see differed from those
seen on the other fronts less in kind than in quantity. More trips
were made, but there is and can be little place for a civilian on a
"front," any spot in which, over a strip several miles wide, from
the heavy artillery positions of one side to the heavy artillery of
the other, may be in absolute quiet one minute and the next the
center of fire.

There is no time to bother with civilians during an offensive, and,
if a retreat is likely, no commander wishes to have country
described which may presently be in the hands of the enemy. Hidden
batteries in action, reserves moving up, wounded coming back,
flyers, trenches quiet for the moment--this is about as close to
actual fighting as the outsider, under ordinary circumstances, can
expect to get on any front.

The difference in Austria-Hungary was that correspondents saw these
things, and the battle fields and captured cities, not as mere
outsiders, picked up from a hotel and presently to be dropped there
again, but as, in a sense, a part of the army itself. They had their
commandant to report to, their "camp" and "uniform"--the
gold-and-black Presse Quartier arm band--and they returned to
headquarters with the reasonable certainty that in another ten days
or so they would start out again.

Another advantage of the Quartier was the avoidance of the not
uncommon friction between the civilians of the Foreign Office and
the soldiers of the War Office. The Foreign Office runs things, so
to speak, in times of peace and it is to the Foreign Office that the
diplomatic representatives of foreign powers apply for favors for
their own fellow-citizens. But in war time the army runs things, and
the Foreign Office official who has charge of correspondents is
continually promising things or wishing to do things he is not sure
of being able to carry out. The result is often a rather unpleasant
sort of competitive wire-pulling between correspondents, some trying
the Foreign Office, some the War Office, some attacking both at the
same time--one would even hear it said now and then that the surest
way to get anything from the soldiers was to complain to them that
the Foreign Office civilians wouldn't do anything for you!

In Austria-Hungary the Presse Quartier acted as a bridge between the
two. It was the definite court to which all applicants were referred
and a good deal of aimless waiting about and wire-pulling eliminated
at once. And having cleared away the