"Forward, my children, forward!"
But they, too, have machine guns; they, too, have rifles; they, too, have shrapnel and their wire entanglements stretch before us. The French fall as their men fall, but the French commanders will not waste life like theirs.
"Fall back, my children, they have had enough!"
Slowly the bombardment dies down to a watchful fire against a repetition of the assault. With countless false alarms the hours of the night pass by.
The gray day breaks slowly.
The trenches are full of dead and No Man's Land is a sight of redoubled horror.
Full daylight comes and shows the scene as desolate as ever, the long line of trenches stretching unbroken from Switzerland to the sea.
All the heroism, the courage, the mad endeavor, the agony, the slaughter, what has it brought to either side?
Nothing.
All that the official communiqués can say, whether sent out from Berlin or from Paris, will be: