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