lanned its capture had been right, but those who
were to carry out the plan had not done their duty. Under General Maude
it was a comparatively simple operation, though full of admirable
details, and it produced all the good effects expected. The British, of
course, did not stop at Bagdad. The city itself is not of strategic
importance. The surrounding towns were occupied and an endeavor was made
to conciliate the inhabitants. The real object of the expedition was
attained.

[Illustration: BAGDAD THE MAGNIFICENT FALLS TO THE BRITISH

Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, Commander-in-Chief of
the British Mesopotamian Army, making his triumphal entry into the
ancient city at the head of his victorious army on March 11, 1917.]

CHAPTER VIII

IMMORTAL VERDUN

France was revealed to herself, to Germany and to the world as the
heroic defender of civilization, as a defender defying death in the
victory of Verdun. There, with the gateway to Paris lying open at its
back, the French army, in the longest pitched battle in all history,
held like a cold blue rock against the uttermost man power and resources
of the German army.

General von Falkenhayn, Chief of the German General Staff and military
dictator of the Teutonic allies, there met disaster and disgrace. There
the mettle of the Crown Prince was tested and he was found to be merely
a thing of straw, a weak creature whose mind was under the domination of
von Falkenhayn.

For the tremendous offensive which was planned to end the war by one
terrific thrust, von Falkenhayn had robbed all the other fronts of
effective men and munitions. Field Marshal von Hindenburg and his crafty
Chief of Staff, General Ludendorff, had planned a campaign against
Russia designed to put that tottering military Colossus out of the war.
The plans were upon a scale that might well have proved successful. The
Kaiser, influenced by the Crown Prince and by von Falkenhayn, decreed
that the Russian campaign must be postponed and that von Hindenburg must
send his crack troops to join the army of the Crown Prince fronting
Verdun. Ludendorff promptly resigned as Chief of Staff to von Hindenburg
and suggested that the Field Marshal also resign. That grim old warrior
declined to take this action, preferring to remain idle in East Prussia
and watch what he predicted would be a useless effort on the western
front. His warning to the General Staff was explicit, but von Falkenhayn
coolly