The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1915-01-24

| watchers on the road. Then a woman
| exclaimed "Oh!" in a tone of ordinary
slight surprise, and another stung out
/ of stony silence ny the exclamation,
| begarf To weep. An elderly man came
across to me and begged for loan Of
| my glasses. Another shell landed. with
another SPLASH Of fire, pale as old gold
in the daylight, and another spreading
tree Of smoke. He fumbed with the
glasses agitatedly, watched for a mo-
ment then he too broke into weeping.
There was a Russian battery out Of
sight behind the town and others away
to the right all firing heavily. TIE
country under my eve, / knew, was
alive with troops hundreds of thou
sands Of them. cropping and fcinting at
each others lines, hut in all that pam
| Drama Of wood and plain there showed
not man. Where ] stood | was look
ing down on the very cruN OF that fight
| by the advantage Of winch the Germans
| surEed forward to the banks Of the
! Visit la opposite KartsChew; yet all
there was to see was pjas,trhnp, with
canopy Of smoke th.Ckeniur above
It and the gaps in its red roofs multi
! plying while one watched.
The Sibcriaus retired that afternoon;
and at n.ghtfall, making across cOdn-
| ;ry to find a road that should tax. me
| back 10 Wnanow, | fell in with them.
! The wagon on which ] had found a
seat wandered as era lually as a process
Of nature through the brown monotony
| Of those bare fields upon watch a chill
mist was already standing in patches.
1t was one of a little ieet OF vehicles
that drirted like logs IN a wide stream;
| there was no road
- IL ,,.ftI
till they should cross "A road that led
northward. | could not talk to them,
but | could look. The mud Of the
trenches plastcred them from head to
foot; the smell Of them was rank like
the smell of beasts. From an officer
who lmped and helped himself along
| with his sCabbard for STAFF ! man
aged to gather that one company had
charged twice already that day h was
now no more than half its fun strength.
"You were with them" asked lie
nodded. And your foot-you are
wounded. aren't your"
mo" he said. mot wounded,
corns!"
But there was man there-prub-
ably there were many-on whom the
! stigma of war stood plain in wars own
colors. He was a huge private. a man
like the stump Of a tree, as solid and as
rough of surface. lie swung along. his
broad face vacant as an idiots, his belt
and straps creaking to the heave and
lurch of bis great body.
For him nll life all thrills. all scnsa-
/ tions We're contained within the scope
Of the immediate moment. The hell OF
the sheliod trench, the roaring ferori'y
, 70 the charge wrote themselves on his
mind as upon water He had nothing
l.mpng officer, volunteering as inter-
prefer tried to blast it out Of him with
authority and oaths. He absorbed Gig
arettes as an empty slot machine alb
serbs the coins of the trusting. hut as
for telling anything, he had nothing to
tell.
Yet--one had no need 20 go close
! to look-hs right sleeve from cuff TO
: breast and half his right side showed
2 black and Urisly with German blood
c that was not dry yet; it was soaked
> with it, stepped in il. He must have
slaughtered lavishly. fighting breast to
d breast in the awful intimacy of the
q bayonet, looking into mems faces while
II he butchered them so that their life
q as 1t left them spouted redly upon him;
n and it had not changed him.
: The two days that followed brought
d the fighting very close to the city; the
Il Russian guns at one point were al work
y within three miles of the streets, firing
< on Germans who were not more than
e seven miles from their goal. 1t is an
% old story now-how away TO the east
: the Russian concentrated cavalry
"a rounded the horn OF the enemy's left
IT flank and forced him to swing round
"a and leave off attacking in order to de-
m fend himself.
The 10th of October was the day
. that was to have seen the entry in state
~ and the Inauguration of the new era,
= the German era, in Poland. For me the
. interest Of that day centres not In War
- saw, but in Gems tochowa, in what was
happening there among the wonderful
~ furniture in the great monastery and
> particularly in the brain Of the man
Is who framed himself in that magnii-
'e CenCe. His orders to his armies were
Sc to spare the people of the country dur
n ing the advance, to abstain from pillage,
OF murder rape and the descCratiOn Of
1t churches; their future emperor should
come among them crowned not only
I'd with the eagle but with a halo.
I'd But on the 18th the great dream
h. ended; Warsaw, that might ConceIvably
IN yet be taken, could not Ice taken in time
he to save the vision; and the naked hand
n of the Kaiser clenChed In anger. lie
he had ruled CZenstOChowa with a certain
o. mildness; now he ordered the arrest OF
no every prominent Pole in the town and
BY district 10 be conveyed 10 Brcslau as
prisoners Of war. He warned he in
lie habitants who remained that the an
NJ cient monastery itself, the goal of pill.
IN hrimages, the shrine Of the greatest
IN of all the Polish Madonnas, should an
n, Swer for any acts Of d.sohed.enCe oi
n hostility by them And all Poland
Oh knows, bitterly, with tears and shud
,o, ders how his orders 10 spare the peo-
81 pie We're carried out during the retreat
~ OF his defeated armies Flesh of mer
~ and flesh of women, houses that wer,
- homes churches that were dear ant
10 holy, broken, dcsecrated, made abo4n
"u Unable.
er Surprising now that he. the mar
hu against whom Europe is armed and a
Al war, had set the world abaze not fol
les the lust of power nor out Of any deviltr,