The word hardly renders the French “audace” which is equally mis-translated by our English “audacity.” “Audace” implies a daring which is not rashness, a daring which is justified, which is, in fact, the military aspect of a great nation’s confidence in itself.  It was the spirit of the “Marseillaise,” says M. Reinach again—­it was the French soul—­l’ame francaise—­the soul of country and of freedom, which triumphed here.

And not for France alone.  At the moment when the attack on Verdun began, although the British military power was strengthening month by month, and the Military Service Act of May, 1916, which put the finishing touch to Lord Kitchener’s great work, was close at hand, the French Army was still not only the principal, but the essential element in the Western campaign.  France, at Verdun, as in the Battle of the Marne, was defending not only her own freedom, but the freedom of Europe.  A few months later, when the British Army of the Somme went over its parapets at daybreak on July 1st, Verdun was automatically relieved, and it was clear to all the world that Britain’s apprenticeship was past, and that another great military power had been born into Europe, on whom, as we now know, the main responsibilities of final victory were to rest.  But at Verdun France fought for us—­for England and America no less than for herself; and that thought must always deepen the already deep emotion with which English eyes look out upon these tortured hills.

That dim line on the eastern ridge, which marks the ruins of Fort Vaux, stands indeed for a story which has been entrusted by history to the living memory of France’s Allies, hardly less than to that of France herself.  As we pause among the crumbling trenches and shell-holes to look back upon the height of Vaux, I seem to see the lines of French infantry creeping up the hill, through the communication trenches, in the dark, to the relief of their comrades in the fort; the runners—­eager volunteers—­assuring communications under the incessant hail of shell; the carrier-pigeons, when the fort is altogether cut off, bringing their messages back to Headquarters; the red and green signal lights shooting up from the ridge into the night.  One of these runners, when the siege was nearing its end, arrived at an advance post, having by a miracle got through a terrible barrage unhurt.  “You might have waited a few instants,” said the Colonel, kindly.  But the runner, astonished, showed the envelope.  “My Colonel, look—­it is written—­’urgent!’”

That was the spirit.  Or listen to this fragment from the journal of Captain Delvert, defending one of the redoubts that protect Fort Vaux: