Meanwhile the Austrians had projected an invasion of Russian Poland which, successful in its initial stages, led up to a succession of disastrous reverses. A co-operating German force under General Preuske fared also very well for a while, its advance into Western Poland causing the abandonment of the important town of Lodz. But it speedily became evident that in General Russky, commander of the army designated to checkmate this invasion, Russia possessed a leader of conspicuous ability. The Germans were pressed back towards the Polish frontier, while the Austrians, upon whom the heaviest stress of this fighting fell, presently came in for a series of reverses. Thus, in what is known as the battle of Przemysl, the Austrian General Bankal was killed and five thousand prisoners captured. Then, in a further battle or series of conflicts lasting an entire week (August to September), Lemberg fell into Russian hands, and the Petrograd bulletins claimed upwards of sixty thousand Austrian prisoners and 637 guns. It is from this point that I take up the as yet rather obscure story of this fluctuating campaign, first premising that the extraordinary severity of the Russian censorship of news renders the task no light one. While, during the first half of September, General Russky is gathering up the fruits of his victory of Lemberg pending a resumption of his successful advance through Galicia, we may be permitted to take a brief glance at the personalities of the men on whom the Grand-duke Nicholas, Russia’s Imperial Commander-in-Chief, could principally depend. In the recent words of a high military authority: “There are, and always have been, brilliant soldiers in the upper grades of the Russian Army. At the beginning of the Great War Russia possessed three leaders of high reputation--Rennenkampf, a cavalry general, and the commander of one of the subsidiary armies under Kuropatkin in the Japanese War; Samsonoff, who had also fought in the Far East, and had the reputation of a first-class military organiser; and Russky, a scientific soldier, with a good record as a teacher of the art of war in the Russian Staff College. All three were among the commanders sent to the western frontier.” And what of their not less brilliant opponent, General von Hindenburg, popularly known in Germany to-day as “the Saviour of East Prussia”? This distinguished officer--who celebrated his sixty-seventh birthday shortly after his victory of Tannenberg, when quantities of “love-offerings” reached him from Berlin, where a street has already been named after him--was promptly promoted from the command in Eastern Prussia to that of the field-armies operating in Poland, and was made a Freeman of three great German cities. Here is a characteristic pæan of praise taken from one of Berlin’s leading journals: