There are many villages between Kowahlen and the frontier—the villages of Lukellen, Drosdowen and Mierunsken. But to-day they are only names by which may be characterized certain works of Russian arson. Not a house did we find intact on this road to the frontier, not a home but that was ashes or if of stone whose walls were black. Not even the church at Mierunsken had escaped the torch. In a few moments more we were in Russia. We did not need the striped frontier posts to confirm this; nor the holes and lumps, that marked the end of German road building. Something more significant revealed to us that at last we had come to the land of the Bear. For we passed through two villages but a kilometer apart and in these not a house had been burned, not even a fence smashed; they were Amt and Filipowa, in the Czar's domain.
"Rittmeister," I asked, "did German soldiers follow the Russians down this road?"
"All the way to Suwalki," replied Tzschirner.
"German soldiers," I persisted, "who passed through Goldap and all those villages to the frontier."
"Naturlich. That was the line of advance."
I was silent.
"Rittmeister, you have wonderful discipline in your army."
Tzschirner seemed surprised. "Why?"
"I cannot understand," I said, "how your soldiers, seeing what the Russians had done to East Prussian villages, could refrain from taking vengeance on the first Russian village they entered."