On our journey we had plenty of opportunity to study Austrian feeling. The train took us through Galicia, and we passed the famous battlefields (now, alas! forgotten) of 1914-15, Jaroslav, the San, Rava Ruska, and so on. The large towns seemed to be in fairly good preservation, but in the country there was nothing but ruin and desolation. The fields were empty, and what peasants we saw scowled at us with hate. The hostility of the people we were supposed to be fighting for made a deeper impression upon us than the distress caused by the war. [SN: ON THE MARCH] We detrained and began a march in pursuit of our regiment, which lasted three weeks. The Russians were in retreat, the regiment pushed forward, and we had to follow after as best we could. Our way took us to Cholm, across the Bug at Wlodawa, then to Kobrin, and thence southwards among the marshes, where we struck the regiment at last. It was a jolly time. We had perfect weather, sunshine all day, but the air was bracing and fresh; it seemed impossible to get tired in that climate. We marched from eight to twelve, halted for the day, cooked our meals, bathed or walked about, and went to bed at nine. It reminded me very much of the continually recurring sentence in Xenophon: “We marched X parasangs and had breakfast.” We tried to do twenty kilometres (about fourteen miles) a day, and every four or five days we had one day’s complete rest. Wherever possible, we put up for the night at the country houses of the Polish nobles, because they had orchards that gave us apples and kitchen gardens that gave us potatoes. The houses were completely gutted, not a stick of furniture was left, and they were often defiled in the most disgusting manner. When we had no meat, we took from the peasants what we wanted. We paid by giving them a sham “bon,” with the reverse (eagle) side of a ten-pfennig piece rubbed in. They saw the eagle and thought it something wonderful, although it was quite valueless. Sometimes a cow would be shot and its flesh immediately cut up, and, still warm and trembling, be distributed among us to make soup of. All our peasants and labourers could cook, and they despised the educated men because they did not know what to do with the meat they received. I was three hours frying my first steak; nothing I could think of made any impression on it, and it remained obstinately leathery. The next time a “Kamerad” showed me how to beat it tender with the blade of my bayonet, and, lo! the steak was fried in ten minutes. [SN: IN POLAND]