It would need the brush of Rembrandt to paint the dining-hall in the citadel of Verdun.  At one long table in the dimly lighted vault sat between eighty and ninety officers, who all rose, saluted, and cheered as we entered.  The General sat at the head of the table surrounded by his staff, and behind him the faces of the cooks were lit up by the fires of the stoves.

Some short distance behind us was an air-shaft.  It appears that about a week or a fortnight before our arrival a German shell, striking the top part of the citadel, dislodged some dust and gravel which fell down the air-shaft onto the General’s head.  He simply called the attendants to him and asked for his table to be moved forward a yard, as he did not feel inclined to sit at table with his helmet on.

An excellent dinner—­soup, roast mutton, fresh beans, salade Russe, Frangipane, dessert—­and even champagne to celebrate the General’s cravate—­quite reassured us that people may die in Verdun of shells but not of hunger.  We drank toasts to France, the Allies, and, silently, to the men of France who had died that we might live.  I was asked to propose the health of the General and did it in English, knowing that he spoke English well.  I told him that the defenders of Verdun would live in our hearts and memories; that on behalf of the whole British race I felt I might convey to him congratulations on the honour paid to him by France.  I assured him that we had but one idea and one hope, the speedy victory of the Allied arms, and that personally my present desire was that every one of those present at table might live to see the flag of France waving over the whole of Alsace-Lorraine.  They asked me to repeat a description of the flag of France which I gave first in Ottawa, so there, in the citadel of Verdun with a small French flag before me, I went back in spirit to Ottawa and remembered how I had spoken of the triumph of the flag of France:  “The red, white and blue—­the red of the flag of France a little deeper hue than in time of peace since it was dyed with the blood of her sons, the blood in which a new history of France is being written, volume on volume, page on page, of deeds of heroism, some pages completed and signed, others where the pen has dropped from the faltering hands and which posterity must needs finish.  The white of the flag of France, not quite so white as in time of peace since thousands of her sons had taken it in their hands and pressed it to their lips before they went forward to die for it, yet without stain, since in all the record of the war there is no blot on the escutcheon of France.  And the blue of the flag of France, true blue, torn and tattered with the marks of the bullets and the shrapnel, yet unfurling proudly in the breeze whilst the very holes were patched by the blue of the sky, since surely Heaven stands behind the flag of France.”

The men of Verdun were full of admiration for the glorious Commander of the Fort de Vaux.  They told me that the fort was held, or rather the ruins of the fort, until the Germans were actually on the top and firing on the French beneath.