"Our general spoke frequently with the men, who helped us in getting our motor over difficult places. When the trouble was over he said heartily, 'Once more, thank you, brothers.' Nothing will remain with me longer than these endless, irregular lines of big, sleepy, almost stupid-looking men, moving at a walk which might last for ever, and all in one direction, and all with set eyes--the people that lies down to sleep at the roadside, that breakfasts off stale biscuit soaked in water, that carries nothing but what it can put to a hundred uses, that will crouch for days without food in flooded trenches, that can die like flies for an idea, and is sure sooner or later to attain it--the people that never complains, the people of brothers." [Footnote 160: Mr. Stanley Washburn, special war correspondent of the _Times_. The quotation is from his "Field Notes from the Russian Front."] [Footnote 161: Between six and seven miles.] [Footnote 162: Ammunition limbers.] [Footnote 163: Or Kieff, chief town of Little Russia; on the Dnieper, 660 miles south of Petrograd.] [Footnote 164: On the railway, about thirty miles west of Ivangorod.] [Footnote 165: Town of Russia, on a tributary of the Niemen, 190 miles east of Königsberg in East Prussia.] CHAPTER XXVII. THE SECOND RUSSIAN ADVANCE ON CRACOW. At the close of Chapter XXV. we left the Germans, who had been beaten north of the Pilitza, retreating rapidly towards the Warta, and those who had suffered defeat south of that river hurrying towards Cracow. As you know, they wrecked the roads, railways, and bridges on their line of retreat, and the work was done with such thoroughness that a whole army must have been detailed for the purpose. So rapidly, however, did the main bodies of the Germans move that they did not even pause to bury their dead properly. Consequently, they left behind them but few prisoners and guns. In some places they had prepared strong positions, but these they abandoned almost without striking a blow. You know that the Germans had set their hearts on Warsaw, because it would enable them to control the sheaf of railways by means of which the Russians were able to maintain their armies in Poland. The Russians, on the other hand, had set their hearts on Cracow, because it would give them a road along the river Oder to Berlin, and another across the Carpathians to Vienna. Now that the Germans and Austrians were in retreat, the Grand Duke was able to advance again towards Cracow. When the Germans attacked him along the line of the Vistula he had four armies, which we will call A, B, C, D, holding that river. The army A extended from the fortress of Novo Georgievsk to the south of Warsaw; the army B continued the line to the south of Ivangorod; and the armies C and D lay still farther south up to the junction of the San with the Vistula. Along the San was Brussilov's army, which had retreated from Galicia.