After the French rally, indeed, from the first terrific bombardment, which nearly gave the German Command its coveted prey, the thing became a duel, watched by all Europe, between Petain and the Crown Prince; between the dynastic interests of the Hohenzollerns, served by a magnificent army, and the finest military and patriotic traditions of France.  From day to day the public in this country watched the fluctuations of the struggle with an interest so absorbing that the names of Douaumont, Vaux, Mort Homme, Cumieres, the Goose’s Crest, came to ring in our ears almost as the names of Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte, La Belle Alliance, rang in those of an earlier time.

Verdun, from a distance, produces the same illusion as Rheims.  The Cathedral and the town are apparently still in being.  They have not lost their essential outlines, and the veils of grey and purple haze between the spectator and the reality disguises what both have suffered.  Then one draws nearer.  One enters the famous fortress, through the old Vauban fortifications, and over the Vauban bridge—­little touched, to all appearance.  And presently, as one passes along the streets, one sees that here is not a town, but only the ghost, the skeleton of a town.  The roofless, windowless houses, of which the streets still keep, as in Rheims, their ancient lines, stare at you like so many eyeless skulls—­the bare bones of a city.  Only the famous citadel, with its miles of underground passages and rooms, is just as it was before the battle, and as it will be, one may hope, through the long years to come; preserved, not for any active purpose of war, but as the shrine of immortal memories.  Itself, it played a great part in the struggle.  For here, in these dormitories and mess-rooms and passages so far underground that even the noise of the fierce struggle outside never reached them, it was possible for troops worn out by the superhuman ordeal of the battle, to find complete rest—­to sleep—­without fear.

We entered through a large mess-room full of soldiers, with, at its further end, a kitchen, with a busy array of cooks and orderlies.  Then someone opened a door, and we found ourselves in a small room, very famous in the history of the war.  During the siege, scores of visitors from Allied and neutral countries—­statesmen, generals, crowned heads—­took luncheon under its canopy of flags, buried deep underground, while the storm of shell raged outside.  There, in the visitors’ book, one might turn to the two signatures—­one of them then only a fortnight old—­that all France knows: 

    “March, 1916—­On les aura!  Petain”

    “January, 1918—­On les a!  Petain”