Though the snow was still falling and a nipping wind blowing, thousands of the crowds that now perambulated the streets stood bareheaded in the blast as each procession passed. Old retired generals of seventy and more stood at rigid attention as the portrait of their monarch and the flag of their nation was borne past. Moujiks, princes, men and women, the aged and the young alike, displayed the same spirit of ardour and enthusiasm as each demonstration came down the street. While it is true that there is not in Russia what we in the West call public opinion, yet a stranger living here during this war comes to feel that there is growing up a spirit that is uniting all classes. This is the great hope for the war. It is also Russia’s hope for the future. In another generation it is destined to bring forth greater progress and unity than the Empire of the Czar has ever known. [Illustration: Occupation of Przemysl by the Russians. Austrians leaving as prisoners. The Russians entering the town.] The people of Petrograd have followed the war much more closely than one would have believed possible. Over here there has been action from the day the war started, and hardly a month when gigantic movements of some sort or other have not been under weigh. Petrograd has been called on again and again to furnish new troops, and from September until to-day there has not been a week that one could not see new troops drilling in the streets. Russia has had great successes and great setbacks, but each alike strengthens the same stubborn determination to keep pressing forward. There was great disappointment when the Russian army withdrew a few weeks ago from East Prussia, but it began to abate when it became known that the German advance was checked. The Russians, as is their habit, had pulled themselves together, and slowly but surely were pushing back the invader just as they did in the dreary days following the Samsonov disaster in the first days of the war. Then came the news of Galicia and the greatest single success that the war has brought to any of the Allies, or for that matter to any of the belligerent powers. When the details of the numbers of the captured began to leak out, the importance of the success was first realized, and not without reason did the Russians begin to allude to the fall of Przemysl as a second Metz. It was generally believed that the garrison shut up within the fortress did not total above 50,000 men, and none were more surprised than the victors, when they learned that more than 131,000 soldiers and nearly 4,000 officers had fallen into their hands, not to mention a number of guns of all calibres amounting probably to above 300. These unfortunately have been rendered useless by the Austrians and must be charged as a heavy loss to them rather than as any direct military asset gained by the Russians. [Illustration: Austrian prisoners leaving Przemysl.]