Russian Avalanche

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 149, 19 November 1914, Page 5

Russian Avalanche

R'JiOIAN SUCCESS. AFTER TWELVE HOURS' BATTLE. Received 20, 1.40 a.m. Petrograd, November IS. After a twelve hours' battle the Russians occupied the Prussian village of Langszaren, in East Prussia, near Tanroggen. The Russians crossed the river at Schrenjawa and encamped within range of the searchlight from Kopio Kosciusko, * hill in Cracow. GERMANS TAKE THE OFFENSIVE. Petrograd, November 17. Official: The retreating Germans destroyed railways and bridges wholesale, greatly delaying, the pursuit as it neared their own territory. Thereafter the extensive network of railways facilitated the rapid transfer of German troops against the Russian left. The movement was covered by strong detach- i ments of cavalry from the western fronts and partly reinforced by Austrian cavalry. The German offensive

led to the battles now in progress on the Plock-Leczyca-iUneioff. front. The Russians captured ten officers and a thousand men southward of Lysko, Galicia - "j'Mi! GERMANS RETREATING. GREAT BATTLE PROCEEDING. Received 18, 7.40 p.m. Petrograd, November 17. Official: The Germans are retreating 3n the Gumbinnen-Augersberg front, but still hold the passages of the Masurian Jakes. i A battle on a large scale is proceeding between the Vistula and Warta, where ;he Germans are in great force.

| MODERN WAR. I ITS HIDEOUS INTENSITY. London, November 17. I The hideous intensity of modern war is described by a correspondent in Galicia. For eight days . there • was a struggle, with varying results, before the Austrians, broken and bleeding, retired. The field was strewn with dead and sown deep with the relics of defeat. In the very centre of this zone of misery two roads intersect, marked by a huge cross, with a carved figure of the Saviour that had hung there for a hundred years. The top of the wooden upright was shattered by a bullet, and an arm destroyed by shrapnel. The .patient face looks down on a newly-made grave, in which lie the shattered remains of 124 men, who died almost at the foot of the figure. • A little further away is the spot where the last stand was made. The Russian howitzers ploughed up in the ground holes 5 feet deep and 10 across. The rents are so thick that it is possible by stepping from one to another to travel a hundred yards. The ground is literally strewn with .pieces of uniforms; there are rent and torn pieces in every direction, and hideous fragments of projectiles. Thousands of men are mouldering in unnamed graves. A battlefield is always depressing, but this one causes peculiar sadness, because while prowling over the scene of devastation one hears the roar of the tumult in the west, telling that the same thing is recurring.

HEAVY AUSTRIAN LOSSES. Rome, November 17. The Petrograd correspondent of the Giornale d'ltalia says that the Russian artillery and cavalry repulsed a desperate sortie from Przemysl. The Austrian losses were heavy.

THE ATTACK ON CRACOW. Rome, November 17. Advices from Venice state that part of Cracow ia invested and ablaze. The inhabitants are fleeing.