August 24, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
The False Analogy with Verdun 
The errors liable to arise with regard to the Allied 
offensive upon the Somme front may be very well regarded 
under the heading, or the statement, that one hears made 
often enough and which seems to sum up all those errors 
in itself. 
That statement is to the effect that " it is Verdun 
over again." The resemblance is exactly of that super- 
ficial sort which is the most dangerous we can use in the 
present phase of the war. 
The superficial resemblance consists, of course, in the 
necessary sequence of events in both cases. As I have . 
just said, one opponent cannot fully concentrate against , 
the blow of another imtil he knows exactly where and 
with what strength that blow is going to fall. There- 
fore, the first blow captures • many prisoners and guns 
and a large belt of front. Then the counter-concen- 
tration takes place and the battle changes in character. 
Progress measured in ground is slow. The prisoners 
are captured in batches instead of wholesale, etc. 
But when one has pointed out such obvious similarities 
the rest of the comparison entirely fails. It does more than 
merely fail as a comparison, for Verdun is the very opposite 
and complement of the Somme offensive. The enemy 
attack at Verdun was made as a last great offensive 
before the tide should turn in munitionment and before 
the equipment of the Russians should be advanced. 
The Somme offensive was undertaken as one of many 
increasing offensives which the superiority of the Allies 
now permits them. " Verdun was a gamble which had to 
succeed fairly quickly or to fail altogether, and the cost 
of its failure much more than it was worth. The Somme 
offensive is something which as it lasts continues to ex- 
haust an enemy whose whole object now is to delay his 
exhaustion. 
The Verdun offensive was undertaken against a salient, 
and as it proceeded flattened that salient and the French 
defensive line got shorter and shorter. 
The Somme offensive was undertaken from within t 
a salient, it has extended that salient, and as it proceeds 
the German line gets longer and longer and therefore 
more difficult to hold. 
Strongest of all is the political contrast. 
Verdun was perhaps originally, but certainly after the 
first few months, fatally attached to a political object, 
with which the enemy ought never to have got himself 
entangled. Because there happened to be behind the 
particular sector which he attacked a town, no longer in 
any sense a fortress, but one which had been a famous 
fortress in the past, the " taking of Verdun " became a 
catchword. It ran throughout neutral countries. - It 
had some effect even upon belligerent opinion among the 
Allies. We know from prisoners that that catchword 
was erected into a sort of fetish throughout the rank and 
file at least of the German Army. The German Higher 
Command knew how false it was, and after having in- 
structed the German press for some weeks to prophesy 
the " taking of Verdun," it tried to call the dogs off and 
to prophesy that nothing was toward except the gradual 
exhaustion of the French forces. But it was too late. 
All the world was now looking on at what they thought 
was the spectacle of the fall of a fortress, and Germany, 
at a moment when the economy of her men was essential 
to her, was compelled to continue. 
It is exceedingly lucky for the Allies that there does 
not happen to lie behind the Somme sector any particular 
town with an historical reputation as a fortress. All the 
world can see that the Allies are not pressing to " take " 
anything at all. But to extend the German front, to 
compel the existing German concentration against them, 
thereby at once doing all the work that is required upon 
that particular sector directly, and indirectly every 
other sector upon the now united front of 2,000 miles. 
There is much more than this. The German heavy 
artillery at Verdun- was, on the whole, superior to the 
French, but the Allied gun power on the Somme sector is 
overwhelmingly superior to the enemy gun power in the 
same sector. We shall never know until peace gives us 
the statistics (if then) all the cumulative and tremendous 
effect this ceaseless intensive shelling upon a totally new 
scale is having upon the Germans behind this front. 
In a word, Verdun, as it proceeded, led the Germans 
more and more towards disaster. The battle was already 
vvon upon April 9th. Its contmuation was the contmua- 
tion of an experiment to which the German Higher 
Command wished they had never been tempted, and which 
will prove the turning point of the later war. Verdun 
was the entry into the last phase of the war. 
The Somme was not an experiment. It was a plan 
deliberately undertaken, which has been deliberately 
conducted and with continuous success. It was the 
entry of the AlHes on their side into the last phase of the 
war. And the last phase of the war is the increasing 
predominance of the Allied forces over those of the 
enemy. 
THE RUSSIAN FRONT 
On the Russian front there has been little change. 
The readers of these columns are already familiar 
with the line of the Strypa from which the enemy's 
last unmoved army under Bothmer has retired 
and the line of the Zlota Lipa, the middle and upper 
reaches of which he is still attempting to hold, the 
lower part of which he has abandoned. What is clear 
is the concentration the enemy has effected to defend the 
approaches of Halicz at (i) upon Bothmcr's southern flank, 
and the vital railway at (2) upon his northern. He still 
continues successful in that defence and we may take it 
