able to view the whole field of the world's
greatest battle--a battle which lasted a year and cost a million
men--as from the gallery of a theatre one might look down upon the
stage, the boxes, and the orchestra-stalls. Below me, rising from the
meadows beside the Meuse, were the shattered roofs and fire-blackened
walls of Verdun, dominated by the stately tower of the cathedral and
by the great bulk of the citadel. The environs of the town and the
hill slopes beyond the river were constantly pricked by sudden scarlet
jets as the flame leaped from the mouths of the carefully concealed
French guns, which seemed to be literally everywhere, while countless
geyser-like irruptions of the earth, succeeded by drifting patches of
white vapor, showed where the German shells were bursting. Sweeping
the landscape with my field-glasses, a long column of motor-trucks
laden with ammunition came within my field of vision. As I looked
there suddenly appeared, squarely in the path of the foremost vehicle,
a splotch of yellow smoke shot through with red. When the smoke and
dust had cleared away, the motor-truck had disappeared. The artillery
officer who accompanied me directed my gaze across the level valley to
where, beyond the river, rose the great brown ridge known as the
Heights of the Meuse.

"Do you appreciate," he asked, "that on three miles of that ridge a
million men--400,000 French and 600,000 Germans--have already fallen?"

Beyond the ridge, but hidden by it, were Hill 304 and Le Mort Homme of
bloody memory, while on the horizon, looking like low, round-topped
hillocks, were Forts Douaumont and de Vaux (what a thrill those names
must give to every Frenchman!) and farther down the slope and a
little nearer me were Fleury and Tavannes. The fountains of earth and
smoke which leaped upward from each of them at the rate of half a
dozen to the minute, showed us that they were enduring a particularly
vicious hammering by the Germans.

There are no words between the covers of the dictionary which can
bring home to one who has not witnessed them the awful violence of the
shell-storms which have desolated these hills about Verdun. In one
week's attack to the north of the city the Germans threw five million
shells, the total weight of which was forty-seven thousand tons.
Eighty thousand shells rained upon one shallow sector of a thousand
yards, and these were so marvellously placed that the crater of one
cut into that of its neighbor,