on armies on the eastern front had advanced to a point where the
Allies were forced to recognize the imminence of a catastrophe, which
could be averted only by the most decisive action of the Russian
armies.

Far in the north, on the extreme right wing of the Russians, the army
of General von Buelow was hammering at the defenses of the Dubissa
line. Off and on fighting was taking place in the neighborhood of
Shavli. Russian counterattacks, reported from day to day through June,
with difficulty had held in check this army, which evidently was
aiming at the Warsaw-Petrograd Railway on the sector between Vilna
and Dvinsk. On the right flank of these forces operated the troops of
General von Eichhorn, with the line of the Niemen for their objective.
Next to these on the south, aiming at the Bobr River and the Upper
Narew, were the forces of General von Scholtz, and on their right the
army of Von Gallwitz, based on Mlawa with Przasnysz in front of it.
Below the line of the Vistula, before the Bzura and down to the middle
course of the Pilica, operated the Ninth German Army, commanded, at
least in the later stages of the Warsaw campaign, by Prince Leopold of
Bavaria. The whole group of northern and central armies was acting
under the general direction of Field Marshal von Hindenburg.

The armies to the south of this group, cooperating in the drive under
Field Marshal von Mackensen which had gained the Teutons Przemysl and
Lemberg, had as their left flank the forces of Generals von Woyrsch
and Koevess between the Pilica and the Vistula mouth of the San. The
troops of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand were pushing forward on the right
of these, and the army directly under Mackensen himself came next in
line to the eastward, joining up with the armies still operating in
Galicia at the extreme right of the great German battle line.

The chief danger to the Russians at this stage still threatened from
the south, where the archduke and Mackensen had pushed forward
irresistibly in their advance to the east of the Vistula toward the
railway running from Warsaw through Ivangorod, Lublin, Cholm, and
Kovell to Kiev and Moscow.

The advance of these Austro-German armies, which had operated in the
neighborhood of Lemberg, was extremely rapid in the last days of June,
1915. In four days they covered from thirty to forty miles in pursuit
of the Russians. By the 1st of July, having swept out of Galicia,
their right, under Mackensen, entered the