's Chief of Staff on the phone and
inquiring if there was "anything doing."
"No; everything quiet here," came the reassuring answer.
An art exhibition within sound of the guns at the front by the
well-known Munich artist, Ernst Vollbehr, the Kaiser's own war painter
with the --nth army, was another real novelty. The long-haired painter,
wearing the regulation field gray uniform, brought his portfolio of
sketches into the billiard hall of the headquarters and showed them with
sprightly running comment:
"Here is the library of Brimont. You can see most of the books lying on
the ground. It wasn't a comfortable place to paint because there were
too many shells flying around loose. Here is the Cathedral of Dinant.
Very much improved aesthetically by the shells knocking the ugly points
of the towers off. Here is a picture of Rheims Cathedral looming through
the fog, as seen from the German lines. I painted this picture of the
battle of the Aisne from a captive balloon. Here is a picture of the
surrender of Maubeuge, showing two of the 40,000 French prisoners. I can
usually paint better during a battle because there's nobody looking on
over my shoulder to distract my attention. I have about 140 sketches
done in all. His Majesty has most of them now, to pick out those he
wants painted. This sketch of a pretty young Frenchwoman is 'Mlle. Nix
zu Macken,' so nicknamed by some sixty-odd hungry but good-natured
Landsturm men quartered in a tavern of a French village, where she was
the only woman left.
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