THE RIVER OF NATIONS.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 15218, 4 March 1915, Page 10

THE RIVER OF NATIONS.

RUSSIAN STRATEGY THAT IS

MAKING HISTORY.

Mr Harold "Williams.- the New Zealander who has won such a iiigh reputation as a Petrograd correspondent, writing from Pctrograd, pays: The guns were silent, strangely silent, after all the din and turmoil of the. eight days' battle. My companion had fallen asicop. weary of the long waitiug for the wounded who did not "come. _ The skipper had gone across the'river with a message for a general, and the crow were snugly at rest somewhere under the hatches. How still it was! I strolled about the deck alone, for there was more rest in the space and the silence and the darkness than in the •stuffy cabins below. And then there was the Vistula, flowing broadly and dimly. with a faint lapping at tho $teanior"s side and on the branches that drooped from the shore. An army was crossing tlie -river a mile or two away. -Searchlight® were playing on either bank: steamers towing rafts and barges threaded their way almost; noiselessly along tho borders of light "and shadow. From far across the waters floated a call, a shout, a barely audible cry—not the bustle and clamour of the hey-day or toil, but the wjiiry expostulations of men whoso task was almost ended. A light mist hung over tho river, and from the trees silong the bank moisture was dripping like a whisper of ram. \nd that was why the bivouac fires were so cheerful. They were glowing caverns of warmth and comfort in the chilly darkness. And. how jolly the soldiers were, resting in the firelight, bending over their kettles or throwing armfuls of wood on the flames! Sometimes I could hear them singing. And I envied them then,, although I knew what a long, long march they had just made from Galicia. \ FEAT OF ENDURANCE.

This army had been down near Jaroslaw fighting the Austriane. Then when the Germans entered Poland and advanced towards Warsaw the order had come to turn right about face and march straight down the right bank of the Vistula to catch .the Germans on the ilank. The shortest way lay through the south-west comer of the province of Lublin. There were no railways. The roads were mere bogs, and half the bridges had been dostrctyed during the Austrian retreat. Through swamps and forests, through lontr stretches of desolated and devastated country, the grey columns hastened on, with their artillery and their endless trains of baggage-waggons. Fifty minutes' march and ten "minutes rest, fifty minutes' march and ten minutes' rest—that was the pace of th o infantry. Eteavily loaded with rifle, bayonet and spade, witli overcoat, kettle" and canvas bag, the infantrymen splashed through the puddles, stumbled in the ruts and leapt from clod to clod. There was no time or strength for marching songs, hardly time to eat, and for sleeping only an hour or two out of all the twenty-four. After 180 miles of such marching they came to Ivangorod, where they entrained, and from tho nearest station marched again down the river twelve miles above Warsaw. They arrived in time to prevent the Germans crossing.

Amazing men these soldiers were! I asked some of them about the march. Not one complained. "It was hard,' they said "but what does it matter so 'long as we beat the Germany?" Their sturdy cheerfulness puzzled mc for a moment, and fhen I understood. It was a Polish peasantwho opened my eyes. He was tramping along, beside a baggage-cart, a sharp-featured, elderly fellow in a slieepskin cap and a sheepskin coat. He and his horse and cart had'been, requisitioned'for transport work somewhere near Ivangorod, and here lie was. following on without a murmur in the far wandering of war. He did not; wear a uniform, but ho v&s proud to be tramping in the great ungainly procession. He had been caught in tlie torrent. He was one of the embattled millions. When he trudged along over the muddy roads, it was not a mere lonely old Jan from Dembhn who was tumbling his way through the dusk. It was the purpose of a great nation sweeping in strength against Germany. Ho was not alone, and the infantryman, Stepan. from Chernigov, was not alone, nor was the Cossack, Yegor, from the Kuban. They, were the nation gone out to war. The bivouac fires glowed - merrily along the bank. There was a mysterious kinship between the army and the river. It was startling and strange. I gazed through the darkness up the Vistula. Where wero .the, Germans now? Were they still m Gqra Kalwaria ? Through,- the stillness came the sound of three muffled detonations. Then again silence fell, Ihe. « Gr " mans were retreating and blowing up bridges on the streams that; flowed into the Vistula.. The great river had taken arms against thenw What was happening farther up at Ivangorod, the fortress that all the week had been so closely knit up with , Warsaw m the'ardour of a common struggled And ai Sandomierz? And what fate was o-athering around Cracow, the older lister of Warsaw, the. ancient capital of the Polish kings? The Polish river and the Russian armies had joined to create history. What -vast movement were they now preparing?^ A WONDERFUL-. RIVER. It is a wonderful river, the Vistula. Down stream, twelve miles away, the lights of tho' bridges of Warsaw wero gleaming, and the glow of the city was reflected in tho misty sky. Sweeping round past Warsaw, the river passes on to the German fortress of Thorn, then out northward across the Prussian plain to reach the'sea at Danzig. On it sweeps silently with the burden of memories and hopes, slowly creating and re-creating history. When the Goths came down from the north they halted for a century or so in the Vistula basin before passing on to the Danube. And Celts wandered here, they say 3 and for a while, when stronger peoples,were far away, Finnish tribes made settlements on the banks of the river. Then the Slave came clown from the valleys of the Carpathians and gradually cleared the forests and dried the'swamps. The Vistula became a Polish etream. A Polish State arose. Light and civilisation wore shed abrond. Pleasant manor houses and churches dotted the countryside. Kings held state in Cra|cow and Warsaw, and the Vistula boro j down the corn from Polish estates and the timber from Polish forests to the Polish port of Danzig. Those jjloriou« days are post. Fetters are laid noon the Vistula now. State frontiers hem its free flow at \ CVacow and at Thorn. The AustrianI Germans hold it* upper reaches, the j Prussian Germans its splendid outlet to the sea. But the chains are loosening, the frontiers are trembling, and mingling its sweep with the power of the Russian the great river is claiming once more ite freedom. What splendid hope is history now bringing; to fulfilment? Five hundred years ago, when the Turks were destroying tiie power of Servia, and Russia was freeing herself from the Tartar yoke, the Polish King Sagello marched down the Vistula, and with an army of Poles, Lithuanians and Bohemians i routed the Teutonic Order to the south J of the Mazurian lakes. Out he did not j reap the full fruit of his victory, and j instead of crushing the Order he made i an easy peace. And the Order laid in I the eastern marches on the border of ■ Slavdom the foundation of that Prussian power that finally brought Poland

to ruin and laid on modern Europe the heaw hand of militarism. _ , , Prussia bocaine strong thi ougfa the Slavs, joine.l to the impetus of the free Western t>eopk«. the Prm, sian pwcr. The.liberate of ■ tula means .the-hberataon of Rnrope.