Iditarod pioneer., 1915-02-20
A POPULATION IN LEASH
(Percival Gibbon in Collier's)

(Perciva Glbbon III Colhers)
 The Russians have been over this ground East Prussia already and fell back from
 it after their defeat between Osterode and Allenstein. Their advance was through viii
 lages lifeless and deserted and over empty
 roads; the retreat was through a country that swarmed with hostile life. Roads were blocked with farm carts; houses along their
 route took fire mysterlously, signaling their | movement and direction, and answered from afar by other coniagrations; bridges that had been sound enough before blew up at charged with and their country laid waste charged with and their county laid waste l for, all East Prussia is organized to do daily
 as an established and carefully schooled aux
 Hilary to the army.
 A few days since there arrived prisoner, driven in on foot by a mounted Cossack, sent back by the officer commanding the reconnaissance party which had captured him. He came up the street, shutfiing at quick walk to keep ahead of the horse and the thin, sinister Csosack-an elderly farmer in works stained clothes, with the lean neck and pursed jaws of hard bar gainer In all his bearing and person there was evident the man of toilsome life who has prospered little; in that soldier thronged street, in his posture of 8 prls- oner with the Cossack's revolver at his back, he was conspicuous and grotesque His eyes, under the gray pent of his brows, were uneasy and through all his commonplace quality and his show of fortitude there was a gleam of the fear of death that made him tragic. He had been found on b,o Joipu pnthinu in norfjpplar | was out of simply general suspicious that the Russian officer had ordered him to be searched The result was the discovery of typewriter paper giving precise lnstruc- tions as to how a German civilian in East Prussia must act toward the enemy-how to signal movements of infantry, of cav airy, of artillery, how to estimate the num- bers of body of men, what to say if questioned, and the like-a document con ceived and executed with true Prussian exactitude, masterpiece in the literature of espionage.
 For him there was no hope; even the Hague convention does not protect spies, however earnestly and dangerously they served their country. He passed, always at the same forced shuffie of reluctant feet, toward his judges and his doom South and southwest from Wirballen the character fo the land changes; from its easy levels it crumples into that maze of small hills and little ragged edged lakes called Masurenland, 8 complicated bit of country, hard to keep under observation. Into it run the railways from Konigsberg, Elbing and Danzig, on the Baltic, and from Berlin on the west; the German military genius, look ing eastward toward the then unawakened might of Russia saw the possibilities of this region as an area for the concentration of big force. Troopships from Stettln and Lubeck can pour whole army corps through the ports and down the railways hither; the long, crawling trains can flood it with men from the east; an army corps
 a day. forty thousand men, every twenty four hours, when the plant is working at full pressure, can be gathered here among the fir woods Rennekampf, we hear, is to move shortly and move backward again, drawing his whole line with him; Masuren- land and what it hides is the reason. Half
 the art of war is in knowing and using the
 ground and Rennenkampf's battlefield will
 be to the east, on Russian soil, upon the
 line of his own choice, and reasonably fsr
 from the nucleus of German strength sn
 Masurenland