INTERIOR
remember that when an army takes up its position,
each headquarters expects to be able to telephone
immediately to all its divisions, battalions, and
bases, . . . That may seem a pretty simple business,
until you come to think of the miles of line that the
improvised system involves. It was a very different
story in the last war. First of all, our officers were
not telephone-minded as they are to-day. When
they had something to say they either wrote a
dispatch or sent a telegram.
'But these days, most of us are too lazy to write.
At the headquarters of an army corps, as many as
three thousand calls a day are registered. And
this, don't forget, is when there are no operations
taking place. What's more, overhead lines were
good enough in the last war. Bombing was a
negligible factor. But to-day we like our cables
buried. There's a machine called an excavator for
that, which I'll be showing you.*
'And say, after all, the cable was broken?'
'We've an auxiliary wireless system ready for
operation, from the powerful station that puts
G.H.Q. into direct communication with London,
down to the brigade post-offices/
'And if even the wireless station were destroyed?'
'Then there are the dispatch-riders, the motor-
cyclists you see out on your greasy roads in all
weathers, with a layer of mud over their water-
proofs and their cases slung across their shoulders.
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