n E. Kehl has been long in our
consular service, and is most admirably fitted to meet the present
crisis. He has been our representative at Salonika for four years, in
which time his experience as consul during the Italian-Turkish War, the
two Balkan wars, and the present war, have trained him to meet any
situation that is likely to arrive.

What that situation may be, whether the Bulgar-Germans will attack
Salonika, or the Allies will advance upon Sofia, and as an inevitable
sequence draw after them the Greek army of 200,000 veterans, only the
spring can tell.

If the Teutons mean to advance, having the shorter distance to go,
they may launch their attack in April. The Allies, if Sofia is their
objective, will wait for the snow to leave the hills and the roads to
dry. That they would move before May is doubtful. Meanwhile, they are
accumulating many men, and much ammunition and information. May they
make good use of it.

CHAPTER IX

VERDUN AND ST. MIHIEL

PARIS, January, 1916.

It is an old saying that the busiest man always seems to have the most
leisure. It is another way of complimenting him on his genius for
organization. When you visit a real man of affairs you seldom find him
surrounded by secretaries, stenographers, and a battery of telephones.
As a rule, there is nothing on his desk save a photograph of his wife
and a rose in a glass of water. Outside the headquarters of the general
there were no gendarmes, no sentries, no panting automobiles, no
mud-flecked chasseurs-a-cheval. Unchallenged the car rolled up an empty
avenue of trees and stopped beside an empty terrace of an apparently
empty chateau. At one end of the terrace was a pond, and in it floated
seven beautiful swans. They were the only living things in sight. I
thought we had stumbled upon the country home of some gentleman of
elegant leisure.

When he appeared the manner of the general assisted that impression. His
courtesy was so undisturbed, his mind so tranquil, his conversation so
entirely that of the polite host, you felt he was masquerading in the
uniform of a general only because he knew it was becoming. He glowed
with health and vigor. He had the appearance of having just come indoors
after a satisfactory round on his private golf-links. Instead, he had
been receiving reports from twenty-four different staff-officers. His
manner suggested he had no more serious responsibility than