that completely overlooks and commands the Ailette immediately north. The German attack was against this ridge, infantry moving out from the cover of the valley and up the slopes. Not one German soldier reached the French lines, each attack being smothered by artillery- and machine-gun fire before it could really get under way. Finally the Germans, after several attacks, desisted, and a moderate artillery-fire only was maintained, infantry taking no part. It was a distinct defeat in what was very nearly a major engagement. French troops won a smashing victory on August 20 on a front of eleven miles north of Verdun. The advance, which was preceded by heavy artillery-fire lasting three days, reached at some points a depth of over a mile and a quarter. The number of unwounded Germans taken exceeded 4,000. The French attacked simultaneously on both banks of the Meuse and everywhere carried their objectives. On the left or west bank of the river the attackers gained Avocourt Wood, the summits of Dead Man Hill, and the Corbeaux and Cumières woods.

Once more the magic word "Verdun" thrilled the heart of Paris. "Victory at Verdun" was the headline of every newspaper in the city, the cry on every lip-Verdun, the city of destiny, whose name had been branded on the French soul by a six-months' tragedy of fear and hope. "A kilometer gained at Verdun, and 1,000 prisoners captured is worth more than an advance of twenty kilometers elsewhere and the surrender of a whole German army corps," said a great French general in the previous December, "both for its stimulating effect in France and the corresponding depression of German morale. Rightly or wrongly, Verdun has become a symbol, the gage of battle, the body of Patroclus." Military experts might talk of "the established equilibrium" and "the impregnable German line," but Bismarck knew better when he said it was the imponderable that counted in war-the evasive moral factor that plays havoc with a general's plans and sets his calculations at naught. German newspapers might stifle news of American preparations; they might deny British gains in Flanders, belittle the Italian successes, and blind their

readers' eyes to recalling how even Napoleon had found progress in Russia more fatal than death; but a French victory at Verdun they could not hide. The new battle of Verdun emphasized the fact that it had been no isolated stroke, when Nivelle late in 1916 reconquered a position which the Crown Prince had sacrificed half-a-million lives to win, but the beginning of a substantial offensive, a new echo of the Allied thunderbolts in Flanders. When French and British guns had resumed their hammering of the German line from the sea to St. Quentin, news of Verdun kindled to a flame the spirit of the waiting infantry and unnerved their battered opponents, keyed up only by desperation to resistance.

Dead Man Hill was aptly named. From where the former French line ran-that is, half-way down its slopes up to the summit-every inch of the ground on August 24 soaked with the blood of German defenders. The place had been made a shambles. Not a blade of grass or a vestige of vegetation marked the awful scene. French victory at Dead Man Hill became a new monument to French artillery. To render Dead Man Hill "impregnable" the Germans had constructed there three tunnels. One, named the "Crown Prince," traversed the hill; another, named "Bismarck," connected the two summits, and a third, . "Corbeaux,' ran under Goose Hill. French 400-millimeter shells pierced each tunnel. In the Crown Prince tunnel alone were found the bodies of more than a hundred dead Germans, the victims of a single shell. When the French first swarmed over it they took 700 German prisoners from the same gallery. In Corbeaux tunnel the French took an entire German regimental staff with its maps, papers, and material. One thing General Pershing, who witnessed this assault, particularly emphasized, was the work done by the new French guns and he spoke about it to General Corvisart, whose troops made one of the assaults. Pershing and Corvisart were old friends. They were together in Manchuria.1

Everywhere, from the Alps to the sea, the tide had turned. One by one places that had been seized by German arms had yielded to the Allied advance. This latest Verdun

Henry Wood, United Press correspondent.

operation was another of those quick, swift blows designed to disorganize German troops, inflict heavy losses and obtain vantage points of local importance. Concentration, terrific artillery-attack, alternating blows-now at Ypres, now at Lens, now near St. Quentin, now along the Chemin-desDames, and now on the heights of the Meuse above Verdunthis was Allied strategy as it unfolded itself, a constant demonstration of the immediate local superiority of the

Allies and an almost daily revelation of decline in the morale of the German army. With the recapture of Dead Man Hill, the mind reverted to the last desperate struggle of March 1916, when the Germans got south on the east bank, took Douaumont, both the town and the fort, and approached Vaux, when all their lines were being swept by the flanking fire of the French across the river on Dead Man Hill.

After that the Germans began an attack on the left bank of the Meuse, which for days and days continued

to be one of the most desperate struggles in the war. Slowly they pushed across the Forges brook, took Malancourt, Haucourt, and Béthincourt, pushed in between Dead Man Hill and Hill 304, and on April 9 made the last of their great sweeping attacks. Thereafter Verdun became a pounding operation. The French had bettered their positions materially, and had deprived the Germans of their last direct sight of the ruined city from the Talon Hill. There was no ground left in their possession from which the twin towers of the cathedral rising above the fortress could be seen. Probably not less than a million men had been killed, wounded, or captured on this field since the war began. No single fortress in human history had been valued so highly alike by defender and attacker. The whole world rejoiced that, in the first month of the fourth year of the war, French spirit was still unbroken, that French soldiers had retaken the last and uppermost outpost of Verdun. When the Germans were telling the world that France was exhausted and her spirit broken, the world saw French troops sweeping along the Meuse to new victories.

The Chemin-des-Dames battle ranked among important engagements, because it gave another instance of the capacity of the French to rally in the face of momentary depression. It had been intended not only to break the spirit of France, but to use up French effectives, and prevent them from being employed either in Flanders or Lorraine. The French answer was threefold, a terrific defeat of the Germans, participation with the British in a successful advance about Ypres, and that superb offensive at Verdun, which wrote "Finis" to the whole Verdun chapter. The moral effect was even greater than the material. The French now felt that they could beat the Germans on their own chosen battle-ground and force them out of subterranean lairs into open fields. With the French capture of the Chemin-des-Dames plateau, a fitting equal to the Messines Ridge operation, German invincibility had become a legend of the past. Neither the French nor the British had anything now to fear from Hindenburg or from any other German commander whose claim of invulnerability for Germany's "iron wall"

had been proved an empty boast. The Allies had only to go on as they had begun, with a succession of continuous alternating blows, the British striking one day and the French another, and Hindenburg's line, already bent, would be broken. Success at Craonne, however, had been costly to France, so costly in fact that Nivelle was removed from his command, and Pétain, the original victor of Verdun, was appointed in his place.

Fighting at Verdun still went on in September, until the French recovered all the ground that was important or useful. What the Germans could not do at the Chemin-desDames in June, the French did on the Meuse, until Verdun had become like the Marne, another battle of arrest. Had the Germans won at Verdun, the decision at the Marne would have been abolished, but now the absolute character of German defeat was established. Violent attacks were made by the Crown Prince as late as September 24, but were checked with heavy losses.

By September 23, near this battlefield and merging into the fighting lines, were encamped, with a French army, some American troops, far removed from the rest of their compatriots. Here, for the first time, the Stars and Stripes was seen flying over a field camp of American soldiers. Some of them had been in a zone covered by German guns, and already two of their number had been wounded, a fact of which they were described as "being exceedingly proud."