Gen. von Haenisch took me aloft and explained to me how business was done. A good telephone operator, it developed, was almost as important as a competent General--the telephone "central" the most vital spot of an army. Here were three large switchboards with soldiers playing telephone girl, while other soldiers, with receivers fastened over their heads, sat at desks busy taking down messages on printed "business" forms. In the next room sat the staff officers on duty, waiting for the telephone bell to jingle with latest reports from the front. There was no waiting because numbers were "engaged" or operators gossiping; you could get Berlin or Vienna without once having to swear at "long distance." Gen. von Haenisch had his chief of field telephone and telegraph trot out what looked like a huge family tree, but turned out to be a most minute chart of the entire telephone system of the --nth Army. It showed the position of every corps and division headquarters' regiment, battalion, and company, and all the telephone lines connecting them, even to the single trenches and batteries. Gen. von Haenisch suggested having some fun with Gen. von X., commanding the army next door on the right, and I was made Acting Chief of Staff for two minutes, getting von X.'s Chief of Staff on the phone and inquiring if there was "anything doing." "No; everything quiet here," came the reassuring answer. An art exhibition within sound of the guns at the front by the well-known Munich artist, Ernst Vollbehr, the Kaiser's own war painter with the --nth army, was another real novelty. The long-haired painter, wearing the regulation field gray uniform, brought his portfolio of sketches into the billiard hall of the headquarters and showed them with sprightly running comment: "Here is the library of Brimont. You can see most of the books lying on the ground. It wasn't a comfortable place to paint because there were too many shells flying around loose. Here is the Cathedral of Dinant. Very much improved aesthetically by the shells knocking the ugly points of the towers off. Here is a picture of Rheims Cathedral looming through the fog, as seen from the German lines. I painted this picture of the battle of the Aisne from a captive balloon. Here is a picture of the surrender of Maubeuge, showing two of the 40,000 French prisoners. I can usually paint better during a battle because there's nobody looking on over my shoulder to distract my attention. I have about 140 sketches done in all. His Majesty has most of them now, to pick out those he wants painted. This sketch of a pretty young Frenchwoman is 'Mlle. Nix zu Macken,' so nicknamed by some sixty-odd hungry but good-natured Landsturm men quartered in a tavern of a French village, where she was the only woman left. Every time they made signs indicative of a desire for food she would laugh and say in near-German, 'Nix zu macken,' and that's how she got her name."