July 6, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
was the sector of Verdun. The French Hne here made 
a pronounced salient which lay beyond a flooded river. 
He conceived a repetition of Friedland upon a great 
modern scale. By crushing in the French saHent against 
the river he would break that portion of the French line 
entirely. A great army would be thrust back upon a 
flooded valley across which it had no adequate communica- 
tions. There would be in the defeat such a congestion 
as would give everything beyond the river into his hands , 
men, guns and material. And from that success would 
immediately result the rupture of the AUied line at this 
point and a decision in the West. 
We all know what followed. The French covering line 
was battered back in a week. But the main positions 
lying behind it, though still beyond the river and still 
imperfectly provided with communications across its 
liooded valley stood the shock. The attack had begun 
upon the 21st of February. By the 28th it was clear 
that as a mere surprise attack it had failed. 
He believed it might still be possible at a very great 
expense of men to obtain his decision in a slower fashion ; 
if only the month of March was occupied in that attack. 
He tried now to force the French line upon both sides 
of the Meuse, and with a loss of about 200,000 men over 
and above the losses inflicted upon the French ; with a 
balance against himself of that very considerable ex- 
penditure he continued his effort. The first great spasm 
of that effort was defeated upon March 9th, and there 
were many who were 'then ready to say that the defensive 
battle of Verdun was won. But a month was to pass 
before things were certain, and it was not until the last 
spasm of April qth that the result was clear. By that 
date the defensi\ e battle of the sector of Verdun was won, 
it was clear the I^rench line would never be broken. 
Significance of Verdun 
WTien thfs was appreciated upon both sides of the 
struggle, when the great defensive action of the sector 
of Verdun was thus conclusively shown to have fallen 
to the military advantage of the French and the immense 
loss inflicted upon the enemy had been wasted, there was 
clearly a moment in which he hesitated upon what his 
next course should be. Circumstances themselves 
dictated that course— he seems, so far as we can now 
judge, to have had no option but to undertake a con- 
tinuance of the offensive actions against the Verdun 
sector. Not because he now had any hope of there 
achieving a decision, but because it was only there 
he could continue to attack, and there by his attack he 
might achieve other political and moral effects what 
he had failed to achieve as a purely military task. 
He had not the men, the positions or the time for 
moving guns which, before the counter-stroke of the 
Allies should be launched, would enable him to fore- 
stall it in anv other field. It was an open secret 
that such a counter-stroke would come in the summer. 
The British arm^• was not only rapidly growmg m 
numbers, but had perfected its organisation. The curve 
of increase in Western munitionment was very rapidly 
rising. The losses of the French had been now for long 
far inferior to his own. r ,r j 
To continue an attack upon the sector of Verdun, 
though his original battle was lost, was his only course 
and he continued it with not one but many motives oi 
action combined, the confusion of which long puzzled 
those who were following the war as students but which 
is now pretty clearly apparent, although the particular 
emphasis he might lay upon one or another of these his 
motives and the proportionate value they had in his mind 
cannot yet be determined and was indeed fluctuating 
from week to week. These motives may roughly be 
tabulated as follows : „ ,, , .. u,..\v,.>r 
(i) He had made of the name Verdun a familiar 
.symbol in all the belligerent countries and among he 
\llies while he had particularly impressed it upon the 
manse's of his own population and nowhere more than 
uponihe rank and file of his army. Verdun, which was 
KSone section of the long trench line, was represented 
as a "fortress." Though the attack was only against 
onesec or S an extended line it was represented-even 
in the maps which he distributed to his Boldiers--as an 
'"investment " A shadowy salient was treated as 
thoS U 2s a besieged arel wdth no issue but a narrow 
one for the defenders. He acted upon thp principle that 
the putting of his soldiers into any part of the geographical 
area called " Verdun " — that is of a particular small 
town which, so fa. as the strategical results of its occupa- 
tion was concerned, might just as well have been a 
ploughed field, would appear to neutrals, to the civilian 
population, to his own army and perhaps to some extent 
to the beUigerents against him, as the " taking " of 
Metz, or Plevna, or Sevastopol of old. 
In other words, he calculated upon the " moral " 
effect of the name Verdun, and to put his soldiers into 
the houses of the town, or such houses as lay west of the 
Meuse, he was prepared to sacrifice his remaining offen- 
sive, hoping that such a result would distract opinion 
from the military problem. 
(2) He further hoped that the continued offensive 
against the French would affect the moral of that people, 
civilian and even military. He was here doing what he 
has so often done during the war, something which his 
own psychology positively condemns him to do, mis- 
understanding the mind of his opponent. Just as he 
believed that the raiding by aircraft of open English 
towns would break the will of the English people or 
cause its political opinion to weaken, just as he had 
counted upon a revolutionary movement in Russia, so 
he counted now upon what he believed to be the unstable 
will of the French. From his own side he could be 
certain that no losses, however great, however superior 
to the losses he himself inflicted, would cause confusion 
with the conduct of the war. His press was entirely 
official. He had published nothing but what was pub- 
lished by authority, he was able to conceal, and he has in 
fact concealed, from the mass of his population the price 
that was being paid. He knew that such concealment 
would not be possible among the Western powers. 
A second motive was the effect on the Western moral, 
and especially on the French moral by the mere con- 
tinuance of an attack which now had no possible strategic 
result open to it. 
(3) He seems also to have been affected by this con- 
sideration — of the Western forces opposed to him the 
most formidable hitherto had been the French. France 
was a conscript country, the strategy' of the French had 
shown itself unexpectedly superior. The army had long 
been very thoroughly organised. The British, on the 
other hand, had had to improvise an army, its staff work 
was long necessarily imperfect, the provision of a corps of 
officers to deal with the new force, 10 or 15 fold that 
which had been provided for tlie war originally, pre- 
sented grave perils of weakness. Could he prolong the 
offensive against the French sufficiently to even make 
them partially exhausted ? Though this were done at 
the expense of his own exhausticti, yet he could when 
he fell upon the defensive count upon having to meet an 
attack mainly of newly improvised British armies, not 
with their combined attack, which he had chiefly dreaded. 
(4) The next consideration was an alternative to, 
and therefore partly contradictory of tliis last. In the 
alternative of failing to exhaust the French by his attack 
on Verdun even at the expense of his own exhaustion, 
he might at least provoke a prema ture counter-offensive. 
This, it is generally believed by competent authorities 
in France, was the chief military cunception in his mind 
throughout the whole business. 
It is clear that if you are you,cself approaching ex- 
haustion while your enemy as a whole is increasing in 
munitionment as well as in numbers,, that the enemy will 
have marked some day upon which his own superiority 
will be so overwhelming that he will, attack without fear 
for the result. It is equally clear thrrt under such circum- 
stances to compel him to "attack be fore his full strength 
is developed, especially in munitions (a further point to be 
dealt with in a moment) is to secure a great advantage. 
Nothing has been more remarkabl e in the whole of the 
prolonged and exceedingly extensive; attacks which have 
succeeded to the loss of' the battle; of Verdun by the 
enemy, nothing has been more striking in all these ten 
weeks of mere assault since the ho])e of a decision was 
abandoned by the enemy, than the refusal of the Allied 
Command to be provoked into a premature fcounter- 
offensive. It is indeed astonishing that so piquaiit a 
test of the whole situation should i K)t have been seized 
by general opinion in this countr%-. It would have been 
seized if the authorities had had" tl le wisdom to explain 
