sians were retreating! In front of the newspaper offices the crowds stood twenty deep, their faces turned to a bulletin which said that Hindenburg was driving the enemy

g this newest of great victories, which they were calling a second Tannenberg. Unable even to get a place of vantage from which to overlook this ecstasy of pat

that you start to-night for the East." Thanking Major von Herwarth, who has done everything in his power to h

to America. Subsequently filed at different points on the battle line, they went by military telegraph into Germany, thence by the regular Government lines to Berlin, thence by the great wireless to Sayville, Long Island. Only a limited number of words

found Baron von Stietencron, a captain in the 5th Regiment of the Prussian Guards, the crack infantry of Germany, to be a light spirited devil-may-care type of officer, gifted with a touch-and-go sense of humor, high strung and imaginative. Since the war he had le

the line, officers rejoining their regiments. The train for K?nigsberg gl

apologized Baron von Stietencron, who spo

witches, turned its headlight towards the Eastern night. It was near three before any of us thought of sleeping. In that short

of those marvelously minute staff maps. "We arrive at K?nigsberg in the morning and from there w

the car wheels seemed to be the clatter of the Russian retreat and when the big light glared through the window into my eyes, I had to awake

s on the East P

following our m

walking down the platform to take the train for Korschen, when we saw a little boy tug at his mother's arm and stare with mouth agape into the sky. There to the south what seemed to be a stub of black pencil w

we were on the tr

the picture that the car window framed, bristled but five days before with Russian lines. There at Korschen where we changed cars, they had burned the station. There we saw on flat cars, ready to be pulled to some point behind the front, three black painted motors that

n American, aren't you?" And when I told him yes, he said: "I am too." He went on to say that he was from Passaic, and I found myself recalling Gu

the army, but I, being born in Germany, offered my services at the outbreak of war to the government. They are using me to go behind

added, "In France and Belgium our soldiers planted the fields with

to eat since morning, the Baron led a foraging expedition into a track-side farmhouse, which resulted in more wurst and heavy black bread. I can still see the expression in that old farmer's eyes as, opening the cottage door, he saw the Baron outside. It was as if the gray officer's cape, hanging over the Bar

sians," he told the Baron.

our car that a military train would pull out for Lyck in a few minutes, we ran down the tracks, stumbling on the ties, for it had become dark, trying to find a pl

an towards that car, where we now saw the pale glow of l

Captain von Stietencron,

ng with bayonets as they moved in a path of light. Entering a dingy waiting room, we stood beside a crowded lunch counter

r nails which each man must have manicured, for they shone, at their clean shaven faces, and glistening combed hair; one fancied their eyebrows wer

tencron coming out of t

However, in forty minutes a big supply train is going and if you can stand

I assured him. "Whe

Whereupon, being a soldier, and having a chance to ea

ter car, filled with ammunition, fodder and food, stretched endlessly up the track. We were in a freight car that had been painted inside and fitted with three long benches. From the white roof,

to the Captain's stories of the war. And later I knew of many things concerning that first great drive into France, of how Namur was take

t plush seat. I involuntarily shuddered at the thought of the potential death we carried in the cars behind, the tons of ammunition coming now to make Russian dead.

rbed wire square that gave the impression of having hastily been built as a Gefangenenlager, the Russians watched our approach with suspicious eyes. Splendid types of the human animal, deep chested, tall fellows, with mighty physiques and stupid faces, the Russians of that greater Russia, who exist in the fiction of those who portray the "beautiful Russian soul." One recognized the great coats of sheepskin and

us from the doorway of what had been a signal tower, while another drew his tall form up straight and smiled. The Captain spoke to this man in German.

, smiling, beardless Russian, "you might be re

the Russian s

d enough of their army. I

per noun that happened to fall into their conversat

the freight car. "That Russian's father is the priest

ing is possibl

ly train such as ours, is about an hour. We left L?tzen before seven; four hours and Lyck was still away. Rattling along, jumping the switches into sidings while coaches filled wit

ulius the station master's invitation to visit his house. It would be cozy there. "Just up the track aways," he said. Imagining a comfortable half hour of lounging on some pillowed German chair, we followed the station master w

was a place of pillage and filth. Torn papers made soft the floor, the walls seemed ragged with torn pictures, hang

y home," and I thought his eyes filled. "I li

mid an overpowering clutter of cooked meat and decaying vegetables. I opened a little closet in the wall and stood looking at something that my electric torch

crest of the rolling country, we found to be utterly and wantonly devastated. We learned there was no fighting in Iucha, yet home after home we found destroyed. We visited the shop of G. Geydon, and found all the goods m

ne end of a long table. Beside the table, on the floor, I noticed a Russian map of this section of Germany. Here in this room, beyond doubt, the staf

trench. The morning after they retreated, we went up there and found it filled with loot and the

ked him, "were t

h," he replied, "to

illed with sleeping German soldiers, obviously two machine gun squads, for the guns were in the middle of the room; and beside this another room where in the light of a cand

struction, with one jagged wall leaning against the night. Leading the way past the burned building, Captain von Stietencron asked us to wait while he went into a rude shack where a light burned. Out of the

aptain called us to com

ut and find the officer who was to meet us in Lyck, a

s clamped to their heads. A large white shaded lamp, evidently from the same house as the sofa on which we sat and the three upholstered chairs, stood upon a rough board table in the center of the room. Getting up and w

came in, a big handsome fellow, who looked at me in polite surprise, and seating himself at the ta

the cities he had visited while he hesitated over his letter. "It is so difficult," he remarked, "when you are

omposition of the note which, finally seali

eat coat of beaver; "I must be at headquarters by morning

or die away in the snowy night. It was

hing here about us. We must go in the morning to the -th Army headquarters a

the shack and in a moment were sleeping like the

llow, larger men in goat and sheepskins, and then a squad of black hatted, slit-eyed Siberians, a squad of strapping fair haire

othes off, and as for the civilized luxuries, given a too

re. We'll go to the Officers' Casino for coffee. There a motor will m

train of "prairie schooners," slowly but steadily rattled by. The way was strewn with discarded car

ned the Captain. "One division of our soldiers rolled up four R

had evidently sought their solace or courage in vodka. We became aware that not a house nor store in Lyck had escaped their pillage. As we crossed a little public park we found they had vented their revenge at defeat by smashing every bench in th

the wall was riddled with bullets, from the pistols of drunken Russian officers who had sat there making a target of a portrait of the German Emperor, now lying on the floor. A tired officer

ut the war behind us. We overtook a long shuffling column of Russian prisoners and further on, the Germans who were slightly wounded walking with almost a springy step in contrast to the dispirited Russians. We passed another of the gray supply trains, where the sleepy horses of the

horse in a dead tangle beside it. I noticed a second sled, a third, a fourth; apparently these sleds

was the only smoke we saw in this once busy town of eight thousand people. We seemed to be standing in a burned s

was staring at the desolation, he added, "There was no fighting in Go

ingle habitable house in this awful desolation. We left the motor and walked around. On one of the side streets we questioned one of the victims of Russian brutality.

cron coming across the sq

mandant here and in the office of the Etappen Kommando

im standing beside a long rakish motor car, outside a looted bank. Von Stietencron held a long c

om the staff. I must return to Berlin, and Rittmeister Tzschirner

yish delight in the trip. And now with a glum face he was saying good-by. "Look me up when you return to Berlin

I saw that his were the cold steady eyes of the fighter, yet not without a twinkle, and the good natured mouth that the little m

remarked, "said that headqu

p with the pursuit of the Russians. We st

was on the very dust

said the Rittmeister; "we should make

n that it was on the

p on the east, there gleamed a huge campfire that spread its yellow light on a ruined wall; as long as we could, we watched the black forms that must have been soldiers, passing across the flames. The motor rumbled on; signs of the retreat began to appear. In

ssian soldiery. I saw rifles, cartridge bones, single shoes and then a broken caisson, a hooped roofed transport,

ss their retreat?" I ask

replied. "It w

d round shutting it all out; and we sat listening to the motor's rumble. Where were the dead? In

ed suddenly, "were m

The Russians did not wish us to know the regiments engaged so they carried away their dead. I mean they carried away as many as they cou

e field

t I should make a mistake. "In the fields her

ween the fields of

had paused there to rest. The man in the heavy coat of an East Prussian farmer leaned on a cane, watching with suspicious eyes. The woman, stout and motherly, sat on a stone, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes blinking from an awakene

n, one carrying a bird cage in which there was no bird. They too were on the heels of the retreat, only they were going back to

glared into their faces, the children, piled among the household goods, frowned an

nd soft earth, once the garden. The woman who sat with her children on the loaded sledge, must have sobbed-although we could not hear it above the motor's din-for the man holding the horse turned, and the girl holding the

but that was ashes or if of stone whose walls were black. Not even the church at Mierunsken had escaped the torch. In a few moments more we were in Russia. We did not need the striped frontier posts to confirm this; nor the holes and lumps, that marked the end of German road

d German soldiers follow th

Suwalki," repl

who passed through Goldap and all

at was the lin

s si

ave wonderful disci

seemed surp

the Russians had done to East Prussian villages, could refrain

tmeister was a

paused and perhaps guessing that Belgium was in my mind, "W

es' backs. Throttling down until we barely crept along, our soldier chauffeur dexterously guided the car between the maze of wagon wheels and balking horses, so on, until after I had counted twenty wagons struggling hub deep through the frozen snow, we came to the head of the column, where the serene officer, utterly oblivious to th

shboard, with the corrugations running in crisscrosses. Jumping insanely from ridge to hole, our motor stood up wonderfully, until we came to an abrupt hill where nubbles of frozen snow impeded the way. Three times did Gelbricke, the chauffeur,

e wood for trea

ed that we should be put to this inconvenience while guests of

woh

to find wood; but one thought that Seyring's "Jawohl" would have been eq

ce was buried in the snow, his stiff, extended arms pawing the frozen ground. On the shoulders of his long brown coat I read the number of his regiment, 256, and on his feet, from which th

crossed the great open plain to Suwalki, snow came, a slow, steady fall, unnaturally white in the headlight's glow. Progress became even slower. Ahead the roa

guns rumbled behind. Our headlight shone upon a gray and red cloaked soldier, sitting on the gun carriage, his spurred boots dangling, his body jumping and jouncing, while quite complacently he munched on a bar of chocolate

e horses from the spans, while the gun crews poured out oats from big gray bags and gave the horses their meal. And, two by two, the drivers led them clanking off into the night, with the gun crews following on fo

e, a gap opene

elbrick

rove down a shaded street, even there I could see the débris of war-discarded uniforms, guns and shells. And when finally we stopped before an old stone building and followed the Rittmeister through a damp archway into a dirty looking café, where we had ham

llery," said Ritt

ou know?"

e this-one-two-three-four, the

rather, to me, those quick salvos seemed to be the firing of desperation, the frantic gunnery of men who knew the enemy was closing in-an enemy who upon their heels had follo