For quite a month it had been an open secret that considerable masses of German troops were being transported to the Carpathian front. What was not known, however, was the magnitude or the plan of these preparations. Never was a greater concentration of men and machinery more silently and more speedily accomplished. All along the south of the range, on the great Hungarian plains, there assembled a gigantic host of numerous nationalities. But it was away to the west, in that narrow bottle neck where the Dunajec flows from the Polish frontier down to the Tarnow Pass, that the mighty thunderbolt had been forged. Thousands of heavy guns were here planted in position, and millions of shells conveyed thither under cover of night. Countless trains carried war materials, tents, pontoons, cattle, provisions, etc. Finally the troops arrived--from the different fronts where they could be spared, and new levies from Germany and Austria-Hungary. Smoothly and silently men and machines dropped into their respective places: All was ready; not a detail had been overlooked; German organization had done its part. The commander was Von Mackensen, nominally Commander of the Eleventh German Army, but in reality supreme director of the whole campaign. During April, 1915, a number of changes had taken place among the commanding officers of the Austro-German armies; the new dispositions of groups along the battle line differ considerably from those which obtained during the fighting for the passes. The line was now enormously strengthened, and more compact. This applies only to the Germanic side; there is little change on the Russian. At this stage the Russian front on the west of Galicia extended from Opatovie on the Polish frontier along the Dunajec, Biala, and Ropa Rivers by Tarnow, Ciezkovice, and Gorlice down to Zboro in Hungary; from here it runs eastward past Sztropko, Krasnilbrod, Virava, and Nagy Polena to the Uzsok Pass, a distance of about 120 miles. Ewarts commanded the army on the Nida; the Dunajec-Biala line was still held by Dmitrieff, Commander in Chief of the Eighth Russian Army; Brussilov still commanded the main army of the Carpathians, and Lechitsky in the Bukowina in the place of Alexeieff, who had succeeded General Russky in the northern group. The whole southern group, from the Nida to the Sereth inclusive, was under the supreme command of General Ivanoff. Facing Dmitrieff on the Dunajec front stood now the Fourth Austro-Hungarian Army under the Archduke Joseph Ferdinand, about five army corps, including a German cavalry division under General von Besser; then the Ninth and Fourteenth Austrian Army Corps; to their right, several Tyrolese regiments; the Sixth Austro-Hungarian Army Corps of General Arz von Straussenburg, with the Prussian Guards on his left and Bavarian troops under Von Emmich on his right; the Eleventh German Army Corps under Von Mackensen; the Third Austro-Hungarian Army under General Boroyevitch von Bojna; the