his 
opponent's line have to a yard and immediately deluge with 
ivhat the French call " crushing fire." The offensive has 
not the same advantage against the defenders because the 
line upon which the greater part will retire is not thus 
accurately known. It has to be sought out and marked 
down later. Against these necessarily highly superior 
losses of the offensive the only point against the defensive 
is that positions occupied by the offensive at the end of 
its attack may be disorganised and suffer locally some 
abnormal loss through disorganisation — but then it is 
the whole point of a defensive to prevent that. If that 
took place. on any large scale the defensive would break 
down, and the continued and complete success of the 
defensive policy for months in front of Verdun proves 
that it has not broken down- 
The Week's Events 
.What has been happening this week at Verdun is a 
mere repetition of all that we have been discussing here. It 
has been on rather a larger scale than usual, but it ex- 
emplifies every point precisely. You have attack after 
attack which does not properly leave its trenches because 
it is caught in the first bound — for example, the two 
divisions trying to get out of the Crows' Wood last Sunday. 
You have the first massed attack launched against the Mort 
Homme which the French estimate at about 50,000 
bayonets, repelled — -and leaving the very large proportion 
of 15,000 dead. You have the French local counter- 
offensive at Douaumont provoking another swarm attack, 
estimated at something like two divisions, say, in practice, 
20,000 bayonets, or a little less, and retaking, at terrible 
expense, the ruins of the fort which are immediately 
subjected to the " crushing " fire which knows every 
yard of the spot, ^'ou have the heavy massing of men 
ifor the rushing of Cumieres, the French local counter- 
attack recovering half Cumieres, and you will certainly 
have, before these lines are in print, another great massed 
attack to rush Cumieres again with the usual quite dis- 
proportionate expense in men : the preliminary bom- 
bardment was already notified in telegrams of Tuesday. 
I have not seen evidence as to the sectors from which 
these fresh German divisions are drawn, save the pubhc 
announcement by the French that they had identified 
two Bavarian divisions, which had come from the 
English front. But if the enemy is determined to play 
the French game here he can still continue so long as our 
defensive, which is strictly ordered upon every part of 
the line, gives him rope. He may still withdraw divisions 
from his ever weakening line (remember that his effectives 
are now declining in number) to melt them away at 
Verdun, and he will still tind that defence almost passive 
and unpro\-oked to any great counter-move. It is for 
him to decide the date upon which such a policy will de- 
termine his inability to stand against the main" counter- 
offensive of the Allies. At present he would seem to desire 
a hastening of that date, and he is the best judge of his 
own affairs. 
Table of German Recruitment 
IT is now at last possible to define with exactitude 
the rate at which the German man-power has been 
drawn upon in the course of the campaign. The 
evidence with regard to the calling up of each class 
is complete, and we can follow exactly the whole process 
of exhaustion : The last reserves of the active army 
all called up in the first three months, all normal recruit- 
ment exhausted in the first twelve, the unfit men re- 
examined and pressed in as far as possible in the autumn 
of last year, the calling up of the very youngest lads in 
December, and the complete drying up of recruiting 
power by the end of 19x5. 
I propose to put the whole thing this week in tabular 
form before my readers. 
' The publication of this all important matter has bsen 
permitted in France. I take it for granted, therefore, 
that its publication \\ill also be permitted in England, 
for 1 have come to believe that the failure to inform the 
public of vital things of this sort is due not to caution, 
but merely to sloth and lack of co-ordination between 
the various people responsible. 
Indeed, there is no possible reason why such information 
should help the enemy. 
It will be found, and I shall comment upon the fact 
in a moment, that tiie dates now officially known agree 
very exactly with the approximate estimates which have 
appeared from time to time in the columns of Land & 
Watkr. 
First, as to the original German active army. We 
premised that the last recruits and reserves of this were 
