fantry were stopped by unbroken wire entanglements with heavy resulting losses and little or no gains.

A week later, on the 16th, there was another strong attack east of Festubert, after a bombardment in which the French 75s assisted. There was much close fighting and the bombers of the First Grenadiers did good work. A company of the Scots Guards got too far ahead and was cut off. Some days later its men were found lying with plenty of German dead about them.

This battle of Festubert ended in the last week of May with a net result of having given to the British the enemy's first-line trenches on a front of over 3,000 yards. In addition some secondline trenches were taken, with nearly 800 prisoners and ten machine guns. But despite the extremely heavy losses incurred, the attack had nowhere succeeded in breaking the enemy line. In June the Belgians won a German blockhouse south of Dixmude, and throughout that month and July there was a prolonged struggle for the ruins of the château at Hooge, just east of Ypres. There were several minor battles near Givenchy, Festubert, and Hooge, but invariably the British forces were compelled to abandon sections of enemy trenches won at severe cost.

The only big thing on the side of the Allies was the casualty list.

In the early Summer a series of small victories were won in the Vosges by the French Alpine Chasseurs, who captured Metzeral in June, and in July stormed the Sondernach Ridge, pushing their advance close to Münster.

Late in June and early in July the German Crown Prince made four attacks upon the French lines in the Argonne along the Vienne-le-Château and Binarville road. Only small gains resulted, and on July 7 the Kaiser's heir hurled a stronger attack against the hill called La Fille Morte, which was captured, but later retaken by the French. It seemed impossible for the Crown Prince to win any glory in "the day" (der Tag!) for which he had openly longed in the years of peace.

It is a difficult thing now for most people to admit what they believed two

years ago. In the Spring of 1915 the consensus of European military opinion was that the Russians were prepared to launch a tremendous campaign with huge armies and adequate equipment. They had won a strong hold in the Carpathians and were supposed to be ready for a crushing invasion of Hungary. Possibly there would be men and guns enough to strike as well toward Southern Germany via Cracow.

Russian Front in 1915

The Russians took Przemysl on March 22, and on the 25th they crossed the Pruth. Early in April they won the crest of the mountain barrier for all of seventy miles, and Brusiloff was within a few days' march of the Hungarian plains below. In a short campaign of a few weeks in Bukowina the Russians claimed to have captured 70,000 prisoners and many guns. Late in April General von Linsingen feinted toward Stanislau and succeeded in drawing down that way the Russian mobile reserves.

In December Dmitrieff had dug himself into a good defensive position behind the Donajetz River, and felt so secure that no positions to the rear had been prepared, in case retreat might become needful, for no such possibility seemed to threaten.

The supreme command of the German army groups was given to that idol of the German Army, von Mackensen, who had for the great operation about to be undertaken as many as 2,000,000, and perhaps 2,500,000, men. On April 28 the Austro-German armies lay on the left bank of the Donajetz down to the CracowTarnow Railroad, and thence on the left bank of the Biala down to the mountains below Rapa and Grybow. On that day von Mackensen struck his first blow from his right flank toward Gorlice. May 1 saw the attack developed further north, where, under a tremendous artillery fire, a crossing was effected over the Biala and Crezkowice was taken. Gorlice, too, was stormed, and by the 2d the whole Russian front in this sector was in full retreat toward the Wislowka River, twenty miles in the rear. The Caucasian corps of Irmanov came to Dmitrieff's

help, and the Wislowka was held until May 7, when the Germans forced a crossing at Jaslo. The flank of the army in the Carpathians was turned, and its hurried retreat involved heavy losses, but desperate fighting enabled Brusiloff to get his army clear of its perilous position in the mountains.

FIELD MARSHAL VON MACKENSEN (F. O. Koch)

By May 14 the Russians were across the San, and the bridgehead at Jaroslav was defended until men and guns were over. The fortnight had been a costly one for Russia. Her armies had retreated something over eighty miles, and some corps had lost 75 per cent. of their strength.

The Grand Duke Nicholas took over the Russian command. On May 5 a Russian army under General Ewarts turned in a strong counterattack, which, after several days' fighting, drove back a German force advancing toward Ostrowiecz with a loss of 30,000 casualties. Toward the south, too, a vigorous counterstroke made good progress and threatened Kolomea and Czernowitz. The German checks on both flanks did not interfere with von Mackensen's main attack, which developed on May 15 and became one of the great battles of the war.

The Battle of the San

The chief German attack was aimed at the sector between Jaroslav and Przemysl, and at midnight on the 15th the northern town fell. On the 18th the Russians lost Sieniawa, and in the south von Marwitz captured the railway junctions at Dobromil and Sambor, on the Dniester, and drove on toward the north against the fortifcations about Przemysl. Pushing on, he took Hussakow and Lutkow.

Von Mackensen crossed the San at Radymno and on June 2 entered Przemysl, which the Russians had held for some two months or more. On June 1 von Linsingen captured Stryj, and the Prussian Guard took prisoners and guns from Brusiloff. On June 7 the same victor forced the Dniester at Zurawno and was well on his way toward Lemberg. Brusiloff turned, and in a three-day battle drove von Linsingen back over the river with the loss of 15,000 prisoners, and some guns.

However, the great German advance continued, and Mosciska, east of Przemysl, was captured June 14, and the Russians were back on the San, the Tanev, and the Grodek Ponds. By the 16th von Mackensen was advancing toward Rava Russka, and after taking Javorov his army entered that position as well as Zolkico on June 20. On the 22d the great City of Lemberg was taken, and Galicia was once more in Austrian hands.

At this time the German invasion beginning at the north was approaching Windau on the Baltic Sea, and the German line, curving southeast, reached close to Shavli, and toward the south cut between Suwalka and Grodno; then back on a curve west of Warsaw and across the Vistula at the junction with the Tanev; thence on a broad out curve toward Brody and down to Halicz. In the north, Libau, the seaport, had been taken early in May, and throughout that month and June Courland was being overrun by the German forces, which, before long, were threatening Riga. The British and French efforts to help Russia by a diversion in the west at Festubert

and Souchez were signal failures so far as their effect on the campaign in the east was concerned.

Battles in Front of Warsaw

'After the fall of Lemberg the German General Staff prepared to attack Warsaw, now a dangerous salient for the Russians, with German armies threatening the railway communications both north and south of the ancient Polish capital. The strongly fortified city was the target, but the real object was a much greater thing. The Germans planned not only to capture cities and provinces, but to surround and destroy the field armies opposing their progress. They hoped to induce the Russian commander to commit great forces to the defense of certain important localities where the favorite Hindenburgian tactics might, by far-flung flank movements, surround and capture or destroy them.

A very powerful army was mobilized in the vicinity of Thorn for the great new effort after the capture of Lemberg. In the south the German campaign progressed methodically. Early in July they took Krasnik and Zamosc. In the first week of July the Russians won an important four days' battle along the Lublin highway above Krasnik, capturing 15,000 prisoners and many guns.

Late in June the German army of von Linsingen crossed the Dniester, and on the 28th captured Halicz. The Russians, fighting stubborn rear-guard actions, finally halted on the left (east) bank of the Zlota Lipa, a northern tributary of the Dniester. The battle line further north was temporarily halted along the River Bug, at Kamionka and Sokal, but by the middle of July von Mackensen had his vast force ready to strike new and irresistible blows from Courland in the north all the way down to Galicia. Przasnysz, north of Warsaw, was taken on July 14 by General von Gallwitz, and within the next few days the Germans reached the lines of the Rawka and the Bzura, and the Russians fell back to Blouie, a prepared position fifteen miles west of Warsaw. By July 20 the Russian defense on the north had fallen behind the Narco, a tributary of the Bug north

18 he captured Krasnostav and Pilaskowice, where he was dangerously close to a vital Russian line of communicationsthe railway from Lublin through Chulm to Kovel. After a series of hard-fought but nearly always successful actions the Germans south of Warsaw pressed on, and by July 22 had the Vistula bridgehead at Nova Alexandria, following the capture of Radom and a number of other positions west of the great river.

In the far north the German wave rushed on, submerging Tukkum and Windau (July 20) and rapidly threatened Mitau, an important railway junction southwest of Riga. On July 29 von Mackensen cut the railway south between Lublin and Chulm, and on the 30th both towns fell.

Fall of Warsaw and Kovno

On Aug. 4 the Russians who had held the point of the salient at Blouie fell

back through Warsaw, for the sides of the salient were pinching in dangerously, and on Aug. 5 German cavalry entered Warsaw. The successful withdrawal of the large garrison was the forerunner of a long series of similar successes. Over and over again Russian flanks were strongly held while large armies nearly trapped were safely extricated. The campaign went on from victory to victory, but the German Generals were always denied the darling wish of their strategy the capture or destruction of the armies which they were able to defeat but not to annihilate. On Aug. 4 Ivangorod fell, and the middle of the month the Germans were pressing forward toward the railway Chulm-BrestLitovsk-Grodno.

On Aug. 17 Kovno was taken, with 20,000 prisoners and 200 guns, after offering a heroic resistance. The fall of this important and strongly fortified city on the Niemen was a deadly blow to the Russian scheme of defense, for it opened the way toward the main railway line from Poland to Petrograd via Vilna.* On Aug. 19 von Beseler (the victor at Antwerp) after a three weeks' siege took Novo Georgievsk with another 20,000 prisoners and more than 700 guns. This great fortress close to Warsaw had been relied upon to withstand a long siege, and meanwhile threaten the communications of German armies pushing east into Russia. The hope was vain in face of von Beseler's great siege guns.

On Aug. 23 Ossowietz fell, and Tykocin, just south of the fortress, was stormed. Two days later the Germans took BrestLitovsk, the fortress covering the railway to Moscow. On the 26th they captured Bialystok, the great railway centre south of Grodno. Olita, a fortress defending the crossings of the Niemen north of Grodno, fell on the 27th. Further to the north the Germans began an attack against Friedrichstadt in an attempt to force a crossing of the Dvina above Dvinsk. On the last day of August

*General Grigorieff was tried by a Russian court-martial and sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment at hard labor for insufficient measures of defense and absence from Kovno during the siege.

Lutsk, on the Styr, in Volhynia, was captured, and on Sept. 2 the Germans took Grodno, against which vc Beseler's siege artillery had been concentrated. The Russians lost only the rear guard of 2,000 men and a few fortress guns.

Czar Assumes Command

On Sept. 5 the Czar took personal command of all the Russian armies, and sent the Grand Duke Nicholas to command in the Caucasus. Early in September the Russian lines east of Grodno retired to a position reaching from Orany (at the crossing of the Petrograd railway over the Meretchanka River) to Mosty, on the Niemen. On Sept. 18 Vilna, a position of great strategic importance, fell after a brave resistance in which two divisions of the Russian Imperial Guard played a distinguished part. Von Eichorn, the German commander, pushed 40,000 cavalry with 140 guns toward the flank of the Russian position, and the garrison barely effected their escape along the line toward Minsk. By the end of September the Czar's troops were making a stand along a line through Smorgon, between Vilna and Molodetchno, and south to Novo Grodek.

Mackensen

Further southward, von reached and captured Pinsk on Sept. 16, but a week earlier the Russians made a surprise attack in front of Tarnopol and along the Sereth, in which they captured 383 officers, 17,000 men, and nearly 100 guns.

That success was continued and the German flank driven back to the Stripa Dubno with heavy additional losses. was retaken, and General Ivanoff seemed for a time to threaten dangerously von Mackensen's right flank.

A long series of battles were fought through the Autumn and early Winter about Czartorysk and Rafadowka, in Volhynia, and along the Rivers Styr, Stripa, and Zlota Lipa, in Eastern Galicia. Above Pinsk the Germans held securely Baranovitchi, an important commercial and railway centre east of Slonim. All efforts failed to capture Dvinsk, and the Dvina marked the limit of German progress toward Petrograd. On the west front of Riga the German

lines curved back west of Babit See and Lake Kanger to the west shores of the Gulf of Riga.

From Riga to Czernowitz the battle front measured about 785 miles, and while the Russians bent the southern end back along the Dniester in the Spring of 1916, when they recaptured Bukowina

from Brody (in Galicia) on to the north, the military frontier has remained almost exactly as the great German victories of 1915 left it. The adequate defense of that frontier, inclosing, as it does, all of Western Russia, required the maintenance on that front of nearly 2,000,000 Austro-German troops.

W

ITH all the evil that has followed in its train it is good to find at least one beneficial result from the war. It has led to the revival of religion in a most remarkable way.

As to this, practically every one is agreed, and it is apparent in a hundred directions. Perhaps this revival is most marked of all in France, and there it is attributable in no little degree to the splendid record of the French priests in the army. To many people it seemed a wrong thing that the ministers of the Prince of Peace should be called upon to take up arms and play a part in the terrible work of bloodshed and slaughter which has converted so large a portion of Europe into a veritable shambles. What seemed wrong, and what was from some point of view wrong no doubt, has in the result turned out a blessing.

The spectacle of thousands of priests marching and fighting for the country and the flag has touched deeply the heart of France, and many and many a man who was, perhaps, ready enough to proclaim himself an anti-Cleric will never so describe himself any more. The bravery displayed by the French priests in battle (2,000 have been killed) has been only equaled by their devotion to their holy office. Few things are more appealing than the sight of the soldier-priest turning to administer the last consolations of

religion to his fallen comrades round about. And this has been witnessed on every battlefield of France, and it has its natural effect upon the impressionable French character, and the effect will remain long after the last shot of the war has been fired.

To those who have been brought to France by the war the manifestations of religion everywhere displayed have come more or less as a surprise, especially to those who had been led to believe from the action of many successive French Governments that the Church was more or less a thing of the past in France. It is hard, of course, to judge of the real depth or intensity of religious feeling, but all one can say is that if this can be done by noticing the attendance at church, then the religion of France is today very true and very sincere.

For over a year the writer of these lines has been with the British Army in France and has been billeted in scores of villages and small towns. Everywhere the way in which the civil population thronged the churches on Sundays and holidays was very noticeable, and in the larger towns more noticeable still. It may be that the attacks which the enemy have made on holy places have caused a revulsion of feeling in France. The ruins of Rheims cathedral, Ypres, and so many other churches in the land have stricken the population with remorse and