reminded of it in face of spectacular German successes.

"Almost no day passed but the communiqué.... ascribed to the Germans
with some appearance of justice heavy losses, extremely heavy, spoke
of bloody sacrifices, heaps of corpses, hecatombs. Likewise the
wireless constantly used the statistics of the intelligence bureau at
Verdun, whose chief, Major Cointet, had invented a method of
calculating German losses which obviously produced marvelous results.
Every fortnight the figures increased a hundred thousand or so. These
300,000, 400,000, 500,000 casualties put out, divided into daily,
weekly, monthly losses, repeated in all sorts of ways, produced a
striking effect. Our formulae varied little: 'according to prisoners
the German losses in the course of the attack have been considerable' ...
'it is proved that the losses' ... 'the enemy exhausted by his losses
has not renewed the attack' ... Certain formulae, later abandoned
because they had been overworked, were used each day: 'under
our artillery and machine gun fire' ... 'mowed down by our artillery
and machine gun fire' ... Constant repetition impressed the neutrals
and Germany itself, and helped to create a bloody background in spite
of the denials from Nauen (the German wireless) which tried vainly to
destroy the bad effect of this perpetual repetition." [Footnote: _Op.
cit._, pp. 138-139.]

The thesis of the French Command, which it wished to establish
publicly by these reports, was formulated as follows for the guidance
of the censors:

"This offensive engages the active forces of our opponent whose
manpower is declining. We have learned that the class of 1916 is
already at the front. There will remain the 1917 class already being