called up, and the resources of the third category (men above
forty-five, or convalescents). In a few weeks, the German forces
exhausted by this effort, will find themselves confronted with all the
forces of the coalition (ten millions against seven millions)."
[Footnote: _Op. cit._, p. 147.]

According to M. de Pierrefeu, the French command had converted itself
to this belief. "By an extraordinary aberration of mind, only the
attrition of the enemy was seen; it appeared that our forces were not
subject to attrition. General Nivelle shared these ideas. We saw the
result in 1917."

We have learned to call this propaganda. A group of men, who can
prevent independent access to the event, arrange the news of it to
suit their purpose. That the purpose was in this case patriotic does
not affect the argument at all. They used their power to make the
Allied publics see affairs as they desired them to be seen. The
casualty figures of Major Cointet which were spread about the world
are of the same order. They were intended to provoke a particular kind
of inference, namely that the war of attrition was going in favor of
the French. But the inference is not drawn in the form of argument. It
results almost automatically from the creation of a mental picture of
endless Germans slaughtered on the hills about Verdun. By putting the
dead Germans in the focus of the picture, and by omitting to mention
the French dead, a very special view of the battle was built up. It
was a view designed to neutralize the effects of German territorial
advances and the impression of power which the persistence of the
offensive was making. It was also a view that tended to make the
public acquiesce in the demoralizing defensive strategy imposed upon
the Allied armies. For the public, accustomed to the idea that war