The Great General Staff occupies the quaint old Hotel de Ville. An unmolested ramble showed that all the best residences and business buildings in the heart of the town were required to house the members of the Great Headquarters, who number, in addition to the Kaiser and his personal entourage, thirty-six chiefs or department heads, including the Imperial Chancellor, the War Minister, the Chief of the Great General Staff, the Chief of the Naval General Staff, the Chief of the Ammunition Supply, the Chief of the Field Railways, the Chief of the Field Telephone and Telegraph Service, the Chief of the Sanitary Service, the Chief of the Volunteer Automobile Corps, &c., making, with secretaries, clerks, ordonnances, and necessary garrison, a community of 1,200 souls. I could not help wondering why the Allies' aviators weren't "on the job." A dozen, backed up by an intelligent Intelligence Department, could so obviously settle the fortunes of the war by blowing out the brains of their enemy. Perhaps that is why the whereabouts of the Great Headquarters is guarded as a jealous secret. The soldiers at the front don't know where it is, nor the man on the street at home, and, of course, its location is not breathed in the German press. Theoretically, only those immediately concerned are "in the know." Visitors are not allowed, neutral foreign correspondents are told by the authorities in Berlin that "it is impossible" to go to the Grosser Hauptquartier. Two aeroplane guns are mounted on the hills across the river at a point immediately opposite the Kaiser's residence, while near them a picked squad of sharpshooters is on the watch night and day for hostile fliers. To further safeguard not only the person of the Kaiser but the brains of the fighting machine the spy hunt is kept up here with unrelenting pertinacity. "We went over the town with a fine-tooth comb and cleaned out all the suspicious characters the very first day we arrived," said a friendly detective. "There are no cranks or anarchists left here. Today the order is going out to arrest all men of military age--between 18 and 45--but there are few, if any, left. We also made a house-to-house search for arms and collected three wagonloads, mostly old.