oads had also interfered with their progress, but on the morning
of July 28, 1915, Von Woyrsch crossed to the eastern shore of the
Vistula between the mouth of the Pilica and Kozienice at several
places, and was threatening the Warsaw-Ivangorod railway.

Novo Georgievsk was steadily being inclosed. The Russian counterthrusts
in the neighborhood of Warsaw both on the north and the south of the
city were repelled by night and day. To the south near Gora-Kalvaria
a desperate attempt of the Russians to push forward toward the west
on the night from July 27th to the 28th, 1915, was shattered.

The armies of Field Marshal von Mackensen, breaking through Russian
positions to the west of the Wieprz, captured thousands of prisoners
and many guns, and once more thrust back the Russian front between
the Vistula and the Bug. On the evening of the 29th they attained
the Warsaw-Kiev railway at Biskupice, about halfway between Lublin
and Cholm, thus crowning their efforts to get astride their important
line of communications. The Russians were destroying everything
of value in the country as they retired, even burning grain in
the fields.

On the afternoon of July 30, 1915, Lublin at last was occupied
by the army of the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, and on the 31st the
Germans of Von Mackensen passed through Cholm. Thus the Teutonic
armies were now across the important railway from Warsaw and Ivangorod
to Kiev, on a broad front, running all the way down to the Vistula at
Novo Alexandria. In Courland the Germans continued to push forward,
so that on the 12th of August they were enabled to seize the important
railway center Mistan.

Hope in Russia died hard. Press correspondents up to July 29, 1915,
still spoke of the possibility of the Russians standing a siege
in their principal fortress on the Warsaw salient. On the 29th,
however, reports came from Petrograd that the fortresses of the
Warsaw defense were to be abandoned and the capital of Poland given
up to the army.

The correspondent of the New York "Times" on July 29, 1915, in
a special cable summed up the situation in an announcement that
the fate of Europe hung on the decision that Russia might make
on the question: "Shall Russia settle down to a war of position
in her vast fortifications around Warsaw, or shall she continue
to barter space against time, withdrawing from the line of the
Vistula and points on it of both strategic and political importance,
in order to gain the