machine
guns had been captured. The German troops now also attained the
Vistula to the north of the Pilica. In their summing up of results
since the 14th of July the Teutons recounted further on this day, the
24th, that some 50,000 prisoners had been taken by the armies of
General von Woyrsch and Field Marshal von Mackensen during the period.

The army of Archduke Joseph Ferdinand had been making rapid progress.
On July 24, 1915, under the attacks of these troops the Russians
retreated on a front of forty kilometers, between the Vistula and the
Bistritza, from eight to ten kilometers northward to prepared lines,
their attempts to halt in intermediate positions being frustrated by
the onrush of the victorious Teutonic forces in pursuit.

By July 25, 1915, the Narew had been crossed by the Germans along its
whole front, southward from Ostrolenka to Pultusk, and by the 26th they
had gained the farther side of the Narew above Ostrolenka likewise. The
troops moving southeast from Pultusk now approached the Bug, getting
toward the rear of Novo Georgievsk and Warsaw, and threatening to close
the Russians' line of escape, the Warsaw-Bielostok railway.

On July 26, 1915, the Russians made a determined counteroffensive from
the line of Goworowo-Wyszkow-Serock in an effort to remove the threat
to the rear of Warsaw. This, however, had little success, the Russians
losing 3,319 men to the Germans in prisoners.

To the south of Warsaw the Germans had seized the villages of Ustanov,
Lbiska, and Jazarzew, which brought them nearly to the Vistula, just
below the capital.

The great attacks of the Germans on the troops defending Warsaw were
being hampered to some extent by the laying waste of the country by
the retiring Russians. Difficulty in moving heavy artillery on roads
had also interfered with their progress, but on the morning of July
28, 1915, Von Woyrsch crossed to the eastern shore of the Vistula
between the mouth of the Pilica and Kozienice at several places, and
was threatening the Warsaw-Ivangorod railway.

Novo Georgievsk was steadily being inclosed. The Russian
counterthrusts in the neighborhood of Warsaw both on the north and the
south of the city were repelled by night and day. To the south near
Gora-Kalvaria a desperate attempt of the Russians to push forward
toward the west on the night from July 27th to the 28th, 1915, was
shattered.

The armies of Field Marshal von Mackensen, breaking through Russian
positio