The roads themselves are not so distinct as they were.  They are becoming grass-grown:  for more than a year—­in daylight at least—­no human foot has trodden them.  The place is like hundreds of others that you may see scattered up and down this countryside—­two straight, flat, metalled country roads, running north and south and east and west, crossing one another at a faultless right angle.

Of the four corners thus created, one is—­or was—­occupied by an estaminet:  you can still see the sign, Estaminet au Commerce, over the door.  Two others contain cottages,—­the remains of cottages.  At the fourth, facing south and east, stands what is locally known as a “Calvaire,”—­bank of stone, a lofty cross, and a life-size figure of Christ, facing east, towards the German lines.

This spot is shelled every day—­has been shelled every day for months.  Possibly the enemy suspects a machine-gun or an observation post amid the tumble-down buildings.  Hardly one brick remains upon another.  And yet—­the sorrowful Figure is unbroken.  The Body is riddled with bullets—­in the glowing dawn you may Count not five but fifty wounds—­but the Face is untouched.  It is the standing miracle of this most materialistic war.  Throughout the length of France you will see the same thing.

Agnostics ought to come out here, for a “cure.”

IV

With spring comes also the thought of the Next Push.

But we do not talk quite so glibly of pushes as we did.  Neither, for that matter, does Brother Boche.  He has just completed six weeks’ pushing at Verdun, and is beginning to be a little uncertain as to which direction the pushing is coming from.

No; once more the military textbooks are being rewritten.  We started this war under one or two rather fallacious premises.  One was that Artillery was more noisy than dangerous.  When Antwerp fell, we rescinded that theory.  Then the Boche set out to demonstrate that an Attack, provided your Artillery preparation is sufficiently thorough, and you are prepared to set no limit to your expenditure of Infantry, must ultimately succeed.  To do him justice, the Boche supported his assertions very plausibly.  His phalanx bundled the Russians all the way from Tannenburg to Riga.  The Austrians adopted similar tactics, with similar results.

We were duly impressed.  The world last summer did not quite realize how far the results of the campaign were due to German efficiency and how far to Russian unpreparedness. (Russia, we realise now, found herself in the position of the historic Mrs. Partington, who endeavoured to repel the Atlantic with a mop.  This year, we understand, she is in a position to discard the mop in favour of something far, far better.)

Then came—­Verdun.  Military science turned over yet another page, and noted that against consummate generalship, unlimited munitions, and selfless devotion on the part of the defence, the most spectacular and highly-doped phalanx can spend itself in vain.  Military science also noted that, under modern conditions, the capture of this position or that signifies nothing:  the only method of computing victory is to count the dead on either side.  On that reckoning, the French at Verdun have already gained one of the great victories of all time.