The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-10-26
RUSSIAN CAPITAL
 GREATLY CHANGED
 AS RESULT OF WAR
Petrograd Now Sombre as a Nocturne, But People Are Hopeful and Confident.
 Feeling of Unity

Petrograd, October .-(Correspondence of the Associated Press)-Probably in no other capital of Europe has war wrought , such a change as in Petrograd what was traditonally regarded as city or dissipated energies and midnight gaiety ouickened by the sale of vodka, has be- come in two months as sombre as noc- turne.
 The streets are quiet and almost de- serted at the hour when the night life used to begin. In the restaurants all the guests could be comfortably gathered around one large table. The Nvesky Pros- pect no longer echoes with revelry, put is as quiet as Fifth avenue on Sunday afternoon. The capital is apprecially sad dened by its losses and by all the misery which ebbs back from the front.
 In the general staff offices, which are at one side of the famous winter garden, the daily lists of dead are published. In front of this structure a line of peas- ants, their black shawls like blots of ink against the blood red color of the build ing, stand helpless and afraid. Some have found relatives in the published lists and others, miserably apprehensive, are try ing to acquire sufficient courage to go up- stairs and look. Women of the better class, dressed in heavy furs, come forth with chalky faces and bowed heads, and step into their carriages There is no sobbing not outward protest among them. Sometimes they stop to give money and words of consolation to the peasant wom- en who face the world as paupers. There 1, tba arla nf ri tocracy and peasantry brought together in . community of grief
 Hopeful and Confident
 But apart from scenes such as these Petrograd is alive with new hope and con- f1dence. The end of the first two months of war is the occasion for the kind of eel ebration which usually accompanies a great anniversary or holiday The Rus sian papers have assisted in this by care ful reviews of the fighting.
 The Novoe Vremya makes this com ment:
 We have finished the second month of the war. Although we were on the whole fortunate during the first month, we were overtaken by great calamity. The second month has not been marked
 
 beaten the Austrians. but we have seen the conquest of a kingdom-Galicia-an . duchy-Bukovina Aside from the value of these successes from military point of view, they are significant as realiza- ton of our national aim, in that they give back to Russia land wrested from her 500 years ago If we are able to hold this land, these days in Russian history will be appreciated in the centuries to come"
 Another Russian newspaper, referring to the repulse of the Germans along the Nieman, says:
 We now have proved the German sol diers to be ordinary soldiers, and not the super men they have been called.'
 Unity of Feeling
 The new unity of feeling in Russia and the loyalty of population thought of as revoiutionists. pervades every class. Res taurant keepers whose rooms were con verted into military quarters durinD the mobilization of troops have yielded with out hope of compensation.
 Tt is our fight said one of them. Why should we not help to pay for it?" One of the largest restaurants far for tunate enough last night to have as many as 20 guests. It was the same restau- rant in which six years ago a Russian officer leaped to his feet and shot dead student who neglected to rise when the national anthem was played. On account of this the orchestras in the resta urant had struck the national anthem from their programme, but last night for the first time since then it was restored. Every person in the room rose to his feet.