TO TAKE WARSAW.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVI, Issue 72, 25 March 1915, Page 7

TO TAKE WARSAW.

KAISER'S PLAN.

Mr. Percival Gibbon, writing from Warsaw to "Colliers." tells a remarkable story of Germany's frustrated designs on Russian Poland.

. ere > in Warsaw, with aeroplanes killing children in the streets, and the German armies thrusting forward to •within eight miles of the city, we heard that the great Pauline Monastery at Czenstochowa, where the famous Palish THadonna droops her beautiful and com"passionate head before the pilgrims, had been cleared of its monks-and got Teady to serve as a lodging-for the Kaiser. "Jlonks who had made their way north with the current of refugees told of it. There were four of them in the refreshment hall of the station at Warsaw, burly, bearded, middle-aged, still cherry in spite of their utter weariness. It was true, they said, that he was coming, and that the monastery bad been .taken for his. lodging. Men had come to get it ready for him, bringing ■with them -what- was necessary to make the place habitable for an Emperor and bis suite. "One of them lifted his bead to speak impressively. His broad, healthy face had a childlike quality, the innocence that is common to saints and simple-' tons. "'Furniture!' he told us. "Wonder - ful! I never saw such furniture! Beds —dozens of beds—all white as snow; and chairs, and pots and pans to do cooking with—wonderful, I tell you! Some of the cooking "things were like jewellery.' He shook bis head in serious reflection. He must be a very, great -man.' he addeiL "So, since Paris was unattainable, it was to be Warsaw, -which, after-all, is a great city, splendid in the capital of an ancient kingdom. If there were to be no processional ride along the Champs-Elysees, there was still the Marszalkowska. Later, when a ment of Cossacks captured the aide-de-camp of the King of Saxony,, convoying an automobile freighted with forders and decorations destined to be pinned to German breast* in conquered Warsaw, we learned another detail. October 19 is tbe Polish national festival: and some of the best brains in the*worid had been put to work to so organise things that Warsaw should fall and tbe Kaiser .should enter it, in all that magnificence of symbolism and poetic aptness which he loves, at noon that-o^y. "The mailed first wasrTO strike—yes! But in the very blow tbe hand revealed itself, the hand no ironican mask. The ■war that had infested Europe, indiscriminate as a pest, had suddenly become a personal thing,and taken on a character. An artist- was at work, a compasser of effects: "we were, then, fighting a figure of.grandiopera! 'A very great man.' said the monk solemnly; and -we agreed. "It was a great conception stirring and colourful, and only the Russian General Staff knew how perilously near it came to succeeding. Rjrsski, with bis army, was south upon}'and across the Oalieian border: Ivancff was on the Vistula: Rennenkampf*was making himself secure on his newly won positions in East Prussia. The railway stem that veins the country on the German side of the Polish frontier-gave the Germans tbe start tbey needed of the "Russian General Staff: their concentration was complete, and four great grey-blue armies were on Polhh soii, and bearing down on Warsaw before the Russians had moved a man. They had taken Lodz before Warsaw had even heard oi their advance: they were bombarding Ivangorod and its bridges: by the 10th of October they had passed Lowicz and Shirardow. and their line was spreading itself to the east like arms which they opened to embrace and strangle Warsaw. And then like a man who sleeps through a fire till his bed catches alight, Russia woke up."