Leaving Conflans, as one passes through the occupied territory, the predominant impression made upon one’s mind is of signs. German military signs. These are everywhere, painted in great staring letters on the sides of buildings, covering bill-boards set at the road’s edge, or hung suspended from the branches of trees over the truck drivers’ heads. Here in this German sector behind the lines every movement was timed, ordered and regulated. No one could possibly go astray, no one could lose a moment in hesitation as to where he should go, in what manner and at what rate. Half-way between Conflans and the lines you come upon two great bill-boards at the highway’s edge, one duplicating the other, in order that, marching past, what might have been missed on the first board, could be supplied by the second. They are headed “Under Enemy Observation!” and give in strict detail the order of procedure from that point forward, both by day and night, just what strength the marching groups should be and how many metres should intervene between them. The German thoroughness, the German system! Everything has been thought of, everything provided for, everything possible done to reduce the individual to an automaton, a mere senseless cog in a vast machine. And yet among all these signs there is one that lacks, a sign that is notable by its absence; it is the sign that should read _Nach Verdun_. Once across the lines on the French side you are struck by the startling difference; here the only signs that one sees are two, poignant in their simplicity and directness. They are _Poste de Secours_ and _Blessés à Pied_. Every time I approach Verdun by this road I thrill when I think of the enormous energy that poured along it, directed, it must have seemed, irresistibly, over-poweringly against the city in the hills; a thrill only surpassed by the emotion that one must feel when he traverses the _Sacra Via_ on the other side of Verdun, the “Holy Way” over which men and munitions flowed incessantly to the defense of the beleaguered city.