heavy guns. An invading army must, therefore, split in two parts
and pass around the sides, and nothing is more dangerous than splitting
an army in the face of the enemy. It is behind these vast marshes that
we shall find the Russians planned to make their first determined stand.

Here, too, the Russians expected to have the advantage of being
surrounded by their own people, for this is the country of the White
Russians, so called on account of their costumes. Here the purest Slavic
type is preserved; they have not blended with other stocks, as the Great
Russians with the Finns and the Little Russians, farther south, with the
Mongols. For a while this territory was subject to the kings of Poland,
who oppressed its inhabitants most barbarously, from the effects of
which they have not even fully recovered. To-day White Russia is one of
the poorest and most backward parts of the empire. And even yet the
great bulk of the landlords are Poles.

CHAPTER XLIII

AUSTRIAN POLAND, GALICIA AND BUKOWINA

Let us now pass ahead of the armies into the southern section of the
eastern front. Here we have to consider only Austrian Poland, Galicia
and Bukowina, for here there is much less swaying back and forth, the
Russians maintaining their lines much more steadily than farther north.
This section is an undulating terrace which slopes down to the Vistula
and the Dniester; behind rise the Carpathian ranges, forming the natural
frontier between the broad, fertile plains of Hungary and Russia. Here
the population is quite dense, there being 240 inhabitants to the square
mile. Nearly half of the total area is in farm lands, about one-fourth
woodland, and the rest mostly meadow and pasture, less than a quarter of
one per cent being lake or swamp. Rich crops of barley, oats, rye,
wheat, and corn are grown here, while the mineral resources include
coal, salt, and petroleum, the latter especially being important in
modern warfare on account of the great quantities of fuel necessary for
motor carriages.

Here, in Galicia, we shall witness the conquests of the important city
of Lemberg--with its 160,000 population--fourth in size of all Austrian
cities, only Vienna, Prague, and Triest being larger. Further in toward
the mountains we shall see the storming of the strongly fortified city
of Przemysl (pronounced Prshemisel), also important as the junction of
the network of railroads that the Austrians had built throughout the
country,