Certain official telegrams which I have been allowed to peruse leave little doubt that, while the Russians are making a show of massing troops in the direction of Cracow, the real line of their strategic advance is towards the Lemberg side, whence a railway leads across the Carpathians to Buda-Pesth. It is argued here that, had the Russians merely to deal with Austria alone, the likeliest line of their advance would be by way of Cracow and its fortress, which they would endeavour to turn, and then strike for Vienna by the route which has been deemed, on the whole, the easier for them, namely, that which leads to the valley of the Danube across Austrian Silesia, and through the gap between the Bohemian and Carpathian mountains. But with a German army massed in Silesia, and menacing their right flank, the advantages of this route would be more than countervailed, and so the Russians seem to have chosen an invading route as remote as possible from the German base of attack, namely, _viâ_ Lemberg and Stryj. Meanwhile the mobilisation of the seven German Army Corps, enumerated by me in a previous despatch, is in full swing, the reserve men hastening to the colours with great alacrity; and as the railways are working night and day, all public traffic being suspended, the troops will soon be in the various positions assigned them. The 12th, or Royal Saxon Corps, it seems, is to be sent over to strengthen the Austrians, which will appear a wise and tactful disposition, when it is remembered how the Saxons fought shoulder to shoulder with the Austrians at Königgrätz; while Field-Marshal Prince George (brother of the King of Saxony) has been intrusted by the Emperor with the command of what is to be called the Army of Silesia, consisting of the 5th and 6th Corps, now swiftly concentrating between Breslau (which, being at present an open town, is undergoing rapid circumvallation by a ring of earthwork forts armed with Schumann gun-turrets) and Neisse, the Prussian Crown Prince’s point of departure for Bohemia in 1866. On the other hand, a Second Army, consisting of the 3d and 4th Corps, to be called ‘of the Vistula,’ and to be commanded by the King of Saxony, is swiftly massing round Thorn, that Metz of the East; while a Third Army, compounded of the 1st and 17th Corps (East and West Prussia), and denominated ‘of the Baltic,’ has been assigned to Count Waldersee, and is fast taking position on the line flanked by the fortresses of Königsberg and Lötzen, the task assigned to it being evidently an invasion of the Baltic Provinces and the consequent splitting up and diversion of the Russian forces from their southern objective. As to the First and Second German Armies (those of Silesia and the Vistula), a glance at the map will show that, roughly speaking, they form the base ends of a triangle whereof Warsaw is the apex, and that a well-timed advance by road or rail, for both are available, would enable them to effect a junction (on Moltke’s principle