The one other was a Berlin artist, by name Follbehr, who having the run of the army, was going out daily to do quick studies in water colors in the trenches and among the batteries.

He did them remarkably well, too, seeing that any minute a shell might come and spatter him all over his own drawing board.

All the rest, though, were generals and colonels and majors, and such--youngish men mostly.

Excluding our host I do not believe there was a man present who had passed fifty years of age; but the General was nearer eighty than fifty, being one of the veterans of the Franco-Prussian War, whom their Emperor had ordered out of desk jobs in the first days of August to shepherd his forces in the field.

At his call they came--Von Heeringen and Von Hindenberg and Von Zwehl, to mention three names that speedily became catchwords round the world-- with their gray heads full of Prussian war tactics; and very soon their works had justified the act of their imperial master in choosing them for leadership, and now they had new medals at their throats and on their breasts to overlay the old medals they won back in 1870-71.
Like many of the older officers of the German Army I met, Von Heeringen spoke no English, in which regard he was excessively unlike ninety per cent of the younger officers.