Last month I was invited to one of the Verdun forts. It now lies in the very path of the drive, and to describe it would be improper. But the approaches to it are now what every German knows. They were more impressive even than the fort. The "glacis" of the fort stretched for a mile, and as we walked in the direction of the German trenches there was not a moment when from every side French guns could not have blown us into fragments. They were mounted on the spurs of the hills, sunk in pits, ambushed in the thick pine woods. Every step forward was made cautiously between trenches, or through mazes of barb-wire and iron hurdles with bayonet-like spikes. Even walking leisurely you had to watch your step. Pits opened suddenly at your feet, and strands of barbed-wire caught at your clothing. Whichever way you looked trenches flanked you. They were dug at every angle, and were not farther than fifty yards apart.
On one side, a half mile distant, was a hill heavily wooded. At regular intervals the trees had been cut down and uprooted and, like a wood-road, a cleared space showed. These were the nests of the "seventy-fives." They could sweep the approaches to the fort as a fire-hose flushes a gutter. That a human being should be ordered to advance against such pitfalls and obstructions, and under the fire from the trenches and batteries, seemed sheer murder. Not even a cat with nine lives could survive.
[Illustration: A valley in Argonne showing a forest destroyed by shells.
Owing to the attack on the Verdun sector, it is again under fire.]
The German papers tell that before the drive upon Verdun was launched the German Emperor reproduced the attack in miniature. The whereabouts and approaches to the positions they were to take were explained to the men. Their officers were rehearsed in the part each was to play. But no rehearsal would teach a man to avoid the pitfalls that surround Verdun. The open places are as treacherous as quicksands, the forests that seem to him to offer shelter are a succession of traps. And if he captures one fort he but brings himself under the fire of two others.
From what I saw of the defenses of Verdun from a "certain place" three miles outside the city to a "certain place" fifteen miles farther south, from what the general commanding the Verdun sector told me, and from what I know of the French, I believe the Crown Prince will find this second attack upon Verdun a hundred per cent more costly than the first, and equally unsuccessful.