One day a man came into lunch with the news that he was off on the best trip he’d had yet—­he was going back to Vienna for his skis, to go down into the Tyrol and work along the glaciers to the battery positions.  Another man, a Budapest painter, started off for an indefinite stay with an army corps in Bessarabia.  He was to be, indeed, part of the army for the time being, and all his work belonged to the army first.  As this is being written a number of painters sent out on similar expeditions have been giving an exhibition in Vienna—­portraits and pencil sketches much like those Frederic Remington used to make.  Foreigners not intending to remain in Austria-Hungary could not expect such privileges, naturally; but if they were admitted to the Quartier at all they were sent on the ordinary group excursions like the home correspondents themselves.  Indeed, the wonder was—­in view of the comparative ease with which neutral correspondents drifted about Europe:  the naivete, to put it mildly, with which the wildest romances had been printed in American newspapers, that we were permitted to see as much as we did.

When a group started for the front, it left Nagybiesce in its own car, which, except when the itinerary included some large city—­Lemberg, for instance—­served as a little hotel until they came back again.  The car was a clean, second-class coach, of the usual European compartment kind, two men to a compartment, and at night they bunked on the long transverse seats comfortably enough.  We took one long trip of a thousand miles or so in this way, taking our own motor, on a separate flat car, and even an orderly servant for each man.  Each of these groups was, of course, accompanied by an officer guide—­several were detailed at the Quartier for this special duty—­whose complex and nerve-racking task it was to answer all questions, make all arrangements, report to each local commandant, pass sentries, and comfortably waft his flock of civilians through the maze of barriers which cover every foot, so to speak, of the region near the front.

The things correspondents were permitted to see differed from those seen on the other fronts less in kind than in quantity.  More trips were made, but there is and can be little place for a civilian on a “front,” any spot in which, over a strip several miles wide, from the heavy artillery positions of one side to the heavy artillery of the other, may be in absolute quiet one minute and the next the centre of fire.  There is no time to bother with civilians during an offensive, and, if a retreat is likely, no commander wishes to have country described which may presently be in the hands of the enemy.  Hidden batteries in action, reserves moving up, wounded coming back, fliers, trenches quiet for the moment—­this is about as close to actual fighting as the outsider, under ordinary circumstances, can expect to get on any front.  The difference in Austria-Hungary was that correspondents saw these things, and the