Within a few hours those two or three hundred words would be read all
over the world. They would paint a picture in men's minds of what was
happening on the slopes of Verdun, and in front of that picture people
would take heart or despair. The shopkeeper in Brest, the peasant in
Lorraine, the deputy in the Palais Bourbon, the editor in Amsterdam or
Minneapolis had to be kept in hope, and yet prepared to accept
possible defeat without yielding to panic. They are told, therefore,
that the loss of ground is no surprise to the French Command. They are
taught to regard the affair as serious, but not strange. Now, as a
matter of fact, the French General Staff was not fully prepared for
the German offensive. Supporting trenches had not been dug,
alternative roads had not been built, barbed wire was lacking. But to
confess that would have aroused images in the heads of civilians that
might well have turned a reverse into a disaster. The High Command
could be disappointed, and yet pull itself together; the people at
home and abroad, full of uncertainties, and with none of the
professional man's singleness of purpose, might on the basis of a
complete story have lost sight of the war in a melee of faction and
counter-faction about the competence of the officers. Instead,
therefore, of letting the public act on all the facts which the
generals knew, the authorities presented only certain facts, and these
only in such a way as would be most likely to steady the people.

In this case the men who arranged the pseudo-environment knew what the
real one was. But a few days later an incident occurred about which
the French Staff did not know the truth. The Germans announced
[Footnote: On February 26, 1916. Pierrefeu, _G. Q. G._, pp. 133
_et seq_.] that on the previous afternoon they had taken Fort
Douaumont by assault. At French headquarters in Chantilly no one
could understand this news. For on the morning of the twenty-fifth,