anglements, in front of which,
for nearly a mile across the fields, was an open field of fire.
Infantry might have charged across that open space until the end of the
war without getting any nearer, but the offensive did not, of course,
try that. Over behind distant clumps of trees and a wooded ridge on the
horizon they planted their heavy batteries. On a space perhaps three
hundred yards long some sixty of these heavy guns concentrated their
fire. The infantry pushed up under its protection, the fort fell, and
the garrison was captured with it.

It is by such use of artillery that herds of prisoners are sometimes
gathered in. Just before the charging infantry reaches the trench, the
cataract of artillery fire, which has been pouring into it, is suddenly
shifted back a few hundred yards, where it hangs like a curtain shutting
off escape. The success of such tactics demands, of course, finished
work from the artillery-men and perfect co-ordination between artillery
and infantry. At lunch a few days later in Cracow, a young Austrian
officer was telling me how they had once arranged that the artillery
should fire twenty rounds, and on the twenty-first the infantry, without
waiting for the usual bugle signal to storm, should charge the trenches.
At the same instant the artillery-men were to move up their range a
couple of hundred yards. The manoeuvre was successful and the Russians
caught, huddled under cover, before they knew what had happened.

Though Lemberg's cafes were gay enough and the old Jews in gaberdines,
with the orthodox curl dangling before each ear, dozed peacefully on the
park benches, still the Russians were only a few hours' motor drive to
the eastward, and next morning we went out to see them. All of the
country through which we drove was, in a way, the "front"--beginning
with the staff head-quarters and going on up through wagon-trains,
reserves, horse camps, ammunition-stations, and so on, to the first-line
trenches themselves.

Sweeping up through this long front on a fine autumn morning is to see
the very glitter and bloom of war. Wounds and suffering, burned towns,
and broken lives--all that is forgotten in the splendid panorama--men
and motors and fliers and guns, the cheerful smell of hay and coffee and
horses, the clank of heavy trucks and the jangle of chains, all in
beautiful harvest country; in the contagion of pushing on, shoulder to
shoulder, and the devil take the hindmost, toward