War de Luxe "I think," said a colonel of the ordnance department as we came out into the open after a good but a hurried and fly-ridden breakfast--"I think," he said in his excellent Saxonized English, "that it would be as well to look at our telephone exchange first of all.

It perhaps might prove of some small interest to you." With that he led the way through a jumble of corridors to a far corner of the Prefecture of Laon, perching high on the Hill of Laon and forming for the moment the keystone of the arch of the German center.

So that was how the most crowded day in a reasonably well-crowded newspaperman's life began for me--with a visit to a room which had in other days been somebody's reception parlor.

We came upon twelve soldier-operators sitting before portable switchboards with metal transmitters clamped upon their heads, giving and taking messages to and from all the corners and crannies of the mid-battle-front.

This little room was the solar plexus of the army.