an aeroplane duel, having a chat with the Generalissimo of the armies, inspecting the consolidation of a few hundred yards of trenches just taken from the enemy, watching the explosion of a mine, interviewing a fresh batch of German prisoners, with whom a punctured tire almost causes him to miss his appointment, and observing the methods employed by the Red Cross in collecting the wounded under fire, he is overtaken by night after a busy day, and sleeps in his shelter-tent before making up his mind which particular army he will visit the following day.

It is a thrilling and romantic picture. But how sadly distant from the truth.

The war correspondent does not buy himself a motor, because if he did he would not be allowed to use it. All he buys himself is a railway ticket. When it comes to motoring, he is packed with an assortment of fellow-correspondents into military autos specially assigned by the army authorities.

He does not buy a shelter-tent or a sleeping-bag, because at a certain scheduled hour every evening the staff-officer who has him and his colleagues in tow will lead him into an excellent hotel in some large town or other and assign him to a comfortable bedroom engaged ahead. He does not buy canned provisions, because before going to bed the officer buys him an appetizing dinner, follows it up with a good breakfast the next morning, and at lunch-time introduces him to a courteous General, or, at a pinch, to another hotel-keeper, by one or the other of whom he is supplied with a prearranged and excellent lunch.

He does not buy himself a medicine-chest, because he is always within shouting distance of enough medical talent to treat a whole city.

He does not buy a revolver, because it would be gently but firmly taken away from him if he did.

If he is sensible, he does not even buy himself binoculars, for the officers by whom he will find himself uninterruptedly accompanied will be glad to let him use theirs, and though he may not look so picturesque without them, he will be much more comfortable if he has any hands-and-knees work to do.

Finally, he will not have a word to say as to where he wants to go or what he wants to see, for that has all been settled in advance.

It is true that different Generals vary greatly in the risks that they will allow correspondents to run with their respective armies. Some feel that if a correspondent wants to take chances that is his own affair so long as he does not unduly endanger the life of a valuable staff-officer along with his own. Others feel personally responsible for the safeguarding of visitors, whether the visitor is willing to take chances or not.

But these variations merely affect the more or less dangerous details of the trip, not the programme as a whole, which is quite rigid.

In the beginning of the war a few men, like Alexander Powell in Flanders, and Robert Dunn in the retreat from Mons, were actual knights-errant of the pen and wandered or whirled where they pleased, and saw what happened to come their way.

But on the western front, at least, that is all dead and gone.

The activities of war correspondents have been thoroughly regulated, systematized, standardized. Just what the correspondent is to be permitted to see at the front is deliberately considered and arranged in advance. The authorities decide what fights are fit for him to see just as painstakingly as chaperons used to decide what plays were fit for débutantes to see. He, together with the six or eight other journalists who are to make up the party, is placed in the hands of a military duenna who guards his every move from the time the admirably organized tour starts, until he is again safely delivered back in Paris. The precise duration of the trip, the precise route to be taken, the precise place at which each meal is to be eaten, the precise room in the precise hotel in which each night is to be spent, the precise General to be met and trench to be visited, are all inexorably fixed in the schedule of the trip.

The only phenomena which the general staffs cannot predetermine are the activities of the aviators and the course of the enemy's shells and bullets. Hence, the only spontaneous adventures in store for correspondents, which may come unexpectedly, at any moment, are the whirring of aeroplanes overhead, their shelling and their duels and the sudden passing or arrival of enemy projectiles, from tiny bullets up to enormous "Jack Johnsons."

Even this element of surprise can be avoided in the case of a small minority of visitors who I understand prefer to limit their researches at "the front" to the hospitals, supply-trains, motor-repair organizations, encampments of reserves, and similar objects of interest, which lie some twenty kilometres behind the trenches and yet really are sufficiently a part of the front to be known as its rear.

The front has a second category of visitors besides the war correspondents of whom I have been writing—"the distinguished strangers." These do not come to the front for the purpose of writing about what they see, and are for this reason, as well as because of the courtesy which it is desired to show them, allowed considerably more latitude, although they, too, are kept religiously away from any part of the lines where real trouble is expected.

I myself was fortunate enough to be invited to visit the French and Belgian fronts in a sort of dual capacity. Having pledged myself not to go on to Germany, and to write nothing about anything that was shown me in confidence, I was given a special trip, instead of going with one of the regular "journalists' parties," which certainly have an unromantic resemblance to Cook's Tours. I was thus enabled to visit certain advanced trenches where larger parties, in the nature of things, could not go, and was shown things which had not previously been shown to correspondents. But the organization of my trip resembled that of the average correspondents' tour closely enough to enable me to describe its details.

In Paris in a rather small room on the second floor of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, at a methodically cluttered writing-table, on which one of the oddly-shaped French telephones lapses into occasional silence, sits a slender, suave, well-groomed Frenchman about forty years old. He has a glossy dark moustache, large and pensive dark eyes, a nicely deprecatory manner, and a beautifully conciliatory smile. He chats to his visitor in excellent English, if English be required, and smiles at him this almost tender smile. He is Monsieur P——, the war correspondents' Czar. He is the absolute ruler of their destinies. For it is he who picks and chooses among their waiting numbers, and decides to which to accord the privilege of a place in one of the parties which leave about every two weeks for a two- or three-day trip to the front.

When an eager newspaper man has come over all the way from California, let us say, for such a trip, has waited in Paris a month or six weeks for such a trip and has seen colleagues favored above other men start off with enthusiasm and return with hauteur from such a trip, the transcendent importance of Monsieur P—— in that craving correspondent's eyes verges on the pitiful.

When you think of this hungry horde of newspaper men collected from the ends of the earth on this one assignment, receiving curt cables and telegrams every few days from their papers asking where their stories are, all as suspicious and jealous of each other as prima-donnas, each trying to "put over a beat" on the other, and each terrified lest some other "put over a beat" on him, you can