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.