We may safely take it for granted that these considerations were not overlooked by the German staff, in addition to the patent fact that the Russians were persistently gaining ground against the Austrians. German officers and men were therefore rushed from the eastern and western fronts to the south of the Carpathians to form the three armies we have labeled A, B, and C. The points of attack for which they were intended have already been stated; but the roundabout manner in which they traveled to their respective sections is both interesting and worthy of notice. At this stage a new spirit seemed to dominate Austro-Hungarian military affairs; we suddenly encounter greater precision, sounder strategy, and deeper plans: a master mind appears to have taken matters in hand. It is the cool, calculating, mathematical composite brain of the German General Staff. As the formation and dispatching of three great armies can hardly be kept a secret, especially where hawk-eyed spies abound, a really astute piece of stage management was resorted to. Wild rumors were set afloat to the effect that the Austrian Government had decided to undertake a great offensive--for the third time--against Serbia, and erase her from the map, with the assistance of four German army corps. The concentration zone for operations against either Serbia or the Russian front in the Carpathians was naturally in the central plains of Hungary. But to cover the real object of Austro-German concentration active demonstrations were made on the Serb border in the form of bombardments of Belgrade, and occupation of Danube islands. These demonstrations made plausible the Teutonic assertion that the concentration of troops was being carried out with a view to an invasion of Serbia. So successful was the ruse, and so well had the secret been kept that on February 1, 1914, a Petrograd "official" gravely announced to an eagerly listening world: "The statement is confirmed that the new Austro-German southern army, intended for the third invasion of Serbia, consists of six Austrian and two German corps or 400,000 men, under the command of the Archduke Eugene(!)" At the very time this appeared the new Austro-German "southern" army had been already, for quite a week, making its presence severely felt in the eastern and central sections of the Carpathians, and still the Russian authorities had not recognized the identity of the forces operating there.