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TO SEDAN 143
ing the army and its connection with the home base, the lines
of communication would appear to form a veritable cobweb,
or network, the knots of which would be formed by the inter-
mediate base depots. But the aspect shown by this network
would only hold good for a certain period, perhaps only for
one day. For, especially in the extreme ramifications of this
network, changes are of course incessantly occurring, owing
to the advance of the positions, or transfers of troops. The
whole is like a system of blood-vessels in the body of the army
or of the nation. The transport columns going west are the
fresh blood of the arteries, maintaining combustion and life
in the organism of the army ; the trains returning east, empty,
or loaded with wounded, represent the spent blood flowing
back to the heart and lungs to be renovated. You cannot
form any clear idea of this complicated apparatus until you
have seen and felt, on the lines of communication, the throbbing
of the pulses of the army.
The army thus rests on the home country, and draws its
food and sustenance from every nook and corner of the whole
German empire—just as the roots of a tree, with their ramifica-
tions of fibres, suck up from the earth the nutritious juices.
Every town and village, every farmstead in Germany feels
that it contributes, in its measure, to the vitality of the army.
The whole nation takes part in the war, and the soldier out
at the front, in the trenches, cannot fight with any prospect
of success, unless the peasant at home does his duty. But the
German peasants and the whole German nation are doing their
duty, not as if it were a hard necessity, but gladly and with
pride and devotion.
And now let us return to the " Inspectorate of the Lines of
Communication zone of the Fourth Army !
"
General von Seckendorff has,—to use a common expression
—plenty to do, and he works like a galley slave, I must say !
He maintains faultless discipline on his lines and inspects them
daily in person. During the campaign he has already covered
twelve thousand kilometres in his elegant covered car. On
the roads he rules with an iron hand and can, if necessary,
roar like a lion at men and officers. But towards me he was
kind, and gentle as a zephyr.
He received me with open arms and invited me to stay to
supper in the large restaurant of the hotel. Here, some forty
of the three hundred officers now in Sedan were assembled
—
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