Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to the New York Tribune for permission to reprint these articles in book form....

THE MEN WHO HOLD THE LINE—WHAT THEIR FACES TOLD OF THE PAST AND THE FUTURE OF FRANCE My road to Verdun ran through the Elysée Palace, and it was to the courtesy and interest of the President of the French Republic that I owed my opportunity to see the battle for the Meuse city at close range. Already through the kindness of the French General Staff I had seen the Lorraine and Marne battlegrounds and had been guided over these fields by officers who had shared in the opening battles that saved Fr

THE VAUBAN CITADEL, IN THE SHELTER OF WHICH FALLING SHELLS CANNOT FIND YOU—HOUSES AND BLOCKS THAT ARE VANISHING HOURLY—"BUT WILLIAM WILL NOT COME"—WAR THAT IS INVISIBLE—A LUNCHEON UNDERGROUND WITH A TOAST TO AMERICA—THE LAST COURTESY FROM A GENERAL AND A HOST—NOTHING THAT WAS NOT BEAUTIFUL The citadel of Verdun, the bulwark of the eastern frontier in ancient days, rises out of the meadows of the Meuse with something of the abruptness of the sky-scraper, and still preserves that aspect which led

FAILURE OF CROWN PRINCE LIKENED BY FRENCH TO "HIGH TIDE" OF CONFEDERACY "The parallel between Gettysburg in your Civil War and Verdun in the present contest is unmistakable and striking." This was said to me by General Delacroix, one of Joffre's predecessors as chief of the French General Staff and the distinguished military critic of the Paris Temps now that because of age he has passed to the retired list. What General Delacroix meant was patent and must have already impressed many Americans.

THE BATTLE AND THE TOPOGRAPHY OF THE BATTLEFIELD—AN ANALYSIS OF THE ATTACK AND DEFENCE In a preceding article I have endeavored to explain the tremendous moral "lift" that the successful defence of the city of Verdun has brought to France, a moral "lift" which has roused French confidence and expectation of ultimate victory to the highest point since the war began. I have also tried to demonstrate how utterly without value the fortress of Verdun was, because the forts were of no use in the prese

In the third week of August, 1914, a French army crossed the frontier of Alsace-Lorraine and entered the Promised Land, toward which all Frenchmen had looked in hope and sadness for forty-four years. The long-forgotten communiqués of that early period of the war reported success after success, until at last it was announced that the victorious French armies had reached Sarrebourg and Morhange, and were astride the Strassburg-Metz Railroad. And then Berlin took up the cry, and France and the worl