The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1927. IN MEMORY OF VERDUN.

Hokitika Guardian, 23 September 1927, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1927. IN MEMORY OF VERDUN.

1 \Yi:tTIN« of the recent dedication ol a war memorial at Verdun, the Clnist- | church Press goes oil to remark that j the rears go by ami memories el the (ifjafc War become bli.ired by lime, bur, every now and then, a celebration I is held or a memorial dedicated which I reminds us ol those times when the I ‘•great days ranged l'ke tides and left j ‘-our dead on every shore. A few I weeks ago it was the dedication or | the Alenin Gate, and all the memories I of tiie A’pre.s salient came crowding in. | Britons stopped in their daily round | to salute the fame and sacrifice of t those who fell, or fought and survived, | in the most appalling hell of which I British warfare at any rate lias record. I To-day it is Verdun, where in the proI sence of Marshal Pctain and other genI ends a great ossuary has been dedi- • cated to commemorate that terrible defence. What Ynres is to the British ' Verdun is to the French. Reading today the accnints of the successful ro- ' sistance of the then worn British line in 1914 to the attacks of ovcrwhelming- ; ]y superior forces of Germans wo can no longer understand how it was done. The men that so held their ground seem to us now to have been .supermen, as for the time they were, raised by the tremendous responsibility of tl 10 occasion to a nobility not reached in ordinary affairs. At Verdun the same sublime cpiaiities wore displayed by the French. The Gormans drove at that place with terrifying strength of man and material. Their guns blasted the earth and armies poured into the breach. Week after week the hideous assault went oil. The French lost ground and their casualties were frightful. According to Marshal Petnin. every written order was repeated ten times to ensure one mail in ten getting through, yet the French went on saying: “They shall not pass.” And they did not pass. The line was held, and Verdun remained unenptured. Tt was one of the momentous chapters of the war. The Germans hied France cruelly, but they themselves suffered a staggering failure which no excuses could explain away. The thought to-day, however, is not so much of strategy or tactics as of what might have lieen had the German assault fallen elsewhere. As for the human side of this past appalling conflict, and especially of the proof it affords of the unimaginable endurance of man, what the soldiers endured in the war completely upset the textbooks of professional writers and the calculations of amateur strategists. Units went on fighting after they had suffered a proportion of casualties, which by the rules should have rendered them utterly useless. Men were able to fare, as at Ypres, a combination of mud, wilted, filth, and devastating bombardments which before the war would have been considered absolutely unendurable. If the war displayed the devilry of man in all its hideonsness. it also exhibited as never before the stature and heautv of his unconquerable soul; and futile in .so many respects though all wars are. that i.s a lesson which we still badly need.