"GERMAN GREAT HEADQUARTERS IN FRANCE, Dec. 1.—There is a certain monotony about the scientific murder of the firing line—a routine repetition of artillery duels, alarums, and excursions which can be and are being vividly described by 'war correspondents' from the safe vantage ground of comfortable cafés miles away. The real human interest end of this ultra-modern war is to be gleaned from rambling around the operating zone in a thoroughly irresponsible American manner, trusting in Providence and the red American eagle sealed on your emergency passport and a letter from Charles Lesimple, the genial Consul at Cologne, to keep you from being shot. "For instance, you get some interesting first-hand knowledge as to how spies can 'get away with it' in spite of the perfect German military system of controls and passes. There is no 'spy hysteria' in Germany but none the less the German authorities know perfectly well that there are swarms of spies in their midst and are hunting them down with quiet, typically Teutonic thoroughness. But the very perfection of the German military machine is its weak spot, and on this, my second visit to the German Great Headquarters, I was able to give the astonished authorities a personal demonstration as to how any smooth-tongued stranger could turn up at even this 'holy of holies.' The nocturnal trail led in a military train from Luxemberg over Longwy to Longuyon. "From here I started out on a foot tour, and entered the Grosses Hauptquartier (Great Headquarters) unchallenged, by the back door. Journalistically it was disappointing at first, for it was Sunday morning and apparently Prussian militarism keeps the Sabbath holy. There was no one interviewing the Kaiser, for he had gone 'way down East' and with him his war minister, Gen. von Kalkenhayn. The courteous commandant, Col. von Hahnke, was not on the job. Even the brilliant chief of the press division, Major Nikolai, was out of town when I called on the Great General Staff. But there were compensations, for at a turn of the road I saw a more impressive sight than even the motoring Kaiser—a mile of German cavalry coming down the straight chausse, gray horsemen as far as the eye could see and more constantly coming over the brow of the distant hill, with batteries of field artillery sandwiched between.