We crossed into Hungary, rolled northeastward for five or six hours into the Vag valley, with its green hills and vineyards and ruined castles, and finally came to a little place consisting almost entirely of consonants, in the Tatra foot-hills.  Two blond soldiers in blue-gray saluted, took my luggage, showed me to a carriage, and drove to a village about a mile away—­a little white village with a factory chimney for the new days, a dingy chateau for the old, and a brook running diagonally across the square, with geese quacking in it and women pounding clothes.

It was mid-afternoon, yet lunch had been kept waiting, and the officer who received me said he was sorry I had bothered to eat on the train.  He told me where lodgings had been made ready, and that an orderly would take me there and look after my personal needs.  They dined at eight, and at five, if I felt like it, I would probably find some of them in the coffee-house by the chateau.  Meanwhile the first thing to do was to take one’s cholera vaccination—­for no one could go to the Galician front without being geimpft—­and just as soon as I could take the second, a week later, we should start for the Russian front.  In this fashion were strangers welcomed to the “Presse-Quartier,” or rather to that part of it—­this little Hungarian village—­in which correspondents lived during the intervals of their trips to the front.  The Austrians have pleasant manners.  Their court is, next to that of Spain, the most formal in Europe, and ordinary life still retains many of the older courtesies.  Every time I came into my hotel in Vienna the two little boys at the door jumped up and extended their caps at arm’s length; an assistant porter, farther in, did the same; the head porter behind the desk often followed, and occasionally all four executed the manoeuvre at once, so that it was like a musical comedy but for the music.

The ordinary salutation in Vienna, as common as our “hello!” is “I have the honor” (Ich habe die Ehre!).  In Hungary—­of course one mustn’t tell a Hungarian that he is “Austrian”—­people tell you that they are your humble servants before they say good morning, and those who really are humble servants not only say “Kiss the hands,” but every now and then do it.  It was natural, therefore, perhaps, that the Austro-Hungarians should treat war correspondents—­often, in these days, supposed to be extinct—­not only seriously but with a certain air.  They had not only the air but indeed a more elaborate organization than any of the other belligerents.

At the beginning of the war England permitted no correspondents at all at the front.  France was less rigid, yet it was months before groups of observers began to be taken to the trenches.