On the other hand, east of the River Meuse the French are approximately in their last line. The hills and crests they hold upon the Meuse Hills are some three or four miles from Verdun, but if the French retired far they would begin to come down hill, with a deep river at their backs. In consequence, whenever you hear that the Germans have made some slight gain, taken a trench about Douaumont or Vaux, you are certain to hear at once that the French have counter attacked and retaken the lost ground.
The essential thing to remember is that the defence of Verdun is not the defence of a position that has a great military value. The French would be better off, would lose fewer men and run smaller risk of considerable losses if they should quit the east bank of the Meuse and occupy the hills back of Verdun on the west bank. On the west bank the Germans have never made any material gain, and they have not come within reach of the hills that bear the old forts. But the French Government has decided that for political reason, for reasons that affect the moral, not the military, situation, Verdun must not be surrendered; hence the army is holding it at a cost of men less than the Germans are paying to take it, but at a far greater cost than would be necessary to hold the better positions west of the river.
The Germans have not made any gain of importance in nearly two months. The French are very sure they will not come farther south. They are as confident as men could be. But if the Germans should come farther south and at last force the French to come back behind the river and to the hills above the town, they would only win a moral victory. The military situation would not be changed, unless they should also pierce the French lines on the west of the river, and this is absolutely unthinkable now.
If you think of Verdun city as a fortress you will put yourself in the eighteenth century. It is just an abandoned town, mostly ashes and completely ruined by a useless bombardment after the main German advance had been checked. If you think of Verdun as a fortified position, like Liège, which, if it fell, would bring disaster, as did the fall of Liège, you are thinking in terms of the situation before the war. The forts of this position have all been abandoned and the French are fighting in trenches in all points save one outside this circle of forts. If you think of Verdun as the gateway to anything, you are thinking of something that doesn't exist. It was a gateway to Central France, to the Plain of Châlons, from the German frontier before the Germans came down into the Plain of Châlons from the north through Belgium.