“I followed the attack on Haumont and Samogneux.  The field of battle was lighted as if in full day by star shells.  Black masses of Germans advanced, protected by their artillery, while ours remained silent.  Finally our artillery began, and then the enemy ranks wavered, halted and disappeared.

“Our guns had waited until the Germans were in a little hollow all arranged for the massacre.  In a little while there lay the bodies of some 2,000 or 3,000 Germans.  They occupied some villages, but their attack on Verdun has failed after terrible losses.”

GERMAN SUBMARINE ACTIVITIES

The sinking of British and French ships, and sometimes neutral vessels, by German and Austrian submarines continued during the month of February.  On February 27 the Peninsular & Oriental Line steamship Maloja, of 12,431 tons, was sunk by a torpedo or mine only two miles off the Admiralty pier at Dover, with a loss of 155 lives, including many passengers, men, women and children, en route to India.  Dozens of craft went at once to the rescue, and one of them, the Empress of Fort William, a vessel of 2,181 tons, was also torpedoed or struck a mine and sank nearby.  Of the Maloja’s passengers and crew, 260 were rescued.

On February 28 the great French liner La Provence was sunk in the Mediterranean with a loss estimated at 900 lives.  It had a displacement of 19,200 tons, length 602 feet, beam 65 feet, and had been in the service of the French Government as a troop transport.

Under new orders to their submarine commanders, in spite of protests by the United States Government, Germany and Austria inaugurated on March 1 the policy of sinking without warning all Allied merchant vessels believed to carry any armament for defensive purposes, and the world waited with bated breath for fresh developments of the Teutonic campaign of frightfulness.

CHAPTER.  XXVI

CLIMAX OF THE WAR.

  Prolonged Battle of Verdun the Most Terrible in History—­
  Enormous Losses on Both Sides—­Submarine Activity
  Imperils Relations of America and Germany_.

Beginning with the first infantry attack by the Germans on Monday, February 21, after twenty-four hours of continuous bombardment, the battles incident to the siege of Verdun were fought at brief intervals during the next two months, down to the middle of April, and marked the climax of the War.  The losses on both sides were enormous and extraordinary, and taken as a whole the struggle on the semicircular front north and east of the great French stronghold fully justified its description as “the most terrible battle in the world’s history.”

When spring of 1916 arrived, the struggle seemed to be a pretty even draw, but the end was not in sight.  Both sides showed the greatest confidence in the outcome.  In France the confidence of the nation found expression in the voice of M. Alexandre Ribot, the veteran minister of finance, who, having Verdun before his eyes, told the Chamber of Deputies:  “We have reached the decisive hour.  We can say without exaggeration, without illusion, and without vain optimism, that we now see the end of this horrible war.”