not fired
a shot upon the town, but that the Germans had destroyed it driving
them out.

I entered a little Roman Catholic church in the undamaged section
of the town and noted with interest that nothing had apparently
been disturbed--this the more significant since the Russians hold a
different faith.

I walked back towards the river and strolled through the neat,
well-shaded, churchyard to the ruins of the large church, the
dominating feature of the town. It was clear from what was left
that the lines of the body and the spire had been of rare beauty
for such an insignificant place as Allenburg.

"Too bad!" I remarked to a white-haired old man who was sitting on
a bench mournfully contemplating the ruins.

"Sad, so sad!" he said in a voice full of grief. "And it seems
sadder that it had to be done by our own people," he added.

"Were you here during the fighting?" I asked.

"I was," he answered. "I would rather die than leave this place,
where I was born and where I have always lived."

I returned to the anxious guides add told them that I had visited
the ruins of the church.

"A destruction which could serve no military purpose," declared the
man in brown. "You see the methods of the people Germany is
fighting."

I expressed a desire to seek only one more thing, the church on the
road to Friedland which had been destroyed by the Russians after
the sixty maidens had been driven into it. We went to it, but,
alas! it had not been disturbed in the least. I somehow felt that
my guides saw the lack of destruction with genuine regret. The big
man with the black beard was at a loss to reconcile the story he
told me at Konigsberg with the actual facts found on the spot.

"Somebody must have made a mistake," was all he said.

My last view of Allenburg was from across the river with the long
rays of the setting sun burnishing the ruins of the once beautiful
church, the church I saw months later on the screen in the London
display room, the church that has been shown all over the world as
evidence of Russian methods in war.

I went all through East Prussia studying first hand the effects of
the great campaign. My luck increased from day to day. I secured
a military pass to visit all hospitals in the XXth Army Corps,
which aided my investigations not a little. The prejudice which I
had against the Russians died in East Prussia. It was buried
forever the following winter when I was with the Russian A