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Evening Post, Volume XC, Issue 38, 13 August 1915, Page 7

ONLY AN EMPTY HUSK

THE TAKING OF WARSAW. FROM THE GERMAN VIEWPOINT. LONDON", 12th August. - The Daily Telegraph's Rotterdam correspondent states' that the first German, descriptions of the entry into Warsa.w betray the truth that they have grasped an empty husk. Everything of military ' value was destroyed, leaving an impression of gaping emptiness. A superior German officer describes the extraordinary character of the fighting when the Russian rearguard, with indomitable courage, harassed from Praga the advancing enemy. ' , While motoring into Warsaw he passed scorched fields, burned fawns, wrecked carts, and fresh graves. He was compelled to stop to remove trees, which the Russians had placed across ' the roadways approaching the suburbs, in order to arrive at the city fortress with its earthen walls and antiquated defence works. Endless streams of refugees were coming out along the roads, standing on the side of the roads watching the Germans marching in. Every window and balcony was occupied by residents eager to see the entry. The cafes were crowded and the shops open. Though the city was calm, a few hundred yards away on ' the riverside Germans were lying behind street barriers and hiding behind the comers of houses firing across the river where the Russians, were entrenched. Machine-gann rattled from both sides with occasionally a louder greeting from the heavy guns. Black smoke was rising beyond .the river where the Russians were continuing their work of destruction. Another officer writes that the population did not sleep on Thursday night owing to the loud explosions of the forts blown up by the military. Busings and workshops were fired. At eleven in the avening control of the city was given to the civil police and the troops commenced to cross the bridges in large masses. At five in the morning the bridges were blown up, and at six an automobile with two German officers arrived, followed by six cavalrymen — lancers — decorated with flowers and singing "The Watch on the Rhine." The higher officers arrived in motor-cars at midday, when the Russian shrapnel shell -was still falling in the town. On the

.Warsaw gave the impression of a German town on a festival day, except that the flags were absent."