11:50 A. M., Tilsit--We have slept late, for we came to Tilsit in the small hours, a weary ride across the snow swept plains from Suwalki. Back there in the pine woods of Augustowo, Von Eichorn's young troops are hammering away at the new army that the Grand Duke has rushed to brace the crumbling front. But we have seen the fighting there, and this morning Rittmeister Tzschirner has promised to show me the war in the north, where the Memel line is protecting Von Eichorn's northern flank. "We shall journey to one of our outposts in Russia," proposes Tzschirner, and his eyes light hopefully. "There may be fighting there." Our motor goes barking through the pretty streets of Tilsit, which, by two hours' fighting in the fall, the German soldiers saved from the Russian torch. We cross the winding Memel, where a century ago Napoleon and the Czar met on a canopied pontoon to sign the Peace of Tilsit, while the hills behind us at Engelsberg bristled with the cannon of France; we cross vast river-plains shimmering with snow and mount to the pine fringed hills beyond, where now are strewn the soldiers of another Czar, who thought to march the road to Berlin; and chugging along a wayside strewn with their smashed entanglements, we come to Piculponen. Across the silent stretches of snow there comes the clear scattering cracks of carbines. "A Russian patrol!" remarks Tzschirner, and he unbuttons his holster, while our red haired mechanician removes the caps from the rifles. "One can never tell," continues Tzschirner, "down which road their patrols may ride." This puzzles me. "But how can they get through the German lines?" I asked him. "There is no line, as in the West. We have driven the Russians from East Prussia, but there are many roads down which their patrols can sneak from a frontier village and run back to the troops." "Could they come down this road?" I asked. "We hold it to Tauroggen, where we must go, but we have no trenches from Tauroggen to Woynuta, and between these points are cross roads by which they could raid this highway. But if those shots we heard were Cossacks, I do not think they will come here. They are not brave, the Cossacks." We see that beyond, to the left, an old brick church hides among the pines. "We shall go there," suggests the Rittmeister. "Do you wish?" I am wondering why we should waste time on a church when Russian patrols are shooting up the countryside, when Tzschirner says: "This church is where Queen Louise of Prussia took refuge from Napoleon in 1807." With the dutiful air that one assumes upon examining an historical landmark, we scramble up the bank toward the church. "Walk slowly," the Rittmeister said, as we picked our way through a snow covered graveyard, "or you may not see and kick a _grenat_. They explode very easily."