GERMAN PURPOSE AT VERDUN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1564, 15 June 1916, Page 2

GERMAN PURPOSE AT VERDUN.

IN a recent article, Mr Hilaire Belloc, discussing the German purpose at Verdun, said : “The phase, ‘to take Verdun’ Ims, in the purely military sense, no significance whatsoever. The whole meaning and the only meaning, so far us the military problem is concerned, of the strug-

gie round Verdun, is the proportion of loss which either pnrly Ims sutfered at any stage during the attaek, There is no question of breaking the French line. There is no (piestion of the ‘surrender of the fortress,' for there is no fortress to surrender. No tinny is surrounded or nearly surrounded. No mass of material and munitions even is in ■jeopardy. The enemy is prepared to sacrifice a' certain number of men over and above the number of men which he puts out of action upon our side. He is prepared to exhaust himself in this degree in order to he able to say (hat his soldiers stand in the ruins of a particular town — that is, upon a particular geographical area upon the map—there is now nothing more whatsoever to be discovered in his efforts. Why is he prepared to do this? Because he believes (hat the effect, not military but political, not upon soldiers studying the military problems of disarming an op|wmenl, bid upon civilian opinion—outside France — will be such as to determine an early peace in his favour. For (he same reason he may direct his last efforts against ourselves. In the first days of the attack upon Verdun he had another object. He thought that he would break the .French line. Now he knows that this cannot be'done. And we know it, too. But. he is persuaded that by the continual repetition of the name ‘Verdun,’ by the continual description of it as a fortress, by the concentration of the world’s attention upon these mere houses, his presence among (heir ruins will shake the confidence of his foes and perhaps determine some accession of neutral aid for himself. The whole thing may he compared lo the poird which we ridicule so rightly in the later mediaeval wars, when the capture of a single personage in an action was regarded by both sides as decisive.”