“Verdun is, in many ways, the most extraordinary of battles.  The mass of metal used on both sides is far beyond all parallel; the transformation on the Douaumont Ridge was more suddenly dramatic than even the battle of the Marne; and, above all, the duration of the conflict already looks as if it would surpass anything in history.  More than a month has elapsed since, by the kindness of General Joffre and General Petain, I was able to watch the struggle from various vital viewpoints.  The battle had then been raging with great intensity for a fortnignt, and, as I write, four to five thousand guns are still thundering round Verdun.  Impossible, therefore, any man to describe the entire battle.  The most one can do is to set down one’s impressions of the first phases of a terrible conflict, the end of which cannot be foreseen.

“My chief impression is one of admiration for the subtle powers of mind of the French High Command.  General Joffre and General Castelnau are men with especially fine intellects tempered to terrible keenness.  Always they have had to contend against superior numbers.  In 1870, when they were subalterns, their country lost the advantage of its numerous population by abandoning general military service at a time when Prussia was completely realizing the idea of a nation in arms.  In 1914, when they were commanders, France was inferior to a still greater degree in point of numbers to Prussianized Germany.  In armament, France was inferior at first to her enemy.  The French High Command has thus been trained by adversity to do all that human intellect can against almost overwhelming hostile material forces.  General Joffre, General Castelnau—­and, later, General Petain, who at a moment’s notice displaced General Herr—­had to display genius where the Germans were exhibiting talent, and the result is to be seen at Verdun.  They there caught the enemy in a series of traps of a kind hitherto unknown in modern warfare—­something elemental, and yet subtle, neo-primitive, and befitting the atavistic character of the Teuton.  They caught him in a web of his own unfulfilled boasts.

“The enemy began by massing a surprising force on the western front.  Tremendous energy and organizing power were the marks of his supreme efforts to obtain a decision.  It was usually reckoned that the Germans maintain on all fronts a field army of about seventy-four and a half army corps, which at full strength number three million men.  Yet, while holding the Russians from Riga to the south of the Pripet Marshes, and maintaining a show of force in the Balkans, Germany seems to have succeeded in bringing up nearly two millions and a half of men for her grand spring offensive in the west.  At one time her forces in France and Flanders were only ninety divisions.  But troops and guns were withdrawn in increasing numbers from Russia and Serbia in December, 1915, until there were, it is estimated, a hundred and eighteen divisions on the Franco-British-Belgian front.  A large number of six-inch and twelve-inch Austrian howitzers were added to the enormous Krupp batteries.  Then a large proportion of new recruits of the 1916 class were moved into Rhine-land depots to serve as drafts for the fifty-nine army corps, and it is thought that nearly all the huge shell output that had accumulated during the winter was transported westward.