could really help! It is the
business of mothers to pick up those poor lads, and give them a
good word. Well, you must replace the mothers, you, _mon cheri_,
you must do all you can--do the impossible--to help. I see you
running--creeping along--looking for the wounded. If I could
only be there too!--Yes, it is my place, _mon petit_, near you.
Courage, courage!--I know it is the beginning of the end--and
the end will be grand for all those who have fought in the just
cause."

A month later thousands of English, Scotch, Welsh and Irish lads, men
from Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia, were passing on
the Somme through a similar furnace of death and suffering to that
borne by the French at Verdun. But the English ways of expression are
not the French; and both differ from the American. The instinct for
ringing and dramatic speech rarely deserts the Frenchman--or
Frenchwoman. It is present in the letter written by Roger Vamier's
mother, as in the _Ordres du Jour_ of Castelnau or Petain. Facility of
this kind is not our _forte_. Our lack of it suggests the laughter in
that most delightful of recent French books, _Les Silences du Colonel
Bramble_, which turns upon our national taciturnities and our
minimising instinct in any matter of feeling, an instinct which is
like the hiding instinct, the protective colouring of birds--only
anxious to be mistaken for something else. The Englishman, when
emotion compels him, speaks more readily in poetry than prose; it is
the natural result of our great poetic tradition; and in the
remarkable collections of war poetry written by English soldiers we
have the English counterpart to the French prose utterance of the
war--so much more eloquent and effective, generally, than our own.

* * * * *

One more look round the slopes over which the light is fading. The
heroism of the defence!--that, here, is the first thought. But on the
part of the attackers there was a courage no less amazing, though of
another sort; the effect of an iron discipline hypnotising the
individual will, and conferring on the soldier such superhuman power
of dying at another man's will as history--on such a scale--has
scarcely seen equalled. In the first battle of Verdun, which lasted
forty-eight days (February 21st to April 9th), the German casualties
were over 200,000, with a very high proportion of killed. And by the
end of the year the