In the advance after the taking back of Radom and Kielce, the army came under the very walls of Cracow, and in all of its divisions and brigades there was scarcely a battalion that did not distinguish itself in that terrific fighting. When the Germans began their second invasion of Poland last autumn, this army regretfully fell back to its positions on the Nida river, and when the last storm broke in Galicia and the retirement of the army of the Dunajec rendered a change of the Russian-Polish line a strategic necessity, the army with all its numerous corps was again called upon to fall back in order that the Front as a whole might be a symmetrical one. During this change of front we heard a great deal in Warsaw, from people who delight in circulating false stories, of Russian disasters in Southern Poland. I have been particularly interested, therefore, in checking up this movement on the ground and getting at the actual facts of the case. As a fact, the Russian retirement was made amid the lamentations and grumbling of the whole army. The private soldiers, who do not follow strategy very closely, complained bitterly that they, who had never met defeat, and before whom the enemy had always fallen back when they attacked, should be called upon to retreat when they were sure, regiment by regiment, that they could beat twice their numbers of the enemy. The Germans and Austrians advanced with great caution for several days. Knowing, however, the location of the new Russian line, they imagined that their adversaries would fall back on it in a few big marches and await them there. Besides this, both Germans and Austrians had been carefully fed with reports of the Galician movement to the effect that the Russians were retiring in utter defeat, that even in Poland they were panic-stricken and would probably put up but a feeble fight even on their line. I could not in the brief time which I had for this trip visit all the corps involved in this movement, and at the suggestion of the General of the army, visited only the--corps, whose operations may be regarded as typical of the whole spirit in which this front was changed. Regarding the movement as a whole it is sufficient to say that in the two weeks following the change of line in Poland, the corps comprising this one army made the enemy suffer losses, in killed, wounded and prisoners, which the General estimated at nearly 30,000, of whom about 9,000 were prisoners. All of this was done at a comparatively trifling loss to the Russians themselves. From which very brief summary of the change of front it will be realized that this particular army has neither lost its fighting spirit nor has its _moral_ suffered from the retirement to another line. [Illustration: In the trenches near Opatov.]