CHAPTER XXXIX.
STORIES OF THE GREAT RETREAT.
A correspondent with the Russian armies tells us that no mind can picture the awful effect of the German bombardment which drove the Russians out of their positions on the Donajetz. Von Mackensen, as you know, had 1,500 guns, and many of them were monster howitzers. It is said that a thousand wagon-loads of shell were used in a single day—that is, twice as many as would have sufficed, under ordinary conditions, for the six months' siege of a great and well-provisioned fortress. Ten shells, each weighing 800 lbs., were hurled on every yard of the Russian front. An officer calculated that the part of the line which he was holding received no less than 10,000 shells in the course of a few hours. The wreckage was awful, and those who survived were dazed and stupefied, and unable to resist.
Where the Cossacks score: a Cavalry Skirmish in the Rear of the Russian Retreat.
(By permission of The Graphic.)
Another correspondent describes what he saw in Warsaw prior to the entry of the Germans. Day and night, he tells us, one heard the muffled roar as factory plant, too heavy or too deeply embedded in concrete to be moved, was blown up. Every fragment of the metal was carried eastwards. The newspapers made their last appearance with a notice that the city was to be abandoned, after which the lino-types were uprooted and the very floors carted away. Police and soldiers visited every printing works and newspaper office, taking away founts of type and dismantling presses. Hardly a ton of copper fittings was left in the city. . . . Warsaw knew no sleep over that week end. Through the streets passed endless columns of carts and lorries heavily laden, and all making for the bridges across the Vistula. You could only distinguish a wagon loaded with millions of roubles in paper money from those containing sacks of potatoes, by the soldiers who sat swinging their legs over the side. Day and night gangs of soldiers were seen stripping league after league of copper telegraph wires from their poles. Church doors flung open revealed the interiors filled with weeping, praying Poles and Russians, amongst whom passed priests in their rich vestments. Aloft in the towers the huge bronze bells had been unslung, lest they should become food for Krupp's furnaces. Not only the bells, but all records and church plate, precious vestments, and ikons,[56] were carted away into the interior. In the Church of the Holy Cross there was a vault, and in it lay the heart of Chopin.[57] The vault was opened, and the precious relic was removed to Moscow. Wherever possible troops were sent out to garner the crops in the surrounding country. Where this was impossible the harvest was destroyed, and villages were burnt to the ground. Thousands of poor were ferried across the Vistula to begin their long tramp eastward.
It is said that after the fall of Warsaw the Kaiser was very much annoyed that the Russian army had been allowed to escape. "We have paid too dearly," he said to his generals, "for the privilege of walking along the streets of Warsaw. Our success has been gained under such a cloud of mourning that at present I cannot think of rewards. You are not little children to be dazzled with a toy while the Russian troops are at liberty. You have secured the cage, but the bird has flown. While the Russian army is free the problem of the war is unsolved."