Reluctant permission was finally obtained to remain one night on the possibly unwarranted intimation that the great American people would consider it a “national affront” if an American newspaperman was not allowed to stay and see the American Military Attache, Major Langhorne, who was away on a sightseeing tour near Verdun, but would be back in the morning.  However, a long cross-examination had to be undergone at the hands of the venerable Herr Chief of the Secret Field Police Bauer, who was taking no chances at harboring an English spy in the Houptquartier disguised as a correspondent.

I found Major Langhorne standing the strain of the campaign [Transcriber:  original ‘compaign’] well, and I gathered the impression that he intended to see the thing through, and that there was much which America could learn from the titanic operations of the Germans.  Major Langhorne and the Argentinian, Brazilian, Chilean, Spanish, Rumanian, and Swedish military attaches are luxuriously quartered a mile and a half out of town in the handsome villa of M. Noll, the landscape painter, present whereabouts unknown.  The attaches all have a sense of humor, “otherwise,” said one of them, “we could never stand being cooped up here together.”  The gardener’s daughter, a pretty young Frenchwoman, the only servant who remained behind when the household fled at the approach of the Germans, is both cook and housekeeper, and when I arrived I found the seven military attaches resolved into a board of strategy trying to work out the important problem of securing a pure milk supply for her four-month-old baby.

Work consists of occasional motor runs to various points along the long front.  I was told that recently Major Langhorne ran into some heavy shrapnel and shell fire, and was lucky to get away with a whole skin.  When asked to tell about it, Major Langhorne passed it off laughingly as “all in the day’s work.”

In spite of the fact that they are engaged in keeping their end up in a life-and-death fight for national existence, the Great General Staff has found time to give the American Military Attache every possible opportunity to see actual fighting.

The foreign military attaches have made many of their expeditions in company with the small band of German war correspondents, who live in another villa close by, under the constant chaperonage of Major von Rohrscheldt.  They are allowed to see much, but send little.  The relative position of the press in Germany is indicated by the fact that these German war correspondents are nicknamed “hunger candidates.”  A military expert who was well posted on American journalism explained to me, however, that the very tight censorship lid was not for the purpose of withholding news from the German people, but to keep valuable information from being handed to the enemy.  He pointed out that the laconic German official dispatches dealt only with things actually accomplished, and were very bare of detail, while, on the other hand, the French and English press had been worth more than several army corps to the Germans, concluding, “It may be poor journalism, but it’s the right way to make war.”