int.
In spite of its unceasing fierceness the results it accomplished were
as nothing compared with the effort and expense it involved. For, of
course, no matter how brilliant the gunnery, how wonderful the cannon,
how devastating the shells, if the target at which they are aimed is
sufficiently far away and sufficiently small, the result will be
disappointing; and the Russians at Dvinsk saw to it that the Germans
experienced a long series of costly and heartbreaking disappointments
of that nature.

A Hungarian staff correspondent, who was with Von Hindenburg's army,
had this to say about the siege of Dvinsk, or rather about the attacks
on its outlying fortifications: "The German army could not make use
of its heavy artillery, for it proved quite useless, owing to the
extreme narrowness of the Russian trenches. In the lake district south
of Dvinsk the Russians made the utmost of their natural defenses, and
even the advanced trenches there were only occupied after very heavy
losses, and then retained under the most trying circumstances. In
taking Novo Alexandrovsk--a village about fifteen miles southwest of
Dvinsk on the Dvinsk-Kovno post road--the losses incurred on our part
were unprecedented in severity."

Another correspondent in writing to his paper, the "Vossische
Zeitung," describes the fortifications of Dvinsk as follows: "Every
rod of land is covered with permanent trenches, roofed securely
against shrapnel and shell fragments and connected with so-called 'fox
holes'--small shelters in which the garrisons are safe against the
heaviest shells. Sand trenches, skillfully laid out, so that they are
mutually outflanking, smother exploding projectiles. The flanking fire
of the machine guns often annihilates the assailants when they are
apparently successfully attacking. One company alone thus lost
fifty-one dead in one day. Between September 15 and October 26, 1915,
Dvinsk, in a way, was captured fifteen times, but it is still in
Russian hands. The bombardment has reduced the fortress in size
one-half without affecting in the least the strength of the
remainder."

South of Dvinsk, however, the Germans had been able to advance their
line slightly farther to the east. On September 27-28, 1915, and the
following days they were fighting on the shores of Lake Drysvidly,
about ten miles east of the Dvinsk-Vilna railroad, and at Postavy, ten
miles south of the Disna River, a southern tributary of the Dvina.
Again on Oct