“In the matter of railway development the Austrians have also left us far behind. While they, by means of eight lines of rail (ten tracks), can run two hundred and sixty trains up to the frontier every twenty-four hours, we can only convey troops up to the same point on four lines. As any of their troops on the frontier would be in advance of the Carpathians, this range was formerly looked upon as an obstacle to retirement, and to communication between Galicia and the rest of Austria. But in the last ten years it has been pierced by five lines of railway, and preparations have been made to lay three more.” It will be perceived that General Kuropatkin cherished no optimistic illusions as to the ultimate aims and aspirations of Germany, neither did he believe that the shock could be much longer delayed, having regard to the immense burden of armaments. CHAPTER IV EBB AND FLOW IN EAST PRUSSIA General Rennenkampf’s brilliant raid into East Prussia--which admirably served its immediate purpose of causing the Germans to transfer great masses of men from the west to the east, thereby relieving the pressure upon the Franco-British allies in Northern France--had closed with the brave Rennenkampf’s heavy defeat of Osterode, or Tannenberg, on the last day of August. Two days later had happened, as a counterstroke, General Russky’s capture of the capital of Galicia with its thousands of prisoners and hundreds of guns, so that, in familiar language, “honours were easy.” In point of fact, Rennenkampf, approved soldier in Europe as in Manchuria, recovered with astonishing rapidity from the severe set-back suffered by his army in the swamps of Osterode on August 31. While, as we have seen, that victory was causing General von Hindenburg to be acclaimed as the popular hero of the hour in Germany, Rennenkampf had the satisfaction of knowing that his defeat had not appreciably relieved the pressure upon the Austrian armies in the south.