The Champagne-battle-field is indeed deeply interwoven with the whole history of the war.  The flower of the French Army and almost all the leading French Generals—­Castelnau, Petain, Nivelle, Gouraud, have passed through its furnace.  But famous as it is, and for ever associated with the remarkable and fascinating personality of General Gouraud, which gives to it a panache of its own, it has not the sacredness of Verdun.

We had spent the day before the expedition to Champagne at St. Mihiel and Verdun.  To St. Mihiel I will return in my next chapter.  Verdun I had never seen, and the impression that it makes, even in a few hours, is profound.  In March, 1916, I well remember at Havre, at Boulogne, at St. Omer, how intent and absorbed a watch was kept along our front over the news from Verdun.  It came in hourly, and the officers in the hotels, French and English, passed it to each other without much speech, with a shrug, or a look of anxiety, or a smile, as the case might be.  When we arrived on March 6th at the Visitors’ Chateau at G.H.Q.—­then, of course, at St. Omer—­our first question was:  “Verdun?” “All right,” was the quick reply.  “We have offered help, but they have refused it.”

No—­France, heroic France, trod that wine-press alone; she beat back her cruel foe alone; and, at Verdun, she triumphed alone.  Never, indeed, was human sacrifice more absolute; and never was the spiritual force of what men call patriotism more terribly proved.  “The poilu of Verdun,” writes M. Joseph Reinach, “became an epic figure”—­and the whole battle rose before Europe as a kind of apocalyptic vision of Death and Courage, staged on a great river, in an amphitheatre of blood-stained hills.  All the eyes in the world were fixed on this little corner of France.  For a Frenchman—­“Verdun was our first thought on waking, and was never absent from us through the day.”

The impression made by the battle—­or rather, the three battles—­of Verdun does not depend on the numbers engaged.  The British Battle of the Somme, and the battles of last year on the British front far surpassed it in the number of men and guns employed.  From March 21st last year to April 17th, the British front was attacked by 109 divisions, and the French by 25.  In the most critical fighting at Verdun, from February 21st to March 21st, the French had to face 21 divisions, and including the second German attack in June and the triumphant French advance in December, the total enemy forces may be put at 42 divisions.  But the story is incomparable!  Everything contributed—­the fame of the ancient fortress, the dynastic and political interests involved, the passion of patriotism which the struggle evoked in France, the spendthrift waste of life on the part of the German Command.