erman outer positions were carried by storm with ghastly
carnage.

"We didn't dig much," said a Russian officer to me. "We knew we
shouldn't stay there. We should either go forward or back, and we were
sure to go forward."

The cloud of patrols, mostly Cossacks, which flits unceasingly along the
German front is the subject of innumerable stories.

When the news was issued that the Kaiser had come east to take command
of his army on this front a Cossack came in, driving before him a plump,
distressed Prussian Captain whom he had gleaned during the day's work.

"I've brought him," he announced. "I knew him by his mustache," and he
produced an old picture postcard from his breast showing the Kaiser
with his characteristic mustache.

Near Augustowo the roads are literally blocked in many places with
abandoned German transports which became trapped in the terribly muddy
country. Dead horses in hundreds lie everywhere and the Russian Sanitary
Corps is busy burying them. Yet the Russians who are still moving about
this country retain not only their usual average health, but do not even
complain.

Between Augustowo and Raigrod a small stream is actually blocked with
German stores, including much gun ammunition. The German advance which
ended in this debacle has been the costliest defeat in point of
materials which they have yet suffered.

*The First Fight at Lodz*

*By Percival Gibbon of The London Daily Chronicle.*

WARSAW, Dec. 5, (by Courier to Petrograd.)--I have wired you previously
of the German force which advanced around Lodz and was cut off south and
east of the town. This consisted of two army corps--the Twenty-fifth
Corps and the Third Guard Corps. The isolated force turned north and
endeavored to cut its way out through the small town of Breziziny. It
was at Breziziny that final disaster overtook them.

The town and road lie in a hollow in the midst of wooded country, where
the Germans were squeezed from the Vistula and pressed to the rear. They
had fought a battle during the slow retirement of five days and were
showing signs of being short of ammunition. On the fifth day they made
their final attempt to pass through Breziziny. That was where that fine
strategist and fighting man who held Ivangorod on the Vistula brought
off the great dramatic coup for which he had been manoeuvring.

The Germans were holding the town and pouring through when he began his
general attack. Breziziny underwent nine