April 14—The army, reported as splendidly equipped, is ready for instant action.
RUSSIA.
April 1—Persistent rumors are current in Petrograd that Austria has opened negotiations for a separate peace; General Ruzsky, who won praise for his conduct of the Galician campaign, taking Lemberg, and also for his success at Przasnysz, retires because of ill-health.
April 3—General Alexiev is appointed Commander in Chief of the army on the northern front in place of General Ruzsky; it is officially announced that Colonel Miassoydoff, attached as interpreter to the staff of the Tenth Army, which was badly defeated in the Mazurian Lake region, has been shot as a German spy.
April 4—Petrograd reports that the Russians have taken 260,000 prisoners on the Carpathian front since Jan. 21.
April 7—All towns in Russian Poland are given local municipal self-government; Petrograd reports that during the celebration of Easter, the greatest of Russian festivals, there has been an entire absence of drunkenness.
April 14—Imperial order calls up for training throughout the empire all men from twenty to thirty-five not summoned before; it is stated that the call will ultimately almost double the Russian strength; the men summoned are all untrained.
April 17—The General Anzeiger of Duisburg, Rhenish Prussia, says it learns "from an absolutely unimpeachable source" that the reported sickness of Grand Duke Nicholas, Commander in Chief of the Russian forces, was due to a shot in the abdomen fired by the late General Baron Sievers of the defeated Tenth Army, who is stated to have then committed suicide.
April 20—Orders have been issued that Austrian officers who are prisoners of war shall no longer be allowed to retain their swords, as a penalty for the cutting out of the tongue of a captured Russian scout who refused to betray the Russian position.
April 21—As a substitute for vodka shops there have been erected in open places in communities throughout Russia "people's palaces," where the public may gather for entertainment and instruction; in the Government of Poltava alone 300 of these recreative centres have been opened or are projected.