in an avalanche in
southern Tyrol. Only one out of twelve was rescued alive, and he lay
buried under snow for fourteen hours before he was rescued.

Added to the sufferings of the fighting men during the winter the sum
total of human misery in Europe when 1916 dawned was vastly increased by
the awful conditions prevailing in Poland and in Serbia. Poland, a land
long recognized as given over to sorrows, had been crossed and recrossed
by hostile armies. It had been harried, almost destroyed. Towns and food
supplies, fields and granaries, were obliterated. The cattle had been
driven off by the invaders and the people were left starving. The misery
of Belgium a year before was as nothing compared with the misery of
Poland amid the rigors of winter, and the unhappy country clamored
for the help of happier peoples. It had become a land of graves and
trenches, of ruin and destruction on a scale that had been wrought
nowhere else by the war. Many of the abandoned trenches were the
temporary "homes" of countless refugees, mostly women and children, who
had been driven from their homes in the burned and ruined villages that
dotted the land. And there was little or no relief in sight for
the stricken Poles, innocent victims of a ruthless war and pitiful
playthings of Fate.

ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Artillery fighting with mortars and long-range cannon was a continuous
performance during December and January in nearly every section of the
western battle line. Every day tens of thousands of shells, both high
explosive and shrapnel, were hurled at the trenches and men were killed
or wounded by the score at a time. To the war-hardened men behind the
guns on both sides this business of slaying and running the risk of
being slain or crippled became so prolonged and monotonous that they
thought no more of it than of cutting down a forest or building a
pontoon bridge.

Early in January the city of Nancy, just behind the French lines, was
bombarded for three days by German 15-inch guns. Much damage was
done and a number of the inhabitants were killed and wounded. As a
consequence there was an exodus from the city, safe conducts being
issued to more than 30,000 persons.

Estimates made in Vienna of the total booty of the Teutonic allies
during the first seventeen months of the war, up to January 1, 1916,
were as follows: Nearly 3,000,000 prisoners, 10,000 guns, and 40,
machine guns, while 470,000 square kilometers of enemy territory had