The tide of battle at Verdun ebbs and flows, but
unquestionably the French have of late had the positive as well as the negative advantage, though we admit that the former has up to the present been slight. The negative advantage—the ability of the French to check the Germans' advance and prevent them from attaining their design of forcing the French to evacuate the fortress—is, however, of enormous importance. Their splendid tenacity has cost the Germans already thousands of men, and quite conceivably will cost them, before they have finished, half-a-million in casualties, for the Germans now dare not break off the battle and admit their failure. But if their loss in men has been great, their loss in prestige on the one hand and moral on the other has been even more serious. As General Grant found when he hurled his army again and again unsuccessfully at the trenches at Petersburg, even the best troops in the world cannot stand indefinitely such re-sultless buffeting. There comes a moment when they feel that their efforts are hopeless. Even though they obey their orders and go on, it is with a sense of wasted 'Courage and failure upon which victory can never be built.
