ive section was in Teschen; the
correspondents lived in Nagybiesce, two or three hours' railroad journey
away.

It was to this village--the most novel part of the scheme--that I had
come that afternoon, and here some thirty or forty correspondents were
living, writing past adventures, setting forth on new ones, or merely
inviting their souls for the moment under a regime which combined the
functions of tourists' bureau, rest-cure, and a sort of military club.

For the time being they were part of the army--fed, lodged, and
transported at the army's expense, and unable to leave without formal
military permission. They were supposed to "enlist for the whole war,"
so to speak, and most of the Austro-Hungarian and German correspondents
had so remained--some had even written books there--but observers from
neutral countries were permitted to leave when they felt they had seen
enough.

Isolated thus in the country, the only mail the military field post, the
only telegrams those that passed the military censor, correspondents
were as "safe" as in Siberia. They, on the other hand, had the
advantage of an established position, of living inexpensively in
pleasant surroundings, where their relations with the censor and the
army were less those of policemen and of suspicious character than of
host and guest. To be welcomed here, after the usual fretful dangling
and wire-pulling in War Office anterooms and city hotels--with hills and
ruined castles to walk to, a brook rippling under one's bedroom window,
and all the time in the world--seemed idyllic enough.

We were quartered in private houses, and as there was one man to a
family generally, he was put in the villager's room of honor, with a
tall porcelain stove in the corner, a feather bed under him, and another
on top. Each man had a soldier servant who looked after boots and
luggage, kept him supplied with cigars and cigarettes from the Quartier
commissariat--for a paternal government included even tobacco!--and
charmed the simple republican heart by whacking his heels together
whenever spoken to and flinging back "Jawohl!"

We breakfasted separately, whenever we felt like it, on the rolls with
the glass of whipped cream and coffee usual in this part of the world;
lunched and dined--officers and correspondents--together. There were
soldier waiters who with military precision told how many pieces one
might take, and on every table big carafes of Hungarian white wine,
dru