This monument, a striking example of its class, is executed with a full measure of French skill and artistic power. But there cannot be the least misunderstanding as to its meaning. Every line breathes revenge and a day of reckoning to come. Mars-la-Tour was occupied by the Germans in the first days of the recent war. It must, I think, be put to the credit of the military authorities that, during the four and a half years that this memorial was in their power, no damage of any kind was done to it. Gravelotte and Mars-la-Tour are both dirty ramshackle villages, with middens out in the street blocking the entrance to the houses. Perhaps the inhabitants of frontier villages are inspired by a justifiable pessimism as to the futility of building decent dwelling-houses. Certainly the standard of life seems unusually low. Shortly after leaving Mars-la-Tour we began to pick up occasional signs of war, signs which, of course, multiplied as we entered the plain of the Woevre, and began to draw near the ridge of hills to the west on the far side of which Verdun lies. One battlefield is painfully like another. The destroyed villages and desolate fields told the same tale of death and suffering which is impressed on the long belt of devastation running across the Continent. Yet to me in future a cowslip field will always bring with it memories of Verdun. The familiar yellow flowers were growing in sheets by the roadside, striving, as it were, pathetically to throw the cover of their freshness and grace across the stricken land. The interest of Verdun, apart from its heroic defence, lies in the fact that the line of attack being very intensive was relatively small, and owing to the hilly and varied nature of the ground it is possible to visualise more or less accurately the various attacks and counter attacks. We approached Verdun from the south-west, a point from which the damage was relatively small. The whole of the Verdun ridge on which the forts are situated runs north and south, and commands the plain of the Woevre to the east and the valley of the Meuse to the west. All this district was formerly a great forest. On the southern slopes we found the trees practically intact. We turned to the right and, keeping along the top of the ridge, had our first view of the valley of the Meuse, and Verdun with its twin towers lying far below us in the plain.