ADVANCES IN SIGNALLING 229 



portable telephone outpost switchboard for outdoor installa- 

 tion under forest cover. As the telephone is carried nearer and 

 nearer to the front line, it naturally enough assumes a less per- 

 manent appearance and becomes increasingly rough-and-ready. 

 This is indicated by Figures 3 and 4. Of these, the former, 

 Figure 3, shows a little four-line switchboard which has been 

 set up, and is in use, on a street doorway. In all the apparatus, 

 serviceability, adaptability, and simplicity were of prime im- 

 portance, while finish and appearance were sacrificed. 



As may be easily imagined, a very large amount of insulated 

 twisted-pair telephone wire was needed to maintain telephone 

 connection between all the elements of an advancing division. 

 Very often there was no time or opportunity to pick up and 

 reel in wire already in position, when new orders came to 

 march. Consequently, arrangements had to be made to pay 

 out new wire rapidly. 



In the billeting and rest areas well behind the front, the 

 telephone wires could be maintained without much trouble; 

 but near the front trenches the wires were continually subject 

 to damage by shell-fire. It was necessary to keep men con- 

 stantly engaged on repairs, a very important, but very hazardous 

 duty. Much of this work had to be done under long sustained 

 gas-mask protection. A picture of two signallers in their gas 

 masks exchanging telephone messages with an observer in a 

 captive balloon overhead, through a pair of twisted wires in 

 the balloon rope, appears in Fig. 5. 



In the colloquial language of many telephonists, telephones 

 and telephone circuits are apt to be " in trouble." There are 

 " trouble men " appointed to each exchange. If a telephone 

 man is said to be in trouble, the statement excites no remark ; 

 since that is part of the established order of telephonic things. 

 When, however, the troubles besetting a telephone man are so 

 numerous and inordinate as to do injustice to reason and 

 probability, he is described as being " in grief," and then eti- 

 quette requires that sympathy should be extended. According 

 to this philosophy of the art, the wires were "in grief" in 



