s for a day's march of from nine to ten hours gives
an average of five to six kilometers per hour, some 6,000 to 7,000
steps. That makes in the neighborhood of 100 steps per minute, which
the correspondent regarded as a considerable accomplishment when
allowance is made for the fact that this was kept up hour after hour
in full marching equipment.

The column coming from Memel, directed along the Baltic shores, had
been steadily moving on Libau. In preparation for the land attack
German naval vessels on the 29th of April had bombarded the forts
defending the town. On the 6th of May the Russians themselves blew up
one of the forts on the eastern front. The shore batteries were soon
after silenced by German fire. The German troops advancing from the
land side took the forts on the south almost without opposition.
Russian troops which had been unloaded at Mitau and sent forward
toward the southwest were unable to come up in time to offer any
obstacles to the German advance, and on the 8th of May, at six o'clock
in the morning, the German soldiers marched into Libau, where they
took about 1,500 prisoners, twelve guns, and a number of machine guns.

The Germans immediately turned the metal-working plants of the city to
their uses in the manufacture of chains, barbed wire, etc. They also
found here a large supply of tools for intrenching work. Most of the
Russians of the city had fled. One motive for the German advance into
Courland advanced by their enemies was that it was an attempt to
include a rich section of country in foraging operations, and it is a
fact that the German authorities gave expression to their satisfaction
at seizing a region that was of considerable economic value. It is
apparent, however, in regarding these operations in the retrospect
that they had no small bearing on the German plan of campaign as a
whole. It was at the time that the inroad into Courland was started
that the signal was about to be given for the great onslaught far to
the south on the Dunajec, as described in the account of the
Austro-Russian campaign. As the vast campaign along the whole eastern
front developed, it became more and more apparent that the position of
the German troops in Courland placed them advantageously for taking
the Russian line of defenses, of which the fortress of Kovno
represented the northern end in the flank in this carrying out of an
important part of the vast encircling movement which took all Poland
in its