How great a role the motor car plays among the Germans may be gathered from an estimate made to the writer that 40,000 cars were in use for military purposes.  Many thousands of these are private automobiles operated by their wealthy owners as members of the Volunteer War Automobile Corps, of which Prince Waldemar, son of the sailor Prince Henry, is chief.  Their ranks include many big business men, captains of industry, and men of social prominence and professional eminence.

They wear a distinctive uniform, that of an infantry officer, with a collar of very dark red, and a short, purely ornamental sword or dagger.

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BACK TO LUXEMBURG.

LUXEMBURG, Oct. 24.—­I have just returned from the German Great Headquarters in France, the visit terminating abruptly on the fourth day, when one of the Kaiser’s secret field police woke me up at 7 o’clock in the morning and regretfully said that his instructions were to see that I “did not oversleep” the first train out.  The return journey along one of the German main lines of communication—­through Eastern France, across a corner of Belgium and through Luxemburg—­was full of interest, and confirmed the impression gathered at the centre of things, the Great Headquarters, that this twentieth century warfare is in the last analysis a gigantic business proposition which the Board of Directors (the Great General Staff) and the thirty-six department heads are conducting with the efficiency of a great American business corporation.

The west-bound track is a continuous procession of freight trains—­fresh consignments of raw material—­men and ammunition—­being rushed to the firing line to be ground out into victories.  The first shipment we pass is an infantry battalion—­first ten flatcars loaded with baggage, ammunition, provision wagons, and field kitchens, the latter already with fire lighted and soup cooking as the long train steams slowly along, for the trenches are only fifty miles away, and the Germans make a point of sending their troops into battle with full stomachs.

After the flatcars come thirty box cars, all decorated with green branches and scrawled over with chalked witticism at the expense of the French and Russians.  The men cheer as our train passes.  A few kilometers further backed on to a siding, is a train of some twenty flatcars, each loaded with a touring car.  Then we pass a battery of artillery on flatcars, the guns still garlanded with flowers; then a short freight train—­six cars loaded with nothing but spare automobile tires—­then a long train of heavy motor trucks, then more infantry trains, then an empty hospital train going back for another load, then a train of gasoline tank cars, more cheering infantry, more artillery, another empty hospital train, a pioneer train, a score of flatcars loaded with long, heavy piles, beams, steel girders, bridge spans, and lumber, then a passenger train load of German railway officials