The relations existing between the auxiliary field (einbein field) formalism and the spinless Salpeter equation are studied in the case of two particles with the same mass, interacting via a confining potential. The problem of non-orthogonality for radial excited states in the auxiliary field formalism is discussed and found to be non-crucial. It is shown that the classical equations of motion of the rotating string model, derived from the QCD lagrangian, reduce exactly to the classical equations of motion of the phenomenological semirelativistic flux tube model, provided all auxiliary fields are eliminated correctly from the rotating string hamiltonian.