To it all the tingling nerves of the mighty organism ran and in it all the ganglia centered.

At two sides of the room the walls were laced with silk-covered wires appliqued as thickly and as closely and as intricately as the threads in old point lace, and over these wires the gray-coated operators could talk--and did talk pretty constantly--with all the trenches and all the batteries and all the supply camps and with the generals of brigades and of divisions and of corps.
One wire ran upstairs to the Over-General's sleeping quarters and ended, so we were told, in a receiver that hung upon the headboard of his bed.
Another stretched, by relay points, to Berlin, and still another ran to the headquarters of the General Staff where the Kaiser was, somewhere down the right wing; and so on and so forth.

If war is a business these times instead of a chivalric calling, then surely this was the main office and clearing house of the business.
To our novice eyes the wires seemed snarled--snarled inextricably, hopelessly, eternally--and we said as much, but the ordnance colonel said behind this apparent disorder a most careful and particular orderliness was hidden away.

Given an hour's notice, these busy men who wore those steel vises clamped upon their ears could disconnect the lines, pull down and reel in the wires, pack the batteries and the exchanges, and have the entire outfit loaded upon automobiles for speedy transmission elsewhere.

Having seen what I had seen of the German military system, I could not find it in my heart to doubt this.
Miracles had already become commonplaces; what might have been epic once was incidental now.