The only drawback is that the fort is not his. It takes this liberty on March 8, and again on March 9, and again on the 10th. General von Guretsky-Cornitz, Commander of the 9th Reserve Division, gains nothing by vigorously clearing the way with his artillery and by making a brilliant night attack. Yet the German supreme command dares not confess to the world that the haughty General von Guretsky-Cornitz has befooled it. Hastily, on March 10, it sends out a third raven, with this message under his wing: “The French have made violent counter-attacks on our new front to the east and south of the village, as well as near Fort Vaux. In the course of these engagements the enemy managed to regain a footing in the armoured fort itself. Everywhere else the enemy were repulsed with heavy losses.” That is how the game is played. “Let us give back the fort to the French, since they are there and have always been there. Let us give it back, for we are honest and loyal: we give back what we haven’t got. What ground have the French for complaint? We have given them back a fort by a counter-attack. We credit them with a counter-attack which they have never made. We ascribe to them a success which they have not obtained. The world will admire us. The world will say: ‘There is true Teutonic frankness. The Germans had taken Fort Vaux. It was a splendid gain. Next day they lost it. Well, they don’t hesitate to proclaim the fact. We can certainly rely on the German communiqués. They confess the truth when things go against them. They play the game.’” But lying requires a continuity of effort of which the most cunning impostors are rarely capable. It is only the man who tells the truth that never burns his fingers. Three months later--measure those three months later: exactly eighty-eight days, in other words the whole interval between the announcement of March 9 and the real fall of the fort, June 7 in the early morning, eighty-eight days of heat and cold, of weariness, of thirst and lack of sleep, of bombardments and assaults--three months later Fort Vaux is really taken. The German High Command knows what the cost is. It proudly announces the news. It forgets its wireless message of March 9. It says, “The armoured fort Vaux is occupied by us....” It does not say, it does not dare to say, “The armoured fort of Vaux is reoccupied by us....” II THE ROAD (MARCH 11) Here is Verdun, like a Florence of the North in the midst of its amphitheatre of hills. After days of frost and snow, so pitiless to our men in the demolished trenches which are now mere conglomerations of shell-holes, a soft spring air has suddenly come to relax the numbed limbs and the frozen earth. The surprise is so great that it brings to unaccustomed lips that charming and unexpected name of Florence. It is the hour of sunset, a sunset that bathes the undulating line of the hills in gold and mauve, and lights up the dismal waters of the flooded Meuse.