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e hours and taking ample time out for meals. The staff was quartered in a handsome old municipal building; the ground floor, devoted to living purposes, quite like an exclusive club; the business offices upstairs. Gen. von Haenisch took me aloft and explained to me how business was done. A good telephone operator, it developed, was almost as important as a competent General--the telephone "central" the most vital spot of an army. Here were three large switchboards with soldiers playing telephone girl, while other soldiers, with receivers fastened over their heads, sat at desks busy taking down messages on printed "business" forms. In the next room sat the staff officers on duty, waiting for the telephone bell to jingle with latest reports from the front. There was no waiting because numbers were "engaged" or operators gossiping; you could get Berlin or Vienna without once having to swear at "long distance." Gen. von Haenisch had his chief of field telephone and telegraph trot out what looked like a huge family tree, but turned out to be a most minute chart of the entire telephone system of the --nth Army. It showed the position of every corps and division headquarters' regiment, battalion, and company, and all the telephone lines connecting them, even to the single trenches and batteries. Gen. von Haenisch suggested having some fun with Gen. von X., commanding the army next door on the right, and I was made Acting Chief of Staff for two minutes, getting von X.'s Chief of Staff on the phone and inquiring if there was "anything doing." "No; everything quiet here," came the reassuring answer. An art exhibition within sound of the guns at the front by the well-known Munich artist, Ernst Vollbehr, the Kaiser's own war painter with the --nth army, was another real novelty. The long-haired painter, wearing the regulation field gray uniform, brought his portfolio of sketches into the billiard hall of the headquarters and showed them with sprightly running comment: "Here is the library of Brimont. You can see most of the books lying on the ground. It wasn't a comfortable place to paint because there were too many shells flying around loose. Here is the Cathedral of Dinant. Very much improved aesthetically by the shells knocking the ugly points of the towers off. Here is a picture of Rheims Cathedral looming through the fog, as seen from the German lines. I painted this picture of the battle of the Aisne from a captive
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