tly covered slime.

The first phase of the business lasts until the 24th of August,
beginning with the 7th of that month, and may be very briefly dealt
with.

Two Russian armies, numbering altogether perhaps 200,000 men, or at
the most a quarter of a million, advanced, the one from the Niemen,
the other from the Narew--that is, the one from the east, the other
from the south, into East Prussia. The Germans had here reserve
troops, in what numbers we do not know, but perhaps half the combined
numbers of the Russian invasion, or perhaps a little more. The main
shock was taken upon the eastern line of invasion at Gumbinnen; the
Germans, defeated there, and threatened by the continued advance of
the other army to the west of them, which forbade their retreat
westward, fell back in considerable disorder upon Koenigsberg, lost
masses of munitions and guns, and were shut up in that fortress. The
defeat at Gumbinnen occupied four days--from the 16th to the 20th of
August.

Meanwhile the Russian army which was advancing from the Narew had
struck a single German army corps--the 20th--in the neighbourhood of
Frankenau. The Russian superiority in numbers was very great; the
German army corps was turned and divided. Half of it fled westward,
abandoning many guns and munitions; the other half fled north-eastward
towards Koenigsberg, and the force as a whole disappeared from the
field. The Russians pushed their cavalry westward; Allenstein was
taken, and by the 25th of August the most advanced patrols of the
Russians had almost reached the Vistula.

The necessity for retaking East Prussia by the Germans was a purely
political one. The vast crowd of refugees flying westward spread panic
within the empire. The personal feeling of the Emperor and of the
Prussian aristocracy in the matter of the defeated province was keen.
Had that attempt to retake East Prussia failed, military history would
point to it as a capital example of the error of neglecting purely
strategical for political considerations. As a fact, it succeeded
beyond all expectation, and its success is known as the German victory
of Tannenberg.

The nature of this victory may be grasped from the accompanying sketch
map.

From the town of Mlawa, just within Russian Poland, beyond the
frontier, runs, coming up from Warsaw, a railway to Soldau, just upon
the Prussian side of the frontier. At Soldau three railways
converge--one from the east, one going west to Niedenberg