As for the Camp des Romains, it was so badly hammered that the Germans could not use it, even when they had taken it, and were obliged to construct a new fort close to it. From that time all the subsequent efforts of the French to dislodge them have been unavailing. Although with St. Mihiel it is the only point which they have captured in the line of the river forts between Toul and Verdun, and although since the end of September, 1914, they have never advanced one foot beyond it, its possession has been extremely useful to them, and a nasty thorn in the side of the French. For though in position the Camp des Romains fort is only the apex of the St. Mihiel triangle, it is in effect its base and sides and area, since, without it, the triangle would not exist. CHAPTER XIX THE “SOIXANTE-QUINZE” The capture of St. Mihiel and the Camp des Romains was the last real triumph—I had almost said the only real triumph—that the Germans won in the east of France. For the scene of their other great positive success was not in France but in the annexed part of Lorraine, even though as the result of it they still hold one corner of the Department of the Vosges. But there, as everywhere else, since the end of September, 1914, they have not only made no progress, but have been on the whole driven further back. That is an obvious fact, but it is one which no one who studies the course and the probabilities of the war can afford to overlook. It is true that the French in all that time have made very little appreciable advance. Measured by distance the ground they have recovered is nothing in comparison with the number of lives that it has cost. But the sacrifice of lives must be made. It is the only way of deliverance, and every yard of blood-drenched soil that France has won back from the invader brings one step nearer the victory of freedom over oppression and of right over wrong. Also it must never be forgotten that few though the steps have been every one of them has been away from Paris and towards Berlin. The Germans began the war. For more than forty years they had been preparing for it. In spite of all the warnings they gave us of what we had to expect, England and France and Russia were not prepared. From one point of view that is a good thing. It throws the onus of the crime against humanity on to the right shoulders, and at the same time exposes the grotesque absurdity of the German fiction, intended chiefly for home and neutral consumption, that it was merely the instinct of self-preservation which forced them against their will to take up arms, and that they attacked their neighbours only to secure themselves against annihilation.