We have to depend during the war for our news of what is happening in Poland almost entirely upon Russian accounts official and non-official. The German wireless reports give only the briefest outline of the official view of the situation taken at Berlin, and these reports are often cut down by our own censorship. The few reports from Berlin that were allowed to be published in England contained, it is true, some references to a victorious advance of the Austro-German armies into Poland in the first days of October. But, at the time, these were treated as fictitious claims of success, for it seemed strange that, in the numerous telegrams that came from Russian sources, there was not a word of any important events in the central theatre of war. Official news told of fighting on the East Prussian border and in Galicia, and non-official reports were full of detailed statements as to the complete collapse of the Austrians, an invasion of Hungary through the Carpathians, attacks upon Przemysl that had reduced the fortress to desperate straits, and steady progress in the direction of Cracow. It was, therefore, a surprise to every one when, towards the end of the second week in October the official bulletin from St. Petersburg admitted that Von Hindenburg had forced his way up to the left bank of the middle Vistula and overrun all Western Poland--this, too, at a time when all the rest of Europe believed that the Germans were still on the frontiers of Poland and Galicia, and busy preparing the fortresses of Thorn and Posen for a siege. It was afterwards explained that the Russian retirement to the Vistula was a deliberate “strategic” movement intended to lure the Germans to destruction. But it is fairly certain that the Russians had sent such large masses of men northwards and southwards for the operations in East Prussia and Galicia, besides providing for an army they were concentrating on the Black Sea coast and the Caucasus, that their forces in Central Poland had been considerably reduced. During Von Hindenburg’s advance they were busily engaged in reinforcing the army on the middle Vistula and in the Polish triangle of fortresses, and for this purpose they drew in several army corps from their left. Weakened by this withdrawal, the Russian army in Galicia gave way before the advance of the Austrian armies on the German right. Jaroslav was abandoned, the siege of Przemysl was temporarily raised, and General Brussiloff concentrated his forces to protect Lemberg from recapture.