Читать книгу Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights - Kelly Miller - Страница 58
THE GREAT BATTLE OF VERDUN.
ОглавлениеThe annals of history record no battle approaching in duration, artillery fire, and awful sacrifice than the battle that enveloped Verdun for six months, beginning February 21, 1916. Other battles have been fought along more extended fronts and thus engaged larger numbers of troops; but none ever presented in a more acute form the issue of national life or death. The stand of the heroic Greeks at Thermopylae denying passage to the hosts of Persia was not more vital to the cause of civilization than this storied defense of Verdun. The reflective writer can but notice that in every campaign of the war, when further success of the German armies meant victory, it was as if an unseen Power decreed "thus far and no further." It was so at Verdun. The French soldier, calmly going to death, chanting "They shall not pass," did not die in vain.