even some army
corps staff. For they filled one of the chief requirements for such
headquarters: a sufficiency of many large, light rooms which permitted
to combine the necessary offices with the officers' quarters under the
same roof. Every high command needs a number of offices for its
various branches of service, in war as well as in peace. At that, war
demands a hundredfold measure of ready cooperation and punctual
working together. What happens from early in the morning, far into the
night and often throughout the night in these offices during the
course of a lively action on the battle field is nothing more or less
than administrative activity as it is known to us and practiced in
peace, but of a degree of activity, responsibility, and decision, of
an importance and variety as times of peace do not demand from an army
officer.

"Day and night numerous telegraphs and telephones, established often
by means of very skillful and exposed connections, receive reports,
communications, inquiries, and requests from the front and transmit
orders, instructions, decisions, and information to the front, and at
the same time maintain a similar service with superior headquarters.
The number of subjects which have to be watched continuously is
legion: movements of their own and the enemy's forces; changes in
their own and the opponent's positions; news and scouting service;
losses, reserves; lodging, provisioning, arming of the troops;
sanitation, prevention of epidemics, ambulances, hospitals; counting
and handling of booty and prisoners; military law, religious matters,
gifts; health and continuity of the supply of mounts; climate,
weather, condition of the water; condition of streets, bridges,
fortifications; means of intercourse and traffic of all kinds;
railways, mails, wagons, motors, pack animals; aeroplanes; telegraph
and wireless stations.

[Illustration: Austrian infantry resting during the Teutonic drive
into Russia. Some of the men carry the picks and shovels of sappers,
while others are provided with the steel-pointed staffs of
mountaineers.]

"And all these matters, within a certain group of the army, change
hourly, perhaps, and are continuously subject to unexpected
modifications; at the same time they depend in their outward relations
on events that happen in other adjoining army groups, on the
general military and political conditions, on the decisions and
interference of general headquarters. And if the st