an casemates General Dubois, the
commander of the city, directed the execution of the orders which he
received from General Nivelle at Souilly, twenty miles away. Though
the citadel's massive walls have resisted the terrific bombardments to
which it has been subjected, it has neither guns nor garrison: they
are far out on the trench-line beyond the encircling hills. It has, in
fact, precisely the same relation to the defense of the Verdun sector
that Governor's Island has to the defense of New York. This it is
important that you should keep in mind. It should also be remembered
that Verdun was held not for strategic but for political and
sentimental reasons. The French military chiefs, as soon as they
learned of the impending German offensive, favored the evacuation of
the city, whose defense, they argued, would necessitate the sacrifice
of thousands of lives without any corresponding strategic benefit. But
the heads of the Government in Paris looked at things from a different
point of view. They realized that, no matter how negligible was its
military value, the people of other countries, and, indeed, the French
people themselves, believed that Verdun was a great fortress; they
knew that its capture by the Germans would be interpreted by the world
as a French disaster and that the morale of the French people, and
French prestige abroad, would suffer accordingly. So, at the eleventh
hour and fifty-ninth minute, when the preparations for evacuating the
city were all but complete, imperative word was flashed from Paris
that it must be held. And it was. Costly though the defense has been,
the result has justified it. The Crown Prince lost what little
military reputation he possessed--if he had any to lose; his armies
lost 600,000 men in dead and wounded; and the world was shown that
German guns and German bayonets, no matter how overwhelming in number,
cannot break down the steel walls of France.

It was my great good fortune, when the fate of Verdun still hung in
the balance, to visit the city and to lunch with General Dubois and
his staff in the citadel. Though the valor of the French infantry kept
the Germans from entering Verdun, nothing could prevent the entrance
of their shells. Seven hundred fell in one day. Not a single house in
a city of 40,000 inhabitants remains intact. The place looks as though
it had been visited simultaneously by the San Francisco earthquake,
the Baltimore fire, and the Johnstown flood. But o