A Russian journalist tells us that when the Kaiser seized the cage without the bird he began, like Jehu, to drive furiously in the hope of rounding up the retreating enemy. His soldiers were driven remorselessly. The advance guard was ordered not to beat the enemy but to detain him until the arrival of the main body. The leading detachments were hurried along so rapidly that they often lost touch with each other. Along the Vistula, on the bridges and at the fords, sentinels remained unchanged and without food for two or three days at a stretch. They were forgotten, and some of them died at their posts. All this time the Russians made great captures of their pursuers. So many Germans were seized that the captors scarcely knew how to deal with them. The prisoners when questioned said that they had been marching almost without pause for five days and nights. Each morning they were driven forward for three or four hours. Then they had twenty minutes' rest, and were again sent onward until midnight." * * * * * Perhaps you will be surprised to learn that a British boy fought with the Russians, and that he rose from the ranks to be an ensign.[58] His name was John Wilton, and he was a frail lad of seventeen when the Tsar gave him permission to serve in the ranks of the famous Petrograd Guards. He became a mounted scout, and took part in every battle in which his corps was engaged. He was one of the scouts who managed to get within eight miles of Cracow. After six months' service he was promoted ensign, and five months later was in command of the mounted scouts of his regiment. On one occasion he very cleverly withdrew his scouts from a position in which they had been ambushed by German cavalry, and got them away with the loss of only one man. * * * * * You have read more than once in these pages of women fighting in the Russian ranks. A story from Petrograd tells us that twelve schoolgirls from a Moscow college somehow obtained uniforms, boarded a military train at a roadside station, and thus reached the Austrian frontier. When they left the train for the march towards Lemberg the major discovered them, and ordered them back home; but they persuaded him to let them go on with the army. "We had to have our hair cropped," said one of them, Zoe Smirnoya, a girl of sixteen. "That is what I felt most. My hair was long, and I confess I cried. I've carried it ever since in my haversack."