tation of the bark on a tree, and my driver, my
photographer and I were peering cautiously from behind the corner
of a brick farmhouse. I supposed that Miss War Correspondent was
there too, but when I turned to speak to her she was gone. She was
standing beside the car, which we had left in the middle of the road
because the bullets were flying too thickly to turn it around, dabbing
at her nose with a powder-puff which she had left in the tonneau
and then critically examining the effect in a pocket-mirror.

"For the love of God!" said I, running out and dragging her back to
shelter, "don't you know that you'll be killed if you stay out here?"

"Will I?" said she, sweetly. "Well, you surely don't expect me to be
killed with my nose unpowdered, do you?"

That evening I asked her for her impressions of her first battle.

"Well," she answered, after a meditative pause, "it certainly was
very chic."

The third and largest division of this journalistic army consisted of
free lances who went to the Continent at their own expense on the
chance of "stumbling into something." About the only thing that any
of them stumbled into was trouble. Some of them bore the most
extraordinary credentials ever carried by a correspondent; some of
them had no credentials at all. One gentleman, who was halted
while endeavouring to reach the firing line in a decrepit cab,
informed the officer before whom he was taken that he represented
the Ladies' Home Journal of Philadelphia. Another displayed a letter
from the editor of a well-known magazine saying that he "would be
pleased to consider any articles which you care to submit." A third,
upon being questioned, said naively that he represented his literary
agent. Then--I almost forgot him--there was a Methodist clergyman
from Boston who explained to the Provost-Marshal that he was
gathering material for a series of sermons on the horrors of war.
Add to this army of writers another army of photographers and
war-artists and cinematograph-operators and you will have some idea of
the problem with which the military authorities of the warring nations
were confronted. It finally got down to the question of which should
be permitted to remain in the field--the war correspondents or the
soldiers. There wasn't room for them both. It was decided to retain
the soldiers.

The general staffs of the various armies handled the war
correspondent problem in different ways. The British War Office
at first ann