Special correspondents in great numbers have come from America into the European "zone of military activity," and in almost equal numbers have they gone out, to write their impressions, their descriptions, their histories, their romances and songs. Other correspondents who are not "special," but who by the grace of the military authorities have been permitted to enter the forbidden territory, and by the favor of the censor have been allowed to tell what they saw there, have entered it again and again at regular intervals. These are the "regular" correspondents, who lived in Europe before war was declared, and who during many idle hours speculated on what they would do with that great arm of their vocation—the cable—when the expected hour of conflict arrived. Few of their plans worked out, and new ones were formed on the minute—on the second. For the Germans did not cut the cable, as some of the correspondents, in moments of despair, almost hoped they would do, and the great American public clamored insistently for the "news" with its breakfast. It is a journalist's methods in covering the biggest, the hardest "story" that newspapers were ever compelled to handle, that this book attempts to describe.