There are so many big movements in this war that it is utterly impossible for one observer to describe more than a trifling fraction of the achievements that are made here. Since the General Staff have given me what appears to be a free range in the north-eastern armies, I have had so many interesting opportunities that it is difficult to pick any one in preference to another. What I am writing in this story is merely the narrative of a single corps during this change of front, and I think it a significant story, because I believe it typifies not only the corps of this particular army, but practically all the corps now in the field on this Front. General Ragosa, who commands this corps, and who has entertained me for the best part of three days, has given me every opportunity to study his whole movement and permitted one of his officers to prepare sketches, illustrating his movement. The General himself, like most men who deal with big affairs, is a very modest and simple man. To talk with him one would not guess that the movement which has resulted so successfully for his corps and so disastrously for the enemy, was the product of a programme worked out in the quiet of a remote head-quarters and carried successfully through under his direction by means of the field wire stretched through the forest for the 30 kilometres that separate his head-quarters from the fighting line. When I suggested to him that his fighting around Opatov made an extremely interesting story, he only shrugged his shoulders and replied, “But in this war it is only a small fight. What is the operation of a single army, much less the work of one of its units?” Yet one feels that the success of this war will be the sum of the work of the many units, and as this battle resulted in the entire breaking up of the symmetry of the Austro-German following movement, and is one of the few actions during the recent months of this war which was fought in the open without trenches, it is extremely interesting. Indeed, in any other war it would have been called a good-sized action; from first to last on both sides I suppose that more than 100,000 men and perhaps 350 to 400 guns were engaged. Let me describe it. General Ragosa’s corps was on the Nida river, and it was with great regret that the troops left the trenches that they had been defending all winter. Their new line was extremely strong, and after they had started, it was assumed by the enemy that they could leisurely follow the Russians, and again sit down before their positions. [Illustration: Second-line trenches, Opatov.]