Warsaw, as I have seen it in nearly a dozen visits here since the war began, is a little panicky in disposition, perhaps with reason; and there have been such a continuous ebb and flow of rumours good and bad, that for months no one knew what to expect. All through December and January one heard every few days that the Germans would take the town almost any time, only to be told the next day that all chances of Teuton success were forever gone. Tales of German raids, aeroplanes, Zeppelins on the way to destroy the city were circulated so persistently, that perhaps it was not strange that genuine optimism found the soil of local public opinion a difficult one in which to take root. The end of the first week of February left the public here greatly encouraged, for had not the stupendous German attack failed on the Bzura-Rawka line? But following close on its heels came the news of the movement in East Prussia and Russian retirements, and once more confidence fled. Later still the enemy’s advance on Przasnys and the threat to the Petrograd-Warsaw line made conditions even worse. This was the low-water mark. When the terrific attacks began to weaken and at last the columns of the Kaiser began to give place, conviction that the worst was over for Warsaw began to be felt generally, until to-day, May 1, I find a buoyancy and hopefulness here that I have not seen in any part of Russia since the war started. The reasoning of the people here is something like this. In the attacks of January and February the Germans were putting into the field the best men and the most of them that they could lay their hands on, and still not weakening their position in the West. The onslaught on the Bzura-Rawka line is believed to have been one of the fiercest efforts that the Germans up to that date had made on any Front. Six corps and, as it is said, 600 guns were concentrated on a short front and almost without interruption they attacked for six days. The net result was nothing save a few unimportant dents in the Russian line, and the German loss is placed at 100,000 men. The Russians certainly did not lose half that number, and some well-informed people who have been on this Front for months think it may have been little more than a third.