AN EXPLANATION 



767 



bayonets, fought from tree to tree and 

 ditch to ditch. Systematically, pa- 

 tiently, stoically, the Russians sent in 

 fresh troops at their side of the wood. 



"The end was of course inevitable. 

 The troops of the Dual Alliance could 

 not, I suppose, fill their losses, and the 

 Russians could. Their army was under 

 way, and they would have taken that 

 belt of wood if the entire peasant 

 population of Russia had been necessary 

 to feed the maw of that ghastly monster 

 of carnage in the forest. But at last 

 the day came when the dirty, grimy, 

 bloody soldiers of the Czar pushed 

 their antagonists out of the far side of 

 the belt of woodland. What a scene 

 there must have been in this lovely bit 

 of open country, with the quaint little 

 village of Augustow at the cross-roads. 



"Once out in the open, the hungry 

 guns of the Russians, that had for so 

 long yapped ineffectively and sight- 

 lessly into blind forest, got their chance. 

 Down every road through the wood, 

 came the six-horse teams with the guns 

 jumping and jingling behind, with 

 their accompanying caissons heavy with 

 shrapnel. The moment the enemy were 

 in the clear, these batteries, eight guns 

 to a unit, were unlimbered on the fringe 

 of the wood and were pouring out their 

 death and destruction on the wretched 

 enemy now retreating hastily across 

 the open. 



"The place where the Russians first 

 turned loose on the retreat is a place to 

 remember — or to forget, if one can. 

 Dead horses, bits of men, blue uniforms. 



shattered transport, overturned gun 

 carriages, bones, broken skulls, and 

 grisly bits of humanity strew every 

 acre of the ground. A Russian officer, 

 who seemed to be in authority on this 

 gruesome spot, volunteered the in- 

 formation that already they had buried 

 at Kozienice in the wood and in the 

 open 16,000 dead; and as far as I could 

 make out the job was still a long way 

 from being completed. Those who 

 had fallen in the open, and along the 

 road, had been decently interred, as 

 the forests of crosses for 10 miles along 

 that bloody way clearly indicated; 

 but back in the woods themselves, there 

 were hundreds and hundreds of bodies 

 lying as they had fallen. Sixteen thou- 

 sand dead means at least 70,000 casual- 

 ties all told, or 35,000 on a side if losses 

 were equally distributed. This is 

 figured on the basis of the 16,000 dead 

 which were already buried, without 

 allowing for the numbers of the fallen 

 that still lie about in the woods. And 

 yet this is a battle the name of which 

 is, I dare venture to say, hardly more 

 than known either in England or the 

 United States, and in which the losses 

 on both sides probably amount to 

 more than the entire army that Meade 

 commanded at the battle of Gettysburg." 

 If one wants to get an idea of what 

 war is under these conditions, it is only 

 necessary to stroll back among the 

 trees and wander about among the 

 maze of rifle pits and trenches thrown 

 up by the desperate soldiers as they 

 fought their way forward or defended 

 their retreat." 



AN EXPLANATION 



A POEM "A Talc of the Trail" 

 appearing in American For- 

 estry for April was by error 

 credited to Matt Daly a 

 preacher-poet who is working among 

 the lumberjacks of the north. It was 

 written by Mr. James W. Foley of 

 Oakland, Cal., and was published in 



a volume of his writings. Mr. Daly 

 saw the poem reproduced in a Minne- 

 sota paper, typed it and sent it to a 

 friend who, thinking it was Mr. Daly's 

 own, sent it to American Forestry for 

 publication. This explanation is made 

 in justice to Mr. Foley and in response 

 to a letter from him. 



