Field Marshal Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War, perished with his staff off the West Orkney Islands on June 5 by the sinking of the British cruiser Hampshire, which struck a mine and went down fifteen minutes later. "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" Formerly they had sounded in our ears as chords of solemn music, breathing consolation; now that we see them clearly to be triumphant verities, living and everlasting truths, they ring out like a trumpet call, summoning and inspiring the living to stronger action. The work continues though the hand that moulded it perishes; the body dies, but the soul lives on. There is no sting in the grave when on either side men press forward to one immortal goal and when living and dead battle together for incorruptible principles. Whether individually we live or die signifies nothing, if that high cause for which we fight wins. Lord Kitchener's death will not interfere with the work he had undertaken, nor shall his passing delay, but rather shall it hasten the victory to which he looked forward.
Land and Water, London, June 8, 1916.
Crown Prince: "We must have a higher pile to see Verdun, Father."
The Crown Prince, after the gigantic effort of his armies, was confronted with problems more vast, with a resistance more confident and more efficient, than those which he had had to face in the opening days of the Verdun offensive. In three days the French had been driven off their first positions along a large portion of the Verdun front; over a month later they were still defending with increasing vigour their second line. Behind that line lay yet another, and the prospect of the fall of Verdun was but faint upon the German horizon. The French could already count upon victory, the price of Verdun having already been exacted in the enemy's blood, without the position having been captured. That price, it was said, had been fixed by the Imperial General Staff at 200,000 casualties.
The Times History of the War.