ond the hills. The Vauban citadel is now a place where bread
is baked, where wounded men are occasionally brought, where live the
soldiers and officers whose important but unromantic mission it is to
keep the roads through the town open, to police the ashes of the city,
to do what remains of the work that once fell to the lot of the civil
authorities.

To glide swiftly to the shelter of this rock from a region in which a
falling shell has served to remind you of the real meaning of Verdun
of the moment, to leave the automobile and plunge into the welcome
obscurity of this cavern--this was perhaps the most comfortable
personal incident of the day. The mere shadow of the rock gave a sense
of security; to penetrate it was to pass to safety.

Some moments of wandering by corridors and stairways into the very
heart of the rock brought us to the quarters of our host, General
Dubois; to his kind attention I was to owe all my good fortune in
seeing his dying city; to him, at the end, I was to owe the ultimate
evidence of courtesy, which I shall never forget.

Unlike Petain or Joffre, General Dubois is a little man, possibly a
trifle older than either. A white-haired, bright-eyed, vigorous
soldier, who made his real fame in Madagascar with Joffre and with
Gallieni, and when the storm broke was sent to Verdun by these men,
who knew him, to do the difficult work that there was to be performed
behind the battle line. There is about General Dubois a suggestion of
the old, as well as the new, of the French general. The private
soldiers to whom he spoke as he went his rounds responded with a "Oui,
mon General" that had a note of affection as well as of discipline; he
was rather as one fancied were the soldiers of the Revolution, of the
Empire, of the Algerian days of Pere Bugeaud whose memory is still
green.

Our salutations made, we returned through the winding corridors to
inspect the bakeries, the water and light plant, the unsuspected
resources of this rock. In one huge cavern we saw the men who provided
30,000 men with bread each day, men working as the stokers in an ocean
steamer labor amidst the glare of fires; we tasted the bread and found
it good, as good as all French bread is, and that means a little
better than all other bread.

Then we slipped back into daylight and wandered along the face of the
fortress. We inspected shell holes of yesterday and of last month; we
inspected them as one inspects the best blossoms in