n every and any
occasion, and then, if circumstances dictated such a move, to withdraw
their slender garrisons to a line farther back, exchanging so many
yards of territory willingly for the losses they had forced upon the
Kaiser's soldiers. For this gigantic conflict in the West, this
warfare devouring the nations of Europe, had, after the twentieth month
of its outbreak, become more than ever a question of numbers. With
teeming millions of soldiers at the commencement, Austria and Germany
were able to fall upon their unprepared neighbours and almost to swamp
their country; but the thin line of heroes who had dwelt in those
trenches from the North Sea to the frontier of Switzerland had held the
horde at bay, had kept it back until their comrades could rush to the
rescue. Numbers were now far more equal; the toll of Germans taken by
British and French and Belgians, and of Austrians and Germans by the
Russians, had begun to tell upon the enemy effectives. Thanks to the
mighty army which Britain had collected, the Allies were now greater in
number than were the enemy, and, adopting a system devised by the
French, were carefully saving their men, willingly giving ground if
need be, if its tenure meant great losses, and always, both by day and
night, taking every opportunity of killing Germans--yes, of killing
Germans, of reducing the Kaiser's ranks, and of hastening the day when,
with weakened numbers, Germany could no longer resist the onslaught of
the armies of France and Britain and Belgium. Here, then, in front of
Verdun, the French had but a mere handful in their first-line
trenches--a mere handful--upon whom that torrent of shells was rained.
Just a scattered, yet noble band, ready to hold up the assault which
would most certainly follow.

Rifles cracked along the line while those sappers and patrols sent out
by the enemy--who hardly believed life still possible in the shattered
trenches--were shot down or driven back to cover. Henri then, peering
over the trench, turned of a sudden and rushed to the entrance of the
dug-out.

"Come!" he shouted. "Thousands of the enemy are coming from the
shelter of the trees, and are massing in the open. It is an assault in
force that we must resist."

Along that draggled line of trenches, which were almost blotted out of
existence by now, and over which shells still rained in abundance, men
whom the Germans imagined to have been killed long ago, to have been
blown to pi