y from some ridge to right or left. That was what
the Austrians and Germans did and, following their artillery with an
infantry assault, captured one of the upper Russian trenches. From this
it was only a matter of a few hours to clear out the others. Except for
the visits of a few peasants the battle-field had scarcely been touched
since the snow melted. The hillside was peppered with shell holes, the
trenches littered with old hand-grenades, brown Russian over-coats, the
rectangular metal cartridge clip cases---about like biscuit tins--which
the Russians leave everywhere, and some of the brush-covered shelters in
which the Russians had lived, with their spoons and wet papers and here
and there a cigarette box or a tube of tooth-paste, might have almost
been lived in yesterday.

The valley all the way back to Skole was strung with the brush and
timber shelters in which the Russians had camped--the first of thousands
of cut-up pine-trees we were to see before we left Galicia. All the
drab and dreary side of war was in that little mountain town--smashed
houses; sidewalks, streets, and fences splashed with lime against
cholera; stores closed or just keeping alive, and here and there signs
threatening spies and stating that any one found carrying explosives or
building fires would be shot. I went into one fairly clean little cafe,
where it seemed one might risk a cup of tea--you are not supposed to
drink unboiled or unbottled water in such neighborhoods--and the dismal
old Jew who kept the place told me that he had been there since the war
began. He made a sour face when I said he must have seen a good deal.
A lot he could see, he said, six months in a cellar "gesteckt."

There was a certain amount of cholera all through eastern Galicia,
especially among the peasants, not so well housed, often, as the
soldiers, and not nearly so well fed and taken care of. Every one who
went into Galicia had to be vaccinated for cholera, and in the army this
had all but prevented it. In a whole division living in a
cholera-infected neighborhood there would be only one or two cases, and
sometimes none at all. The uncomfortable rumor of it was everywhere,
however, and one was not supposed to eat raw fruit or vegetables, and in
some places hand-shaking, even in an officers' mess, was prohibited.

Russian prisoners were working about the station as they were all over
eastern Austria-Hungary--big, blond, easy-going children, apparent