"We saw indistinctly across the trenches the Russian videttes in front. It is reported that the Germans do not take the precaution of posting a line of sentinels before their trenches. Just before morning the videttes came running to report activity in the German trenches. Quickly the sleeping soldiers were roused to man the loopholes. The machine guns cracked and the rifles rolled out volleys in the cold morning light. The Germans answered and bullets kicked the top of our trench. Some of the bullets seemed to crack on striking and it was reported to us that the Germans were using explosive missiles. Under the Russian fire the Germans failed to leave their trench. "When the light swelled into day the German artillery began shelling the houses, the tall chimney, and the trenches. Black clouds of smoke rose from the spots where the shells struck. On our trench they used shrapnel, which burst for the most part beyond us in white puffs. The German infantry continued a heavy fusillade, but our machine gun fire, which seemed to sweep the dust from the top of the German trench, caused their rifle fire to go high and the bullets hissed overhead. "Two German aeroplanes swept down the line above the Russian trench, but retired when chased by a Russian biplane. In the distance a German observation balloon hung in the sky like a huge sausage." [Illustration: H.S.H. PRINCE LOUIS ALEXANDER OF BATTENBERG, Who Was Forced to Resign as First Sea Lord of the British Admiralty. (_Photo_ (C) _by Pach Bros., N.Y._)] [Illustration: FIELD MARSHAL LORD ROBERTS, From a Photograph Taken on His Eighty-second Birthday. (_Photo by L.N.A._)] The Waste of German Lives By Perceval Gibbon. [Special Cable to THE NEW YORK TIMES.] ZYRARDOW, Poland, Jan. 5, (Dispatch to The London Daily Chronicle.)--Once again Poland has seen a great German general attack along the whole line of the Bzura and Rawka positions from Gradow to Rawa. For thirty-six hours the battle has shifted like a moving flame in a long line. Now that its intensity is abated, it is clear that the German purpose has again failed of accomplishment, and at several points the Russian line has advanced. We have no key to the German mentality which inspires these attacks so wasteful in lives of soldiers, so ineffectual in their general result. In the records of this struggle along the courses of the two little rivers I have notes of upward of 100 attacks in considerable force, of which not a single one resulted in shifting the imperturbable Russian infantry from a trench, but each of which has been accompanied by ghastly loss to the Germans.