The German authorities are afraid to tell their hungry people the truth about Verdun. The French, they say, succeeded “in pressing us back out of our first line” — of course to “a prepared second line”. That is the only account they dare to publish of a defeat which has cost them at least 9,000 prisoners and 80 guns, and which has driven them back to within a few hundred yards of positions from which they set out to take Verdun last February.
The battle of October 24 was the first stage in the deliverance of the historic fortress. The French then retook Douaumont and the inner circle of heights round the town. On Friday they recaptured the outer circle. The ground gained was considerable but its importance lies in its character, rather than in its extent. It deprives the enemy of the main viewpoints from which they directed their attacks. That is a most valuable result, as the battle again demonstrated the weakness of their air service.
They have lost their eyes. But they have lost much more. They employed five divisions to resist the four French divisions which attacked, and prisoners were taken out of every regiment in the five. They seem to have made hardly any fight except with the artillery, and even the artillery shot wild. The French losses were slight, and the troops showed magnificent dash and confidence. Our Correspondent, who witnessed the battle, declares that “the dispirited Germans were beaten before it began”. The French came on, singing the battle-hymn to which their fathers conquered Europe, and to its stirring strains they carried the German trenches “with consummate ease”. At first the enemy was “pressed back” in good order, but when some found themselves cut off, it “became a rout”. General Nivelle, the new French Commander-in-Chief, who was the brain and the soul of the defence of Verdun for so many critical months, had the supreme satisfaction of bidding farewell to his brave comrades in the moment of victory. “I leave you, gentlemen,” he said, “after a splendid day, the result of which is conclusive.” It proved, he went on, the moral and material superiority of the Verdun troops over the enemy, and he declared his conviction that victory is certain, and that “Germany will learn it to her cost.”
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