our generals, officers, non-commissioned officers and men whom France loves to associate together in her praise, for they all share the glory of the battlefield — are entitled to have some of the finest pages in the annals of our history consecrated to their memory.

During endless weeks, under the concentrated fire of artillery of all calibers, over ground soaked with rain, and ploughed up by shells, our battalions, defying the enemy, defended the outposts of Verdun step by step, unaware until the last few days how greatly their endurance and stoicism would facilitate the combined operations of the Allies elsewhere. Humanity has never yet witnessed any sight of more heroic grandeur.

The Central Empires can retain no illusion as to the possibility of reducing the Allies and wresting from their lassitude a peace which for the Prussian militarists would be but a stratagem wherewith to mask preparation for fresh aggression. It is in vain that our enemies study the military map which they used to invoke with such boastful satisfaction. They perceive now with uneasiness, that, on the Somme as on the Styr, at the foot of the Karpathians as on the summits of the Alps, the lines upon that changing map have already been altered considerably, and they know that to make it complete, it is necessary to add thereto the seas which are closed to them, and the colonies which have been taken from them. They well know also that the strength of the belligerent countries is not so much reckoned on the geographical position of field-trenches, as upon the condition of the fighting troops, their reserves, their capacity for attacking and for resisting attack, and upon the moral temper of the peoples and armies.

As for us, we shall not fail, even if we were fighting for honor alone, and we are fighting for honor and for life.

RAYMOND POINCARE

77

To be, or not to be, is the poignant problem before the great European nations, and for a free democracy such as ours it would be "not to be," if we vegetated, struggling in the suffocating and unhealthy shadow of a German Empire, strong enough to hold over the whole of Europe its heavy hegemony.

No, by the grief of our French families, by the long torture of our occupied country, by the blood of our soldiers; no, we shall not suffer our sorrow to weaken our will! The more we hate war, the more passionately must we labor to prevent its return, the more must we work and pray that peace may bring us together with the complete restitution of our invaded provinces - invaded provinces of yesterday, and invaded provinces of forty-six years ago the reparation of Right violated at the expense of France and the Allies, and the guarantees necessary to the definitive safeguarding of our national freedom.

VERDUN

RAYMOND POINCARÉ

It

GENTLEMEN, these walls mark the spot where the greatest hopes of imperial Germany were dashed to pieces. was here that she sought to achieve blustering ostentatious success, and here that France quietly and firmly replied: "You shall not pass." When the attack against Verdun began, on February 21st, the enemy had a double objective in view he intended to forestall a general offensive on the part of the Allies; and at the same time to strike a blow, that would be much talked of, by rapidly capturing a fortress whose historical fame would, in the eyes of the German people, increase its military importance. The ruins of these Germanic dreams are now lying at our feet.

The splendid troops, who, under the command of Generals Petain and Nivelle, held out against the formidable onslaught of the German Army for many long months, frustrated the enemy's designs by their valor and their spirit of self-sacrifice. It is they who have enabled all our Allies to work, with increasing activity, for the production of war material; it is they who have now brilliantly marked by the light of their heroism the boundary of Germanic force, thus imparting to the world confidence in our final victory; in short, it was the resistance of these

This speech was delivered at Verdun, September 13, 1916. The occasion for the address was the conferring of medals and decorations upon the heroic city of Verdun, "in recognition of its valorous defense," by the French and Allied Governments. The ceremony took place in

the casements of the citadel.

RAYMOND POINCARE

79

troops which, by assuring the realization of the plan formed by the different Staffs, left Russia time to carry out her triumphant offensives of June 4th and July 2d. It also enabled Italy to make her brilliant attack on Gorizia, on June 25th, and, from July 1st on, allowed the Anglo-French forces to conduct their offensive on the Somme. It also permitted the army of the East to make its preparations, to concentrate its different elements, and lend fraternal assistance to our new Allies, the Rumanians, in their conflict with Germano-Bulgarians. Honor to the soldiers of Verdun! they sowed the seed of the coming harvest and watered it with their blood.

You see here, gentlemen, the just return of things. The name of Verdun, to which Germany in her fond dream had given a symbolic signification that was to have shortly evoked - she thought-in the minds of men, a brilliant defeat for our armies, together with the irremediable discouragement of our country and the passive acceptance of a German peace; this name stands, henceforth, in neutral countries, and among our Allies, for what is noblest, purest, and best in the French character. It has become, so to speak, a synonym for Patriotism, Bravery, and Generosity. Throughout the ages, in every corner of the globe, the name of Verdun will resound like a shout of Victory and Joy, sent up by a free human race.

THE WAR'S LEGACY OF HATRED

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

BEFORE we reach the end of this war, whose days of grief and terror now seem to be numbered, let us weigh for the last time in our minds the words of hatred and malediction which it has so often wrung from us.

We have to deal with the strangest of enemies. He has deliberately, scientifically, in full possession of his senses, without necessity or excuse, revived all the crimes which we had believed to be forever buried in the barbarous past. He has trampled under foot all the precepts which the human race had so painfully gleaned out of the cruel darknesses of its origins; he has violated all the laws of justice, of humanity, of loyalty, of honor, from the highest, which almost touch the divine, to the simplest and most elementary, which still appertain to the lower orders. There is no longer any doubt on this point. The proof of it has been established and reëstablished, the certitude definitively acquired.

But, on the other hand, it is no less certain that the enemy has displayed virtues which it would not be right for us to deny; for one honors one's self by recognizing

In October of 1916 this article appeared in Les Annales, Paris. It was later translated for the Current History Magazine, through whose courtesy it is here reprinted.

The Belgian Maeterlinck, born 1862, is well known on this side of the Atlantic as an author and playwright. He began publishing his works about 1890. Among his best-known plays are "Pelleas and Melisande," "The Blue Bird," and "The Unknown Guest."