It is rarely that one meets among these wounded of the enemy any other disposition than a strong desire for peace. I should add that several of them have asked me to communicate to their relations that they were being treated with the greatest kindness in Russia; "I am lovingly tended," wrote one of them. An Austrian colonel, a fine soldier and gentleman, told me he should never forget the "Anständigkeit" (decency) of all the Russians with whom he had had to do since his capture. Even Germans who at first are challenging and hostile, are softened by the true humanity with which they are surrounded in the Russian hospitals. _January 22._ The town has been bombarded for several days on end, beginning with the Russian New Year, January 14. The Germans had given a foretaste on our own Christmas Eve. They dropped from an aeroplane a paper bearing the words: "We ask you not to shoot on December 25; we will send you presents": the text of the telegram I had from the Commandant of the town, to whom it was taken. For all that, and though the Russian artillery was instructed only to reply, five heavy bombs were fired into the town and some of the inhabitants were wounded. There were other Christmas "presents" which I have seen, sent by the Austrians with a parleyer and a white flag. With other objects of no importance were six matchboxes full of matches and containing also short manifestoes printed in Russian and addressed to the troops. They were signed "Your unfortunate Tsar, Nicholas"; and they informed the Russian soldiers that the Emperor knew the war would ruin Russia and had sought to avoid it, but had been forced into it by the Grand Duke Nicholas and the "perfidious" Russian generals, against whom the soldiers were invited to turn their arms. I have not often seen a document so conspicuously lacking in humour. Punctually at midnight of January 13, one Russian regiment received two large shells bearing on their case the words "Congratulations on the New Year." The next day the town, though it had no troops in it, was shelled severely, and this bombardment was kept up for several days. The chief mark, and a very legitimate one, was the railway; here there fell in all six large bombs, making holes some twenty feet in diameter and ten in depth. But the great majority of the bombs fell in other parts of the town; and two of them rattled close over the roof of two different hospitals while I was in them, and the splinters of a third flew into the lodging of the workers of another lazaret.