But the simplest fashion in which to describe the later phases of the conflict is to say that a war of action has become a war of endurance, that Germany has sought and missed a decision on the battle field and her foes are now seeking the decision through economic forces quite as much as military and through casualty lists rather than brilliant campaigns. THE WAR CORRESPONDENT By ARTHUR RUHL When the American fleet was sent to Vera Cruz in the summer of 1914 and it looked for a time as if an army might go into Mexico, Major General Funston explained the conditions under which correspondents were to go to the front. There was to be no repetition of the scandalous free-for-all of the Spanish War, when news prospectors of all sorts and descriptions swarmed over to Cuba in almost as haphazard fashion as Park Row reporters are rushed uptown to cover a subway explosion or a four-alarm fire. The number of men was to be limited and their privileges strictly defined. Only the press associations and some twenty or thirty newspapers were to send correspondents, and they must put up substantial bonds for each man--one for his good behavior, the other to serve as an expense fund against which would be charged his keep as a civilian guest of the army. These conditions fulfilled, the men were to accompany the expedition with the privileges, practically, of officers or neutral attaches. They would join an officers' mess or have a mess of their own with similar service; they might provide their own horses which would be cared for with the other horses of the unit to which they were attached. They were to stay where they were put, so far as nearness to the fighting was concerned, according to the judgment of the commanding officer, and all their dispatches must first pass a military censor. These rules were read with some dismay by those not included in the provisional list. To many who had hoped to see something of a war they doubtless seemed severe, yet it is a fact that had they been put into effect, the correspondents in Mexico would have seen much more, comparatively speaking, than any group of correspondents has seen in Europe. They would actually have accompanied the army, sharing throughout the expedition the day-to-day life of the fighting men, like the old-fashioned "horseback correspondent"--and nobody in Europe has done that.