co-Prussian War and intended to defend the city. Like all the
rest, it ceased to have value when the German artillery had shown at
Liege and at Namur that it was the master of the fort. Then the French
left their forts and went out to trenches beyond and took with them
the heavy guns that the fort once boasted. To-day Fort de la Chaume is
just an empty shell, as empty as the old Vauban citadel in the valley
below. And what is true of this fort is true of all the other forts of
that famous fortress of Verdun, which is no longer a fortress, but a
sector in the trench line that runs from the North Sea to Switzerland.

From the walls of the fort staff officers showed me the surrounding
country. I looked down on the city of Verdun, hiding under the shadow
of its cathedral. I looked across the level Meuse Valley, with its
little river; I studied the wall of hills beyond. Somewhere in the
tangle on the horizon was Douaumont, which the Germans held. Down the
valley of the river in the haze was the town of Bras, which was
French; beyond it the village of Vachereauville, which was German.
Beyond the hills in the centre of the picture, but hidden by them,
were Le Mort Homme and Hill 304.

Verdun is like a lump of sugar in a finger bowl, and I was standing on
the rim. It seemed utterly impossible that any one should even think
of this town as a fortress or count its ashes as of meaning in the
conflict.

Somewhere in the background a French battery of heavy guns was firing,
and the sound was clear; but it did not suggest war, rather a blasting
operation. The German guns were still again. There was a faint
billowing roll of gunfire across the river toward Douaumont, but very
faint. As for trenches, soldiers, evidences of battle, they did not
exist. I thought of Ralph Pulitzer's vivid story of riding to the
Rheims front in a military aeroplane and seeing, of war, just
nothing.

The geography of the Verdun country unrolled before us with absolute
clarity; the whole relation of hills and river and railroads was
unmistakable. But despite the faint sound of musketry, the occasional
roar of a French gun, I might have been in the Berkshires looking down
on the Housatonic. Six miles to the north around Le Mort Homme that
battle which has not stopped for two months was still going on. Around
Douaumont the overture was just starting, the overture to a stiff
fight in the afternoon, but of all the circumstances of battle that
one has read o