It was not until September 17 that the Russian general’s clever manœuvring was rewarded by his being able to resume the offensive after the enemy had not penetrated more than twenty-five miles into Russian Poland. On the evening of that day the Germans realised that their attempted outflanking of Rennenkampf’s right was being checkmated by a vigorous counter-offensive. Very severe fighting took place at or near the junction of the railways between Kovno and Vilna, and at Stednicki, where the Niemen is joined by the Dubissa. The Russians held the banks of the latter tributary in force. By the 18th the enemy were falling back from Suwalki and four other townships which appear to have been the high-water mark of their advance. They lost four guns and many prisoners. Having regard to the fact that a large proportion of the men of the German army corps employed here were troops that had been withdrawn from the western theatre of war, it is interesting to note that they are accused of having behaved with much lack of discipline along the line of route. Such accusations are common enough to all warfare, and the only point of interest here is that they certainly were for the most part troops drawn from the area of operations where so many allegations of “atrocities” have been preferred against them. Roughly speaking, one continuous battle raged along the East Prussian borderland from September 25 to October 3. This has been styled the “Battle of Augustoff,” otherwise Suwalki, from the name of the province or “government” covering the battle-ground. The battle began in the vast forest that covers miles of country on the Russian side of the frontier. Through these woodlands Rennenkampf retired, fighting a series of rearguard actions on a broad front. An episode of the battle was the attack of the German right on the fortress of Ossovetz, a place of some importance, as it guards a crossing of the river Bobr in the midst of a region of marshy forest. The garrison met the attack by a night sortie against the German advance, which had got into difficult ground among the swamps and woods. A correspondent who was with the Russian force gives this account of the fighting: “The Germans had not proceeded more than nine miles when they found that they could not move their guns a yard farther owing to the marshy nature of the ground. In this predicament they opened fire with their artillery, and then sent forward their infantry with numerous machine-guns. The latter got within four miles of the fortress, but they made no further progress.