To it all the tingling nerves of
the mighty organism ran and in it all the ganglia centered. At two
sides of the room the walls were laced with silk-covered wires appliqued
as thickly and as closely and as intricately as the threads in old point
lace, and over these wires the gray-coated operators could talk--and did
talk pretty constantly--with all the trenches and all the batteries and
all the supply camps and with the generals of brigades and of divisions
and of corps.
One wire ran upstairs to the Over-General's sleeping quarters and ended,
so we were told, in a receiver that hung upon the headboard of his bed.
Another stretched, by relay points, to Berlin, and still another ran to
the headquarters of the General Staff where the Kaiser was, somewhere
down the right wing; and so on and so forth. If war is a business these
times instead of a chivalric calling, then surely this was the main
office and clearing house of the business.
To our novice eyes the wires seemed snarled--snarled inextricably,
hopelessly, eternally--and we said as much, but the ordnance colonel
said behind this apparent disorder a most careful and particular
orderliness was hidden away.
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