to sight behind
it. A hundred and odd of them, each with thirty men on board--three
battalions to reinforce the threatened left wing--a mighty instrument of
war, mightily wielded. It was Russia as she is today, under way and
gathering speed.
At Rennenkampf's headquarters at Wirballen, where formerly one changed
trains going from Berlin to Petersburg, one sees the fashion in which
Russia shapes for war. Here, beneath a little bridge with a black and
white striped sentry box upon it, its muddy banks partitioned with
rotten planks into goose-pens, runs that feeble stream which separates
Russia from Germany. Upon its further side, what is left of Eydtkuhnen,
the Prussian frontier village, looms drearily through its screen of
willows--walls smoke-blackened and roofless, crumbling in piles of
fallen brick across its single street, which was dreary enough at its
best. To the north and south, and behind to the eastward, are the camps,
a city full, a country full of men armed and equipped; the mean and ugly
village thrills to the movement and purpose. On the roof of the
schoolhouse there lifts itself against the pale Autumn sky the cobweb
mast and stays of the wireless apparatus, and in the courtyard below and
in the shabby street in front there is a surge of automobiles, motor
cycles, mounted orderlies--all the message-carrying machinery of a staff
office. The military telephone wires loop across the street, and spray
out in a dozen directions over the flat and trodden fields; for within
the dynamic kernel to all this elaborate shell is Rennenkampf, the
Prussian-Russian who governs the gate of Germany.
[Illustration: GEN. PAUL PAU
Commanding one of the French Armies
(_Photo from Underwood & Underwood._)]
[Illustration: GEN. D'AMADE
Commanding One of the French Armies
(_Photo from Bain News Service._)]
Here is the brain of the army. Its limbs go swinging by at all hours, in
battalions and brigades, or at the trot, with a jingle of bits and
scabbards, or at the walk, with bump and clank, as the gun wheels clear
the ruts. It is the infantry--that fills the eye--fine, big stuff, man
for man the biggest infantry in the world.
Their uniform of peaked cap, trousers tucked into knee-boots, and khaki
blouse is workmanlike, and the serious middle-aged officers trudging
beside them are hardly distinguishable from the men. They have not yet
learned the use of the short, broad-bladed bayonets; theirs are of the
old three-corner
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