On October 13-14 great Austro-German columns were in touch with their enemy south-east of Sandomir and west of Przemysl. On the first of the dates named an Austrian force deploying by way of Samok-Lisko upon Sambor was hurled back with the loss of 7 officers and 500 men captured, and next day they lost several hundred more prisoners. Hitherto the success of the Russian arms in Galicia had been so continuous that the official despatches and the newspaper reports in the Petrograd papers were fairly representative of the facts, patriotic feeling experiencing no temptation to practise a diplomatic “economy of the truth.” But now we find it hard to reconcile the Petrograd reports with reliable information from other sources as to what was happening in the region of the San. The news that came from Petrograd, directly or through Rome and Paris, told of repeated victories over the Austrians on the San. But it would seem that these reports were only repetitions of news already sent, and referred to the opening stage of the fighting with the Austrian advance on Von Hindenburg’s extreme right. There appears to be no doubt that the peril of Warsaw and the need of drawing heavy reinforcements from Galicia to assist in repelling the German invasion of Poland and then in following up the enemy’s retirement, led to the army on the San being so weakened for the moment that all it could do was to hold its own for a while about Sandomir, near the junction of the San and the Vistula. In doing this it rendered a solid service to the Grand-duke Nicholas, as it prevented the line of the Vistula being turned above Ivangorod. But something had to be sacrificed to secure this result. Jaroslav was abandoned for the moment, and reoccupied by the Austrians, and the siege of Przemysl was raised. There was a day of enthusiastic rejoicing when the relieving column marched into the hard-pressed and half-starved city. Received at the gates by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities, the troops marched amidst cheering crowds to the town hall, where General von Kusmanek, the commander of the fortress, stood waiting to greet them.