THE RUSSIAN ARMY.

Northern Advocate, 19 April 1915, Page 3

THE RUSSIAN ARMY.

A COLLOSSAL MACHINE,

SLAVONIC FORTITUDE

! With a dull leaden sky overhead, amt jan icy drizzle in my face, I left Warsaw, says a correspondent of the "Man-

; Chester Guardian." I sped through the streets of Warsaw in a car, racing past grimy factory chimneys, through n.ar-= ; row alleys with their Hebrew inhabitants. Hardly less inviting was the country that lay beyond. Seas of black, slimy mud covered the roads, the end less plain of Central Poland was covered with lialf-melted snow, the poplar trees that lined the roadside were scarred and barked by soldiers who had sought fuel on their way to the front. Here and there lay the skeleton of a dead horse or a' -heap of bloodstained rags left by. a wounded soldier. The rumble of distant artillery could be heard faintly towards the east —or, to be correct, it was felt vibrating the air without causing definite sound. Inhabitants of wayside farms peeped through half-opened doors with a look of half-curiosity, half-anxiety, which is always a sign that war is afoot. MILES OF TROOPS.

I soon became aware of the immensity of the Russian military machine. Large bodies' of troops and transport were on the road. Great caravans, often miles long, or carts laden with food, hay, and ammunition blocked our way. Our. motor often was -dodging in and out of a maze of wheels, horses , legs, and lines of furjeapped men. It was my general impression that the transport machinery pf Russia's great army is working smoothly, if slowly. The materials arrive at their destination without./ hitch or breakdown,"* though not, of course, with the rapidity of a Western army, having re> gard to the less perfect roads and means of communication. '":'..

" . A .TRAIN PARTY. Occasionally we had amusing incidents when we met a train of transports with horses from Siberia who had never seen a motor. t ln spite of the frantic endeavours of the drivers the whole train was generally to be seen after a few minutes 'careering over, the fields in every direction, distributing their'burdens as they went. A long ride in the dark and I reached a hospital train at the very end of a railway behind the Russian lines'. Here I made my abode for the night with a company of ambiflances and Red Cross workers. We sat in second-class-carriages with all doors and windows closed, with a stove burning, the. 'air dense with tobacco smoke, drinking cups of boiling tea, and all talking.at once on subjects varying from , the ruins of ancient Rome to the price of toothpaste in Poland, while the roar of artillery (only a mile 6r so ttistahf) shook the carriage from side to side.' The Russian never loses his love of association and his communicative nature even under the stress of war.

' UNDER SHELL FIRE. Next morning I set out to try and get down to the place where, along a strip of forest on the bank of a river, the Eussian and German lines stood facing each other. I borrowed a trolley which worked by a liandle, and with a couple of "Polish students (Red Cross workers) crept gingerly down the railway with a view to reaching first the Russian artillery positions on our side of the forest. About midday we reached the station of , and found a heap of charred ruins. It had been shelled a few days previously, tjy the Germans in the attempt to locate the Russian battery close by. In this object, however, they had failed. Soon it waa apparent that they were going to make the attempt again, for just as we were about to proceed down the line the crescendo scream of a shrapnel, followed by a loud report overhead and the patter of the grape shot in a field close by, told us that the German gunners were getting their range again.. We forged ahead, thinking that- we might get into the zone in which the shells would be bursting behind ug. Be fore long, we'found that they were aiming at the Russian battery about 500 yards away from us, for some dozen or more shrapnel burst over us, slightly; to the left, and the Russian battery answered with a round of three shots, fired all at once. So wo beat a hasty., retreat, and spent the next half-hour in watching, at a distance of half a mile, an interesting artillery duel, in which some 20 shells burst over tho ruined station we had just visited. In, tho end the Gorman battery stopped, and tho Russian continued a few casual shots all the afternoon. By evening the German battery had withdrawn, but i we could not make out its destination.