"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 staff quarters of two or three army groups have to consult with each other about every action and re-action before they make their various moves, unceasing activity must be displayed by everyone in order to accomplish all that each day demands. This activity which at one and the same time actuates and reports, acts, observes, and accounts, requires the possession of many manly virtues: the energy of strong nerves, clearness, wisdom, knowledge, self-consciousness, and decision. Every commander shares in it. But the greatest demands are made by it on the few supreme commanders on whom depends the fate of millions. "Thus the summer months quickly passed by. As they passed, the advance continued. In spite of this, however, the crops were brought in from the fields so recently conquered. And what was accomplished in this direction will some day form a separate chapter in the economical history of this war.