behind us was an air-shaft. It appears that
about a week or a fortnight before our arrival a German shell,
striking the top part of the citadel, dislodged some dust and gravel
which fell down the air-shaft onto the General's head. He simply
called the attendants to him and asked for his table to be moved
forward a yard, as he did not feel inclined to sit at table with his
helmet on.

An excellent dinner--soup, roast mutton, fresh beans, salade
Russe, Frangipane, dessert--and even champagne to celebrate
the General's cravate--quite reassured us that people may die in
Verdun of shells but not of hunger. We drank toasts to France, the
Allies, and, silently, to the men of France who had died that we
might live. I was asked to propose the health of the General and
did it in English, knowing that he spoke English well. I told him that
the defenders of Verdun would live in our hearts and memories;
that on behalf of the whole British race I felt I might convey to him
congratulations on the honour paid to him by France. I assured
him that we had but one idea and one hope, the speedy victory of
the Allied arms, and that personally my present desire was that
every one of those present at table might live to see the flag of
France waving over the whole of Alsace-Lorraine. They asked me
to repeat a description of the flag of France which I gave first in
Ottawa, so there, in the citadel of Verdun with a small French flag
before me, I went back in spirit to Ottawa and remembered how I
had spoken of the triumph of the flag of France: "The red, white
and blue--the red of the flag of France a little deeper hue than in
time of peace since it was dyed with the blood of her sons, the
blood in which a new history of France is being written, volume on
volume, page on page, of deeds of heroism, some pages completed
and signed, others where the pen has dropped from the faltering
hands and which posterity must needs finish. The white of the flag
of France, not quite so white as in time of peace since thousands
of her sons had taken it in their hands and pressed it to their lips
before they went forward to die for it, yet without stain, since in all
the record of the war there is no blot on the escutcheon of France.
And the blue of the flag of France, true blue, torn and tattered with
the marks of the bullets and the shrapnel, yet unfurling proudly in
the breeze whilst the very holes were patched by the blue of the
sky, since surely Heaven stan