Chapter XIII: The Lull in November (5)

Main army headquarters, the residence and working quarters of a commanding General whose name may not yet be mentioned, were in Château Chambley, a fine French country house. In the château the commanding General made all as comfortable as in his own home. Telegraph wires led to it from various directions, a small headquarters guard lounged on the grass under the trees, a dozen automobiles and motor cycles were at hand, and grooms were leading about the chargers of the General and his staff. At St. Benoît, five miles further on, a subordinate headquarters was encountered, again in a château belonging to a rich French resident. The Continental soldier leaves tents to the American Army and quarters himself, whenever it is possible, comfortably in houses, wasting no energy in transporting and setting up tented cities for officers and men. No matter how fast or how far a German army moves, a completely equipped telegraph office is ready for the army commander five minutes after headquarters have been established.

At St. Benoît a party of some 300 French prisoners was encountered, waiting outside headquarters. They were all fine young fellows, in striking contrast to the elderly reservist type which predominates in the German prison camps. They were evidently picked troops of the line, and were treated almost with deference by their guards, a detachment of bearded Landwehr men from South Germany. They were the survivors of the garrison of Fort Camp des Romains, who had put up such a desperate and spirited defense as to win the whole-hearted admiration and respect of the German officers and men. Their armored turrets and cemented bastions, although constructed after the best rules of fortification of a few years ago, had been battered about their ears in an unexpectedly short time by German and Austrian siege artillery. Their guns were silenced, and trenches were pushed up by an overwhelming force of pioneers and infantry to within five yards of their works before they retreated from the advanced intrenchments to the casemates of the fort. Here they maintained a stout resistance, and refused every summons to surrender. Hand grenades were brought up, bound to a backing of boards, and exploded against the openings into the casemates, filling these with showers of steel splinters. Pioneers, creeping up to the dead angle of the casemates, where the fire of the defenders could not reach them, directed smoke tubes and stinkpots against apertures in the citadel, filling the rooms with suffocating smoke and gases.

"Have you had enough?" the defenders were asked, after the first smoke treatment.

"No!" was the defiant answer.

The operation was repeated a second and third time, the response to the demand for surrender each time growing weaker, until finally the defenders were no longer able to raise their rifles, and the fort was taken. When the survivors of the plucky garrison were able to march out, revived by the fresh air, they found their late opponents presenting arms before them in recognition of their gallant stand. They were granted the most honorable terms of surrender, their officers were allowed to retain their swords, and on their march toward an honorable captivity they were everywhere greeted with expressions of respect and admiration.

The headquarters guard here was composed of a company of infantry. The company's field kitchen, the soup-boiler and oven on wheels, which the German army copied from the Russians and which the soldiers facetiously and affectionately name their "goulash cannon," had that day, the Captain said, fed 970 men, soldiers of his own and passing companies, headquarters attachés, wounded men and the detachment of French prisoners.

Experienced German officers rank the field kitchens, with the sturdy legs of the infantry, the German heavy artillery and the aviation corps, as the most important factors in the showing made by the German armies.

Beyond St. Benoît the Côte Lorraine, a range of wooded hills running north and south along the east bank of the Meuse, rises in steeply terraced slopes several hundred feet from the frontier plain, interposing a natural rampart between Germany and the French line of fortresses beyond the Meuse. The French had fortified these slopes with successive rows of trenches, permitting line above line of infantry to fire against an advancing enemy. For days a desperate struggle was waged for the possession of the heights, which was imperative for the German campaign against the line of fortresses.

Germans do not mention the extent of their losses in any particular action, but it was admitted and evident that it had cost a high price to storm those steep slopes and win a position in the woods crowning the range from which their batteries could be directed against the French forts. Vigneuilles, a village at the foot of the hillside, shot into ruins by artillery and with every standing bit of house wall scarred with bullet marks from the hand-to-hand conflicts which had swayed to and fro in its streets, was typical of all the little stone-built towns serving as outposts to this natural fortress which had been the scene of imbittered attacks and counter-attacks before the German troops could fight their way up the hillsides.

The combat is still raging on this day from north and south against the segment of this range captured by the Germans. The French, massing their troops by forest paths from Verdun and Toul, throw them against the Germans in desperate endeavors to break the lines which protect the sites for the German siege artillery, heavy mortars of 8-1/4 and 16-1/2 inch calibre and an intermediate sized type, and for the Austrian automobile batteries of 12-inch siege guns.

The correspondent had no opportunity to inspect at close range the 16-1/2-inch guns, the "growlers" of Liége, Namur, and other fortresses, which Krupp and the German Army uncovered as the surprise of this war. They could be heard even from Metz speaking at five-minute intervals. A battery of them, dug into the ground so that only the gun muzzles projected above the pits, was observed in action at a distance of about a half mile, the flash of flames being visible even at this distance.

Their smaller sisters were less coy. A dismounted battery of the intermediate calibre, details of which are not available for publication, was encountered by the roadside, awaiting repairs to the heavy traction engine in whose train it travels in sections along the country roads, while the German 8-1/4-inch (21 centimeter) and the Austrian 12-inch (30.5 centimeter) batteries were seen in action.

The heavy German battery lay snugly hidden in a wood on the rolling heights of the Côte Lorraine. Better off than the French, whose aviators had for days repeatedly scrutinized every acre of land in the vicinity looking for these guns, we had fairly accurate directions how to find the battery, but even then it required some search and doubling back and forth before a languid artilleryman lounging by the roadside pointed with thumb over shoulder toward the hidden guns.

These and the artillerymen were enjoying their midday rest, a pause which sets in every day with the regularity of the luncheon hour in a factory. The guns, two in this particular position, stood beneath a screen of thickly branching trees, the muzzles pointing toward round openings in this leafy roof. The gun carriages were screened with branches. The shelter tents of the men and the house for the ammunition had also been covered with green, and around the position a hedge of boughs kept off the prying eyes of possible French spies wandering through the woods.

It was the noon pause, but the Lieutenant in charge of the guns, anxious to show them off to advantage, volunteered to telephone the battery commander, in his observation post four miles nearer the enemy, for permission to fire a shot or two against a village in which French troops were gathering for the attack. This battery had just finished with Les Paroches, a French barrier fort across the Meuse, and was now devoting its attention to such minor tasks. Only forts really counted, said the Lieutenant, recalling Fort Manonvillers, near Lunéville, the strongest French barrier fort, which was the battery's first "bag" of the war. Its capture, thanks to his guns, had cost the German Army only three lives, those of three pioneers accidentally killed by the fire of their own men. Now Les Paroches was a heap of crumbled earth and stone. In default of forts the guns were used against any "worthy target"--a "worthy target" being defined as a minimum of fifty infantrymen.

At this moment the orderly reported that the battery commander authorized two shots against the village in question. At command the gun crew sprang to their posts about the mortar, which was already adjusted for its target, a little less than six miles away, the gun muzzle pointing skyward at an angle of about 60 degrees. As the gun was fired the projectile could be seen and followed in its course for several hundred feet. The report was not excessively loud.

Before the report died away the crew were busy as bees about the gun. One man, with the hand elevating gear, rapidly cranked the barrel down to a level position, ready for loading. A second threw open the breech and extracted the brass cartridge case, carefully wiping [Transcriber: original 'wipping'] it out before depositing it among the empties; four more seized the heavy shell and lifted it to a cradle opposite the breech; a seventh rammed it home; number eight gingerly inserted the brass cartridge, half filled with a vaseline-like explosive; the breech was closed, and the gun pointer rapidly cranked the gun again into position. In less than thirty seconds the men sprang back from the gun, again loaded and aimed. A short wait, and the observer from his post near the village ordered "next shot fifty meters nearer."

The gun pointer made the slight correction necessary, the mortar again sent its shell purring through the air against the village, which this time, it was learned, broke into flames, and while the men went back to their noonday rest, the Lieutenant explained the fine points of his beloved guns. One man, as had been seen, could manipulate the elevation gear with one hand easily and quickly; ten of his horses could take the mortar, weighing eight tons, anywhere; it could fire up to 500 shots per day. He was proud of the skillful concealment of his guns, which had been firing for four days from the same position without being discovered, although French aviators had located all the sister batteries, all of which had suffered loss from shrapnel fire.

Along the roadside through the Côte Lorraine were here and there graves with rude crosses and penciled inscriptions. At the western edge of the forest the battle panorama of the Meuse Valley suddenly opened out, the hills falling away again steeply to the level valley below. The towns below--St. Mihiel and Banoncour--seemed absolutely deserted, not a person being visible even around the large barracks in the latter town. While the little party of officers and spectators, including the correspondent, were watching the artillery duel on the far horizon or endeavoring to pick out the infantry positions, a shrapnel suddenly burst directly before them, high in the air. There was a general stir, the assumption being that the French had taken the group on the hillside for a battery staff picking out positions for the guns; but as other shots were fired it was seen that the shrapnel was exploding regularly above the barracks, a mile and a half away, the French evidently suspecting the presence of German troops there.

A ten-mile ride southward led to the position of the Austrian 12-inch battery. The two guns this time were planted by the side of the road, screened only in front by a little wood, but exposed to view from both sides, the rear, and above. For this greater exposure the battery had paid correspondingly, several of its men having been killed or wounded by hostile fire. Here, as in the German batteries, the war work in progress went on with a machinelike regularity and absence of spectacular features more characteristic of a rolling mill than a battle. The men at the guns went through their work with the deftness and absence of confusion of high-class mechanics. The heavy shells were rolled to the guns, hoisted by a chain winch to the breech opening, and discharged in uninteresting succession, a short pause coming after each shot, until the telephonic report from the observation stand was received. The battery had been firing all day at Fort Lionville, at a range of 9,400 meters, (nearly six miles,) and the battery commander was then endeavoring to put out of action the only gun turret which still answered the fire. The task of finding this comparatively minute target, forty or fifty feet in diameter, was being followed with an accuracy which promised eventual success.

The shells from the guns started on their course with characteristic minute-long shrieks. Watches were pulled out to determine just how long the shrieks could be heard, and the uninitiated were preparing to hear the sound of the explosion itself. The battery chief explained, however, that this scream was due to the conditions immediately around the muzzle of the gun, and could not be heard from other points. He invited close watch of the atmosphere a hundred yards before the gun at the next shot. Not only could the projectile be seen plainly in the beginning of its flight, but the waves of billowing air, rushing back to fill the void left by the discharge and bounding and rebounding in a tempestuous sea of gas, could be distinctly observed. This airy commotion caused the sound heard for more than a minute.

*The Slaughter in Alsace*

*By John H. Cox of The London Standard.*

BASLE, Switzerland, Aug. 19.--I have just returned from an inspection of the scenes of the recent fighting between the French and Germans in the southern districts of Alsace.

Dispatches from Paris and Berlin describe the engagements between the frontier and Mülhausen as insignificant encounters between advance guards. If this be true in a military sense, and the preliminaries of the war produce the terrible effects I have witnessed, the disastrous results of the war itself will exceed human comprehension.

As a Swiss subject I was equipped with identification papers and accompanied by four of my countrymen, all on bicycles.

At the very outset the sight of peasants, men and women, unconcernedly at work in the fields gathering the harvest, struck me as strange and unnatural. The men were either old or well advanced in middle age. Everywhere women, girls, and mere lads were working.

The first sign of war was the demolished villa of a Catholic priest at a village near Ransbach. This priest had lived there for many years, engaged in religious work and literary pursuits. After the outbreak of the war the German authorities jumped at the conclusion that he was an agent of the French Secret Service and that he had been in the habit of sending to Belfort information concerning German military movements and German measures for defense--very often by means of carrier pigeons.

The Alsatians say that these accusations were utterly unjust; but last week a military party raided the priest's house, dragged him from his study, placed him against his own garden wall and shot him summarily as a traitor and spy. The house was searched from top to bottom, and numerous books and papers were removed, after which the building was destroyed by dynamite. The priest was buried without a coffin at the end of his little garden plot, and some of the villagers placed a rough cross on the mound which marked the place of interment.

In the next large village we were told that it had been successively occupied by French and German troops and had been the scene of stiff infantry fighting.

Here we found groups of old men and boys burying dead men and horses, whose bodies were already beginning to be a menace to health. The weather here has been exceptionally hot, and the countryside is bathed in blazing sunshine. Further on were a number of German soldiers beating about in the standing crops on both sides of the road, searching for dead and wounded. They said many of the wounded had crawled in among the wheat to escape being trodden upon by the troops marching along the road, and also to gain relief from the heat.

On the outskirts of another large village we saw a garden bounded by a thick hedge, behind which a company of French infantry had taken their stand against the advancing German troops. Among the crushed flowers there were still lying fragments of French soldiers' equipments, two French caps stained with blood and three torn French tunics, likewise [Transcriber: original 'liewise'] dyed red. The walls of the cottage bore marks of rifle bullets, and the roof was partially burned.

Passing through the villages we saw on all sides terrible signs of the devastation of war--houses burned, uncut grain trodden down and rendered useless, gardens trampled under foot; everywhere ruin and distress.

At a small village locally known as Napoleon's Island we found the railway station demolished and the line of trucks the French had used as a barricade. These trucks had been almost shot to pieces, and many were stained with blood. Outside the station the small restaurant roof had been shot away; the windows were smashed, and much furniture had been destroyed. Nevertheless the proprietor had rearranged his damaged premises as well as possible and was serving customers as if nothing had happened.

Just outside this village there are large common graves in which French and German soldiers lie buried together in their uniforms. Large mounds mark these sites. Here again the villagers have placed roughly hewn crosses.

Not far from Huningen we met an intelligent Alsatian peasant who remembered the war of 1870 and had witnessed some engagements in the last few days. Here is his account of what he saw:

"The bravery on both sides was amazing. The effects of artillery fire are terrific. The shells burst, and where you formerly saw a body of soldiers you see a heap of corpses or a number of figures writhing on the ground, torn and mutilated by the fragments of the shell. Those who are unhurt scatter for the moment, but quickly regain their composure and take up their positions in the fighting line as if nothing had happened. The effects of other weapons are as bad. It seems remarkable that soldiers can see the destruction worked all around them, yet can control their nerves sufficiently to continue fighting.

"I remember the battles of 1870, in five or six of which I fought myself, but they bear no comparison with the battles of 1914. War forty-four years ago was child's play compared with war at the present time."

In several villages the schools and churches and many cottages are filled with wounded Frenchmen and Germans, and everything is being done to relieve their sufferings. In the stress of fighting many wounded soldiers were left from three to ten or twelve hours lying in the fields or on the roads. The ambulance equipment of modern armies appears utterly inadequate, and most of the wounded were picked up by villagers.

A French aeroplane from Belfort reconnoitred the German positions behind Mülhausen. As it passed over the German works at the Isteiner Klotz there ensued a continuous firing of machine guns and rifles. The aeroplane, which had swerved downward to give its two occupants a closer and clearer view of the German position, immediately rose to a much greater altitude and escaped injury. It cruised over the German position for more than an hour, now rising, now falling, always pursued by the bullets of the enemy.

This aerial reconnoissance [Transcriber: original 'reconnoisance'], part of which was carried out at an altitude as low as 1,000 feet, was undertaken at terrible risk, but in this case the aeroplane escaped all injury and returned in the direction of Belfort, doubtless with all the information it had set out to collect.

* * * * *

[Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.]

BERNE, Aug. 22, (Dispatch to The London Morning Post.)--Gebweiler, in Alsace, twelve miles to the northwest of Mülhausen, was taken by the French at the point of the bayonet on Aug. 20. My correspondent, who has just arrived at Basle from the field of battle, says that eight battalions of the German One Hundred and Fourteenth Regiment, numbering about 10,000 men, engaged the French Army. The French artillery was deadly and caused great ravages among the Germans, few officers escaping.

During the whole night the wounded were being transported to villages in the neighborhood, beyond the reach of artillery. All the buildings of Sierenz were filled with wounded.

Hundreds of horses were stretched on the field of battle. Those of the German artillery were killed, and in consequence the German forces left their artillery, of which about twenty guns are now in the hands of the French.

The object of the German troops was to cut off the retreat of the French and force them toward the Swiss frontier--an object which they failed to achieve.

The wounded received here say that they passed a terrible night in the open, without water or other succor, with the pitiful neighing of wounded horses ringing in their ears.

*Rennenkampf on the Prussian Border*

[By a Correspondent of The London Daily Chronicle.]

GRADNO, (via Petrograd,) Oct. 21.--I have returned here after a journey along the East Prussian frontier, as close to the scenes of daily fighting as I could obtain permission to go. The route was from the north of Suwalki southward to Graevo, a stretch of country recently in German occupation, but where now remains not a single German outpost.

It is stimulating to see the Russian soldier in his habits as he lives and fights. I have seen many thousands of them camped in the rain, swamped in bogs, or marching indefatigably over the roads which are long quagmires of mud, always with an air of stolid contentment and the look of being bent on business. They include Baltic Province men speaking German. Jews from Riga and Libau are brigaded with huge Siberians, whose marching must constitute a world record. The Cossacks are past counting, and with them are long-coated, tight-belted Circassians and Kalmucks, all representing a mixture of races and languages like that of the British Empire itself.

Actually the whole line is a battle front from north of Wirballen to well into Poland, and no day passes without contact with the Germans. This is an army in which every man has fought. Most of them have been in hand-to-hand conflict with the Germans. They have approached the front through a country which the enemy has devastated. There is no village which does not bear the mark of wanton destruction. I have seen these things for myself. Houses have been burned, others pillaged and the contents dragged into the streets and there smashed. Churches have been invariably gutted and defiled.

It is impossible not to admire these endless battalions of Siberians. They are common objects of this countryside. I came past Suwalki as they were moving up, column after column, in gray overcoats aswing in the rhythm of their stride, like the kilts of Highlanders. It was they who bore the brunt of the fighting, unsupported by artillery, in forests of Augustowo, and, with the Baltic regiments, pushed on and took Lyck. These are the men who marched forty miles, starting at midnight, then went into action between Gor and Raigrod and delivered a bayonet charge which their officers still boast about today.

I may not indicate the geography of the front on which the Russians and Germans are now facing each other, but the German general plan is to protect the railway and all approaches to a vital junction such as Goldapp and Insterburg. Between them and the frontier lies a country of singular difficulty for the troops. It is easy of defense, with small broken hills, innumerable lakes and roads winding in watered valleys among woods. The Germans have gone to earth in their usual lavish fashion, digging themselves in with a thoroughness worthy of permanent fortifications. Their trenches are five feet deep, with earthworks in front zig-zagging as a precaution against enfilading. Some of them are very cleverly hidden with growing bushes. All peasants remaining at the country-side in Prussia are compelled to work digging trenches. The emplacements [Transcriber: original 'implacements'] for guns of large calibre have concrete foundations.

The Germans had fortified Suwalki, employing forced labor. They had connected up the trench system with telephone installation and appointed a Military Governor and other functionaries. Many German officers were joined there by their wives and families, who when they retired took with them souvenirs consisting of nearly every portable object of value in the town, besides much furniture and clothing.

The Russian trenches are scarcely more than shallow grooves in the ground with earth thrown up in front of them, making barely sufficient cover for prone riflemen.

At once the German outer positions were carried by storm with ghastly carnage.

"We didn't dig much," said a Russian officer to me. "We knew we shouldn't stay there. We should either go forward or back, and we were sure to go forward."

The cloud of patrols, mostly Cossacks, which flits unceasingly along the German front is the subject of innumerable stories.

When the news was issued that the Kaiser had come east to take command of his army on this front a Cossack came in, driving before him a plump, distressed Prussian Captain whom he had gleaned during the day's work.

"I've brought him," he announced. "I knew him by his mustache," and he produced an old picture postcard from his breast showing the Kaiser with his characteristic mustache.

Near Augustowo the roads are literally blocked in many places with abandoned German transports which became trapped in the terribly muddy country. Dead horses in hundreds lie everywhere and the Russian Sanitary Corps is busy burying them. Yet the Russians who are still moving about this country retain not only their usual average health, but do not even complain.

Between Augustowo and Raigrod a small stream is actually blocked with German stores, including much gun ammunition. The German advance which ended in this debacle has been the costliest defeat in point of materials which they have yet suffered.

*The First Fight at Lodz*

*By Percival Gibbon of The London Daily Chronicle.*

WARSAW, Dec. 5, (by Courier to Petrograd.)--I have wired you previously of the German force which advanced around Lodz and was cut off south and east of the town. This consisted of two army corps--the Twenty-fifth Corps and the Third Guard Corps. The isolated force turned north and endeavored to cut its way out through the small town of Breziziny. It was at Breziziny that final disaster overtook them.

The town and road lie in a hollow in the midst of wooded country, where the Germans were squeezed from the Vistula and pressed to the rear. They had fought a battle during the slow retirement of five days and were showing signs of being short of ammunition. On the fifth day they made their final attempt to pass through Breziziny. That was where that fine strategist and fighting man who held Ivangorod on the Vistula brought off the great dramatic coup for which he had been manoeuvring.

The Germans were holding the town and pouring through when he began his general attack. Breziziny underwent nine hours of furious shelling and only half the town is now remaining. The Russian infantry again proved its sterling quality, and, supported by the tremendous fire of its own guns, drove home charge after charge, smashing the German resistance completely. By nightfall out of two army corps, numbering 80,000 men, there remained only a remnant.

The number of prisoners reaches the total of about 20,000, and of the remainder fully 80 per cent, were killed or wounded. This is the estimate supplied to me. Owing to the small area on which the fighting was concentrated, the dead are lying in great mounds and walls at points where the charges were pushed home. For miles the countryside is dotted with dead.

In the sparser grounds an unknown number of fugitives, most of whom are wounded, are lurking in the woods. From Rawa, south of Skierniwice, midway between Lodz and Warsaw, to Lodz on the line of the former German retreat and present advance, not a single village remains. All the burned-out district is utterly desolate.

On Dec. 1, 2, and 3 the force conducting the defense of the town of Lodz was all but surrounded. The German positions were at Royicie on the southern road, within four miles of the long, straggling street which comprises most of the town of Lodz, while at Zgierz, seven miles to the north, they had a battery of heavy guns with which they shelled the town itself, killing several hundred civilians. The fire was chiefly directed on the railway and station and the Russian guns were unable for some time to locate the battery. It was discovered and reconnoitred at last by an aeroplane.

Then followed an act of heroism and harebrained enterprise which is now the talk of the whole army. On Thursday night last the Colonel of Artillery made his way out and with a little group of assistants contrived to drag a field telephone wire within half a mile of the German battery. While a searchlight was swinging over the face of the country, he lay on the ground, and from there directed the Russian guns, which with his help actually succeeded in silencing the battery. The Russian guns were at this time placed in the streets of Lodz.

On Thursday night, when the attack culminated, there were 700 guns in action at one time on both sides, and throughout the night all was alight with flashes from the guns and bursting shells, and the thunder of the guns was faintly audible on the outskirts of Warsaw, sixty miles away.

Then there followed a general assault of the Germans, a charge of huge masses of men, who followed up into the glare of the searchlights under an inferno of gunfire. Here again the Siberians demonstrated the qualities which have made them famous throughout the war. They met the Germans with a rifle fire from the trenches which not only stopped them but shattered them. They again played the old trick of allowing the enemy to approach within fifty feet, meanwhile holding their fire, and then blowing them off their feet with rifle fire and their use of the mitrailleuse.

The attack failed utterly, and from the very manner of it the Russian losses could not be otherwise than light, while the German losses in the whole of the operations against Lodz and the neighboring positions exceed a hundred thousand killed. No guess at the number of their wounded can be attempted, but we know that score upon score of trains filled with them have gone west along the Kalisz line, and still continue to go.

*The First Invasion of Servia*

[By a Correspondent of The London Standard.]

NISH, Servia, Aug. 31.--After the butcheries and atrocities which I witnessed during preceding battles I thought I would get accustomed and insensible to these scenes of blood, but from my last visit to the slaughter house I have brought such visions of horror that their very thought makes me shudder. The object of the Austrian Army seems to have been complete devastation.

The fierce battle which the Servians gave them incessantly for more than a week may be divided into two conflicts of equal intensity which raged along the ridge of the heights of Tser. Each of the two slopes, descending one to the Save and the town of Shabatz and the other to the Drina, is now nothing but a charnel house.

I could not say which of these two conflicts was more murderous, but this admirably fertile region, with its countless fruit trees, is now sheltering the last remains of hundreds of butchered men, women, and children.

When after three days and three nights of truceless fighting the Servians succeeded in surprising the enemy in the middle of the night at Tser, the toll of dead was so colossal that the Servian troops were constrained for the time being to abandon burying the corpses.

Everywhere the fighting was of the fiercest conceivable nature, for to resist the invaders was to the Servians a question of life and death. At several points they fought right up to the last man, succumbing but never falling back.

The volunteer corps of Capt. Tankositch, the famous leader whose head Austria is so anxious to gain, was charged to defend Kroupage, situated south of the battle front, between Losnitza and Lionbovia. Considerable Austrian forces attempted to advance with the view of driving the Captain back.

For two days and three nights Tankositch and 236 volunteers held their position. At last three whole Austrian regiments surrounded them, but rather than yield to the enemy Tankositch and his gallant miniature army resolved to fight to the last. In the dead of night he sent out a small group to meet the Austrians. This group, consisting of a mere handful of soldiers, hurled a shower of bombs at the enemy, cutting up his ranks, and secured a free pass.

At the first break of day, when Tankositch counted his men, only forty-six answered the call. They surrounded more than a hundred prisoners.

It will be realized that in the course of such sharp fighting the Servian losses must have been considerable, although they were much smaller than those of the enemy.

The most pitiful and heartrending aspect of these scenes was presented by the long procession of Servian survivors from the neighboring villages, consisting of old men, women, and children, bringing in the heavy toll of mutilated human beings. At Valievo, the nearest town to the field of battle, large masses of Servian and Austrian wounded kept pouring in incessantly. About 10,000 have already arrived. All had to be examined, all had to have their wounds dressed, and at Valievo there are only six doctors.

In spite of this appalling shortage of medical aid, I witnessed yesterday a most touching spectacle. A car drawn by oxen brought to the hospital at Valievo its load of mutilated soldiers. In the first portion of the car were three wounded Austrians and in the second two wounded Servians and two more Austrians. The convoys wanted to carry the Austrian wounded to the dressing room before their own wounded. A Servian doctor stopped them.

"Bring the wounded in in the order in which they come," he commanded, and, without any regard for the nationality of his patients, the doctor and his colleagues commenced their humanitarian work.

What are the Red Crosses of the neutral countries waiting for? Why do they not come here? In the name of gallant little Servia, in the name of a humane and pitiful people, I make urgent appeal to the Red Crosses to send a portion of their staff here. There are thousands of lives to be saved.

Now I must begin a chapter of sorrows. I wanted to witness the Austro-Hungarian excesses a second time before speaking of them, so that I could give an exact and genuine account of actual facts. Courage failed me to see all, but what I have seen can be summed up in one phrase. In the environs of Shabatz the vanquished put the finishing touch to their acts of fearful savagery by butchering their Servian prisoners, whose corpses were found heaped up in the town.

Yesterday and the day before I ran across country through Valievo toward Drina. Further north, barely forty miles from Valievo, at Seablatcha, the poor refugees who had fled from their houses before the onslaught of the Austrians showed me eight young people, tied one to another, who were all pierced by bayonets.

Five miles from there, at Bella Tserka, fugitives of the village with indescribable despair were burying the mutilated, bodies of fourteen little girls. Six peasants were found hanging in an orchard.

At Lychnitsa, on the Drina, about a hundred old men, inoffensive civilians, were massacred before the eyes of their wives and children. All the women and children were led over on the other side of the bank of the Drina in order to compel the Servians to stop their fire.

It is not war that Austria-Hungary tried to make on Servia. That great nation wanted to exterminate the Servian people. She thought she would succeed before Servia had time to defend herself.

Austrian prisoners affirm that they received orders to hang all those striving against their country, to burn all the enemy's villages, and put all their inhabitants to death.

The Servian Quartermaster General is drawing up an official list of these Austro-Hungarian deeds.

*The Attack on Tsing-tau*

*By Jefferson Jones of The Minneapolis Journal and The Japan Advertiser.*

JAPANESE HEADQUARTERS, Shantung, Nov. 2.--I have seen war from a grand stand seat. I never before heard of the possibility of witnessing a modern battle--the attack of warships, the fire of infantry and artillery, the manoeuvring of airships over the enemy's lines, the rolling up from the rear of reinforcements and supplies--all at one sweep of the eye; yet, after watching [Transcriber: original 'watchnig'] for three days the siege of Tsing-tau from a position on Prinz Heinrich Berg, 1,000 feet above the sea level and but three miles from the beleaguered city, I am sure that there is actually such a thing as a theatre of war.

On Oct. 31, the date of the anniversary of the birth of the Emperor of Japan, the actual bombardment of Tsing-tau began. All the residents of the little Chinese village of Tschang-tsun, where was fixed on that day the acting staff headquarters of the Japanese troops, had been awakened early in the morning by the roar of a German aeroplane over the village. Every one quickly dressed and, after a hasty breakfast, went out to the southern edge of the village to gaze toward Tsing-tau.

A great black column of smoke was arising from the city and hung like a pall over the besieged. At first glance it seemed that one of the neighboring hills had turned into an active volcano and was emitting this column of smoke, but it was soon learned that the oil tanks in Tsing-tau were on fire.

As the bombardment was scheduled to start late in the morning, we were invited to accompany members of the staff of the Japanese and British expeditionary forces on a trip to Prinz Heinrich Berg, there to watch the investment of the city. It was about a three-mile journey to this mountain, which had been the scene of some severe fighting between the German and Japanese troops earlier in the month.

When we arrived at the summit there was the theatre of war laid out before us like a map. To the left were the Japanese and British cruisers in the Yellow Sea, preparing for the bombardment. Below was the Japanese battery, stationed near the Meeker House, which the Germans had burned in their retreat from the mountains. Directly ahead was the City of Tsing-tau, with the Austrian cruiser Kaiserin Elisabeth steaming about in the harbor, while to the right one could see the Kiao-Chau coast and central forts and redoubts and the intrenched Japanese and British camps.

We had just couched ourselves comfortably between some large, jagged rocks, where we felt sure we were not in a direct line with the enemy's guns, when suddenly there was a flash as if some one had turned a large golden mirror in the field down beyond to the right. A little column of black smoke drifted away from one of the Japanese trenches, and a minute later those of us on the peak of Prinz Heinrich heard the sharp report of a field gun.

"Gentlemen, the show has started," said the British Captain, as he removed his cap and started adjusting his "opera glass." No sooner had he said this than the reports of guns came from all directions with a continuous rumble as if a giant bowling alley were in use. Everywhere the valley at the rear of Tsing-tau was alive with golden flashes from discharging guns, and at the same time great clouds of bluish-white smoke would suddenly spring up around the German batteries where some Japanese shell had burst. Over near the greater harbor of Tsing-tau we could see flames licking up the Standard Oil Company's large tanks. We afterward learned that these had been set on fire by the Germans and not by a bursting shell.

And then the warships in the Yellow Sea opened fire on Iltis Fort, and for three hours we continually played our glasses on the field--on Tsing-tau and on the warships. With glasses on the central redoubt of the Germans we watched the effects of the Japanese fire until the boom of guns from the German Fort A, on a little peninsula jutting out from Kiao-Chau Bay, toward the east, attracted our attention there. We could see the big siege gun on this fort rise up over the bunker, aim at a warship, fire, and then quickly go down again. And then we would turn our eyes toward the warships in time to see a fountain of water 200 yards from a vessel, where the shell had struck. We scanned the city of Tsing-tau. The 150-ton crane in the greater harbor, which we had seen earlier in the day, and which was said to be the largest crane in the world, had disappeared and only its base remained standing. A Japanese shell had carried away the crane.

But this first day's firing of the Japanese investing troops was mainly to test the range of the different batteries. The attempt also was made to silence the line of forts extending in the east from Iltis Hill, near the wireless and signal stations at the rear of Tsing-tau, to the coast fort near the burning oil tank on the west. In this they were partly successful, two guns at Iltis Fort being silenced by the guns at sea.

On Nov. 1, the second day of the bombardment, we again stationed ourselves on the peak of Prinz Heinrich Berg. From the earliest hours of morning the Japanese and British forces had kept up a continuous fire on the German redoubts in front of the Iltis, Moltke, and Bismarck forts, and when we arrived at our seats it seemed as though the shells were dropping around the German trenches every minute. Particularly on the redoubt of Taitung-Chen was the Japanese fire heavy, and by early afternoon, through field glasses, this German redoubt appeared to have had an attack of smallpox, so pitted was it from the holes made by bursting Japanese shells. By nightfall many parts of the German redoubts had been destroyed, together with some machine guns. The result was the advancing of the Japanese lines several hundred yards from the bottom of the hills where they had rested earlier in the day.

It was not until the third day of the bombardment that those of us stationed on Prinz Heinrich observed that our theatre of war had a curtain, a real asbestos one that screened the fire in the drops directly ahead of us from our eyes. We had learned that the theatre was equipped with pits, drops, a gallery for onlookers, exits, and an orchestra of booming cannon and rippling, roaring pompons; but that nature had provided it with a curtain--that was something new to us.

We had reached the summit of the mountain about 11 A.M., just as some heavy clouds, evidently disturbed by the bombardment during the previous night, were dropping down into Litsun Valley and in front of Tsing-tau. For three hours we sat on the peak shivering in a blast from the sea, and all the while wondering just what was being enacted beyond the curtain. The firing had suddenly ceased, and with the filmy haze before our eyes we conjured up pictures of the Japanese troops making the general attack upon Iltis Fort, evidently the key to Tsing-tau, while the curtain, of the theatre of war was down.

By early afternoon the clouds lifted, and with glasses we were able to distinguish fresh sappings of the Japanese infantry nearer to the German redoubts. The Japanese guns, which the day before were stationed below us to the left, near the Meeker House, had advanced half a mile and were on the road just outside the village of Ta-Yau. Turning our glasses on Kiao-Chau Bay, we discovered that the Kaiserin Elisabeth was missing, nor did a search of the shore line reveal her. Whether she was blown up by the Germans or had hidden behind one of the islands I do not know.

All the guns were silent now, and the British Captain said: "Well, chaps, shall we take advantage of the intermission?"

A half-hour later we were down the mountain and riding homeward toward Tschang-Tsun.

To understand fully the operations of the Japanese troops in Shantung during the present Far Eastern war one must be acquainted with the topography of this peninsula, as well as with the conditions that exist for the successful movements of the troops.

Since the disembarkation of the Japanese Army on Sept. 2 everything has seemingly favored the Germans. The country, which is unusually mountainous, offering natural strongholds for resisting the invading army, is practically devoid of roads in the hinterland. To add to this difficulty, the last two months in Shantung have seen heavy rains and floods which have really aided in holding off the ultimate fall of Kiao-Chau.

One had only to see the road from Lanschan over Makung Pass, on which the Japanese troops were forced to rely for their supplies, partly to understand the reason for the German garrison at Tsing-tau still holding out. The road, especially near the base, is nothing but a sea of clay in which the military carts sink up to their hubs. Frequent rains every week keep the roadway softened up and thus render it necessary for the Japanese infantry to rebuild it and to construct drainage ditches in order that there may be no delay in getting supplies and ammunition to the troops at the front.

The physical characteristics of Kiao-Chau make it an ideal fortress. The entrance of the bay is nearly two miles wide and is commanded by hills rising 600 feet directly in the rear of Tsing-tau. The ring of hills that surrounds the city does not extend back into the hinterland, and thus there is no screen behind which the Japanese forces can quickly invest the city. Germany has utilized the semicircle of hills in the construction of large concrete forts equipped with Krupp guns of 14 and 16 inch calibre, which, for four or five miles back into the peninsula, command all approaches to the city.

The Japanese Army in approaching Tsing-tau has had to do so practically in the open. The troops found no hills behind which they could with safety mount heavy siege guns without detection by the German garrison. In fact, the strategic plan for the capture of the town has been much like the plan adopted by the Japanese forces at Port Arthur--they have forced their approach by sappings. While this is a gradual method, it is certain of victory in the end and results in very little loss of life.

The natural elevations of the Iltis, Bismarck, and Moltke forts at the rear of Tsing-tau have another advantage in that they are so situated that they are commanded by at least two other forts. All of the guns had been so placed that they can be turned on their neighbors if the occasion arises.

A Japanese aeroplane soaring over Tsing-tau on Oct. 30 scattered thousands of paper handbills on which was printed the following announcement, in German, from the Staff Headquarters:

"To the Honored Officers and Men in the Fortress: It is against the will of God as well as the principles of humanity to destroy and render useless arms, ships of war, merchantmen, and other works and constructions not in obedience to the necessity of war, but merely out of spite lest they fall into the hands of the enemy.

"Trusting, as we do, that, as you hold dear the honor of civilization, you will not be betrayed into such base conduct. We beg you, however, to announce to us your own view as mentioned above."

*The German Attack on Tahiti*

*As Told by Miss Geni La France, an Eyewitness.*

SAN FRANCISCO, Cal., Oct. 7.--Graphic stories of the plight of Papeéte, capital of Tahiti, in the Society Islands, were told here today by passengers arriving on the Union Steamship Company's liner Moana. Several of those on board the steamer were in Papeéte when the town was bombarded by the German cruisers Gneisenau and Scharnhorst. They said the place was in ruins and that the natives were still hiding in the hills, whence they fled when the bombardment began.

The stories of those arriving on the Moana vary only in unimportant details. Perhaps the most graphic story was that told by Miss Geni La France, a French actress. She told of the Governor's heroism and his self-sacrificing devotion to duty, which caused him to face death rather than surrender. All of the passengers were loud in their praise of this Frenchman, who thought first of his country, next of his guests--for so he considered all travelers--and next of the city's residents.

"While the shells screamed and exploded with a deafening roar, tearing buildings and leaving wreck and ruin in their wake, this old Governor was calm throughout," said Miss La France.

"It was his bravery that enabled us to bear up under the terrible strain, although it was impossible to flee the city, as shells were exploding all about.

"I was sitting on the veranda of the hotel, having a lovely holiday. Every one was happy and contented. The sunshine was lovely and warm and the natives were busy at their work. I noticed two dark ships steaming up the little river, but was too lazy and 'comfy' to take any interest in them.

"Suddenly, without any warning, shots began exploding around us. Two of the houses near the hotel fell with a crash, and the natives began screaming and running in every direction. For a minute I didn't realize what was happening. But when another volley of shells burst dangerously near and some of the pieces just missed my head, I was flying, too.

"Every one was shouting, 'To the hills, to the hills!' My manager could not obtain a wagon or any means of conveyance to take me there. I felt as if I had on a pair of magic boots that would carry me to the hills in three steps. But I didn't. It was a good six miles, over bad roads, and we had to run.

"The shells from the German battleships kept breaking, and the explosions were terrible. I am sure that I made a record in sprinting that six miles. The cries of the people were terrible. I was simply terror-stricken and could not cry for fear. I seemed to realize that I must keep my strength in order to reach the hills.

"We hid in the hills and the natives gave up their homes to the white people, and were especially kind to the women."

"The native population probably hasn't come back from the hills yet, and when we left, two days after the bombardment, the European population was still dazed," said E.P. Titchener, a Wellington, New Zealand, merchant, who went through the bombardment.

"From 8 o'clock until 10 the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau circled in the harbor, firing broadsides of eight-inch guns at the little gunboat Zelie and the warehouses beyond.

"Only the American flag, which the American Consul hoisted, and an American sailing vessel also ran up, the two being in line before the main European residence section, saved that part of the town, for the German cruisers were careful not to fire in that direction."

According to all accounts, the cruisers directed their fire solely toward the Zelie, but their marksmanship was said to be poor. Many shots fell short and many went wide, so that the whole business district, the general market, and the warehouses along the water front were peppered and riddled.

The French replied from some old guns on the hills as well as three shots from the Zelie, but ineffectively.

"It was plucky of the French to fire at all," said Mr. Titchener. "At 7 o'clock we could see two war vessels approaching, and soon made out they were cruisers. They came on without a flag, and the Zelie, lying in the harbor, fired a blank shot.

"Then the Germans hoisted their flag and the Zelie fired two shots. The Germans swung around and fired their broadsides, and all the crew of the Zelie scuttled ashore. No one was hurt.

"The Germans continued to swing and fire. Their shells flew all over the town above the berth of the Zelie and the German prize ship Walkure, which the Zelie had captured. Perhaps not knowing they were firing into a German vessel, the Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst continued their wild cannonades.