The Russians for more than a year have laboured under innumerable difficulties. Without munitions, and handicapped in a hundred ways, they have held themselves intact before the relentless drives of the most efficient army in the world. Though they have fallen by the hundreds of thousands, their spirits have not been broken. The loss of Warsaw and numerous other positions has not shaken their _morale_. History will record this campaign as one in which character fought against efficient machinery, and was not found wanting. In the final issue I have never doubted that character would prevail. When the Russians get munitions and their other military needs, they will again advance, and no one who knows the Russian army doubts that within it lies the capacity to go forward when the time is ripe. Nothing is more fallacious than to judge the outcome of this campaign by pins moved backward or forward on the map of Europe. There are great fundamental questions that lie behind the merely military aspects of the campaign; questions of morals, ethics, equity, and justice. These qualities, backed by men of tenacity, courage, and the capacity to sacrifice themselves indefinitely in their cause, are greater ultimate assets than battalions and 42-centimetre guns. That the Russians possess these assets is my belief, and with the fixed opinion that my faith is well-founded, and that the reverses of this summer are but temporary and ephemeral phases of this vast campaign, it is with equanimity and without reservation that I have authorized my publisher to send these pages to the printer. The defects of hurriedly written copy are of course apparent in these notes, but, as in my first volume, it has seemed wiser to publish them with all their faults, than to wait until the situation has passed and news from Russia has no moral value. STANLEY WASHBURN. PETROGRAD, RUSSIA, _September 3, 1915_. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I THE FALL OF PRZEMYSL 3 II WARSAW IN APRIL, 1915 41 III AN AMERICAN DOCTOR IN THE RUSSIAN ARMY 53 IV GENERAL RUSSKY’S SUCCESSOR 63 V CHECKING UP THE SITUATION IN POLAND 75 VI A VISIT TO THE POSITIONS 87 VII A SUMMER DAY ON THE RAWKA LINE 99 VIII THE CHANGE OF FRONT IN POLAND AND THE BATTLE OF OPATOV 113 IX WITH THE ARMY IN SOUTHERN POLAND 127 X AN AFTERNOON AT THE “POSITIONS” 141 XI HOW THE RUSSIANS MET THE FIRST GAS ATTACK 157 XII SOME DETAILS REGARDING THE GAS HORROR 169 XIII THE BZURA FRONT IN JUNE 185 XIV THE GALICIAN FRONT 199