The Verdun news continues excellent, and unless we are very
much mistaken the German offensive is doomed to grow weaker and weaker. Movements like the great assault on Verdun, if they are to succeed, must succeed in the first three or four days. When this does not happen, even if fresh troops are continually brought up, the movements tend to become heartless and mechanical. The men feel that they are being asked to do the impossible, and nothing daunts a man more than that. At the same time, one can quite understand how difficult it must seem to the German General Staff to break off the assault at Verdun and admit failure. One can imagine some genial optimist of a General who was be- loved by the whole Army and the nation issuing a General Order to say that the troops had had a splendid "scrap" at Verdun, had distinguished themselves very greatly and inflicted tremendous loss upon the enemy, but that even the best of things must have an ending, and he had come to the conclusion that they had done as much good as they were likely to do on the Verdun front, and had better now have a go somewhere else. But this is not
the sort of thing that the Kaiser, the Crown Prince, or any of his eolourage could say without maddening the German people and the Army. In truth, the German military authorities are in the position of a demon who has been driven by a magician into a bargain to perform some miraculous operation, such, for example, as emptying a lake with a tin pail.
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