Presently we moved again, we slipped through the column, topped the last incline, shot under the crumbling gate of the Verdun fortress, and as we entered a shell burst just behind us and the roar drowned out all else in its sudden and paralyzing crash. It had fallen, so we learned a little later, just where we had been watching the passing troops; it had fallen among them and killed. But an hour or two later, when we repassed the point where it fell, men were still marching by. Other regiments of men were still marching to the sound of the guns, and those who had passed were already over the hills and beyond the river, filing into the trenches in time, so it turned out, to meet the new attack that came with the later afternoon. I went to Verdun to see the forts, the city, the hills, and the topography of a great battle; I went in the hope of describing with a little of clarity what the operation meant as a military affair. I say, and I shall hereafter try to describe this. But I shall never be able to describe this thing which was the true Verdun for me--these men, their faces, seen as one heard the shell fire and the musketry rolling, not steadily but intermittently, the men who had marched over the roads that are lined with graves, through villages that are destroyed, who had come of their own will and in calm determination and marched unhurryingly and yet unshrinkingly, the men who were no longer young, who had left behind them all that men hold dear in life, home, wives, children, because they knew that there was no other way. I can only say to all those who have asked me, "What of France?" this simple thing, that I do not believe the French will ever stop. I do not believe, as the Germans have said, that French courage is weakening, that French determination is abating. I do not believe the Kaiser himself would think this if he had seen these men's faces as they marched _toward_ his guns. I think he would feel as I felt, as one must feel, that these men went willingly, hating war with their whole soul, destitute of passion or anger. I never heard a passionate word in France, because there had entered into their minds, into the mind and heart of a whole race, the belief that what was at stake was the thing that for two thousand years of history had been France. II MY TRIP TO VERDUN--A DYING, SHELL-RIDDEN CITY THE VAUBAN CITADEL, IN THE SHELTER OF WHICH FALLING SHELLS CANNOT FIND YOU--HOUSES AND BLOCKS THAT ARE VANISHING HOURLY--"BUT WILLIAM WILL NOT COME"--WAR THAT IS INVISIBLE--A LUNCHEON UNDERGROUND WITH A TOAST TO AMERICA--THE LAST COURTESY FROM A GENERAL AND A HOST--NOTHING THAT WAS NOT BEAUTIFUL