not to be found even in the ashes of the old town
that France and not Germany holds. It is to be found in the spirit of
France, now that the great trial is over and the lines have held.

It was Germany and not France that raised the issue of Verdun. The
Germans believed, and all their published statements show this, that
France was weary, disheartened, ready to quit, on fair terms. They
believed that there was needed only a shining victory, a great moral
demonstration of German strength to accomplish the end--to bring
victorious peace. In this I think, and all with whom I talked in
France felt, that the Germans were wrong, that France would have
endured defeat and gone on. But conversely, the Germans knew, must
have known, that to try and to fail was to rouse the whole heart of
France, to destroy any pessimism, and this is precisely what the
failure has done.

The battle for Verdun was a battle for moral rather than military
values, and the moral victory remains with the French. It was a
deliberate and calculated effort to break the spirit of France, and it
roused the spirit of France as perhaps nothing has raised the spirit
of this people since Valmy, where other Frenchmen met and checked
another German invasion, brought to a halt the army of Frederick the
Great, which still preserved the prestige of its great captain who was
dead, turned it back along the road that was presently to end at Jena.

Beside the moral value of Verdun the military is just nothing. To
appreciate its meaning you must understand what it has meant to the
French, and you must understand it by recalling what Gettysburg meant
to the North, invaded as is France, defeated at half a dozen struggles
in Virginia as France has been defeated in the past months of this
war. Gettysburg was and remains the decisive battle of our Civil War,
although the conflict lasted for nearly two years more. For France
Verdun is exactly the same thing. Having accepted the moral likeness,
you may find much that is instructive and suggestive in the military,
but this is of relatively minor importance.

Now, on the military side it is necessary to know first of all that
when the Germans began their gigantic attack upon Verdun the French
high command decided not to defend the city. Joffre and those who with
him direct the French armies were agreed that the city of Verdun was
without military value comparable with the cost of defending it, and
that the wisest and best thi