The Austro-Hungarians, prepared from the first for a large number of civilian observers, including news and special writers, photographers, illustrators and painters, and, to handle them satisfactorily, organized this Presse Quartier, once admitted to which—the fakers and fly-by-nights were supposed to be weeded out by preliminary red tape—they were assumed to be serious workmen and treated as the army's guests.
The Presse Quartier—the Germans later organized one on somewhat different lines—was in two sections; an executive section with a commandant responsible for the arrangement of trips to the various fronts and the general business of censorship and publicity; and a second, an entertainment section, so to speak, also with its commandant, whose business it was to board, lodge, and otherwise look after correspondents when they were not on trips to the front. At the time I visited the Presse Quartier the executive section was in the city of Teschen, across the border of Silesia; the correspondents lived in the village of Nagybicse in Hungary, two or three hours' railroad journey away. In this village—the most novel part of the scheme—some thirty or forty correspondents were living, writing their past adventures, setting forth on new ones, or merely inviting their souls for the moment under a régime which combined the functions of tourists' bureau, rest cure, and a sort of military club.
For the time being they were part of the army—fed, lodged, and transported at the army's expense, and unable to leave without formal military permission. They were supposed to "enlist for the whole war," so to speak, and most of the Austro-Hungarian and German correspondents had so remained—some had even written books there—but a good deal of freedom was allowed observers from neutral countries and permission given to go when they felt they had seen enough.
Isolated thus in the country—the only mail the military field post, the only telegrams those that passed the military censor—correspondents were as "safe" as in Siberia. They, on the other hand, had the advantages of an established position, of living inexpensively in pleasant surroundings where their relations with the censor and the army were less those of policemen and of suspicious characters than of host and guest. To be welcomed here, after the usual fretful dangling and wire-pulling in war office anterooms and city hotels was reassuring enough.
Correspondents were quartered in private houses, and as there was one man to a family, generally, he was put in the villager's room of honor, with a tall porcelain stove in the corner, a feather bed under him and another on top. Each man had a soldier servant who looked after his boots and luggage, kept him supplied with cigars and cigarettes from the Quartier commissariat—for a paternal government included even tobacco!—and whack his heels together whenever spoken to and flung back an obedient "Ja wohl!" We breakfasted separately, whenever we felt like it, lunched and dined—officers and correspondents—together. There were soldier waiters, and on every table big carafes of Hungarian white wine, drunk generally instead of water. For beer one paid extra.
The commandant and his staff, including a doctor, and the officer-guides not on excursions at the moment, sat at the head of the long U-shaped table. Anyone who came in or went out after the commandant was supposed to advance a bit into this "U," catch his eye, bow and receive his returning nod. The silver click of spurs, of course, accompanied this salute when an officer left the room, and Austro-Hungarian and German correspondents generally snapped their heels together in semi-military fashion. All our goings and comings, indeed, were accompanied by a good deal of manner. People who had seen each other at breakfast shook hands formally half an hour later in the village square, and one bowed and was bowed to and heard the sing-song "habe die Ehre!" a dozen times a day.
With amenities of this nature the Quartier guests passed their time while waiting their turn to go to the front. There were always, while I was there, one or more parties in the field, either on the Italian or the Russian front, or both, while a few writers and artists were well enough known to be permitted to go out alone. The Hungarian, Mr. Molnar, for instance, whose play, "The Devil," was seen in America a few years ago, was writing at that time a series of letters under the general title, "Wanderings on the East Front," and apparently, within obvious military limitations, he did wander. One day, another man came into lunch with the news that he was off on the best trip he'd had yet—he was going back to Vienna for his skis, to go down into the Tyrol and work along glaciers to the battery positions. Another man, a Budapest painter, started off for an indefinite stay with an army corps in Bessarabia. He was to be, indeed, part of the army for the time being, and all his work belonged to the army first.
Foreigners not intending to remain in Austria-Hungary could not expect such privileges, naturally; but if they were admitted to the Quartier at all they were sent on the ordinary group excursions like the home correspondents themselves. Indeed, the wonder was—in view of the comparative ease with which neutral correspondents drifted about Europe; the naiveté to put it mildly, with which the wildest romances had been printed in American newspapers—that we were permitted to see as much as we did.
When a group started for the front it left Nagybicse in its own car, which, except when the itinerary included some large city—Lemberg, for instance—served as a little hotel until they came back again. The car was a clean, second-class coach, of the usual European compartment kind, two men to a compartment, and at night they bunked on the long transverse seat comfortably enough. We took one long trip of a thousand miles or so in this way, taking our own motor, on a separate flat car, and even an orderly servant for each man.
Each of these groups was, of course, accompanied by an officer guide—several were detailed at the Quartier for this special duty—whose complex and nerve-racking task it was to answer all questions, make all arrangements, report to each local commandant, pass sentries, and comfortably waft his flock of civilians through the maze of barriers which cover every foot, so to speak, of this region near the front.