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In East Prussia and in North Poland the Germans won battle after battle and steadily advanced against Lodz. About November 22, 1914, it looked as if the tide was going to turn in favor of the Russian arms. One German army group seemed completely surrounded to the northeast of Lodz.
The Russian army around Lodz was assailed on the front flank and rear. It looked like an overwhelming defeat for the Russian army. At the very last moment possible, Russian reinforcements appeared a body of Siberians from the direction of Warsaw. They were thrown at once into the battle and succeeded in re-establishing the Russian line.
At Zyradow these cannon sounded distant, but as we neared Radzivilow the guns were crashing away as they did at Lodz, and we prepared for a hot time. The station had been entirely wrecked and was simply in ruins, but the station-master's house near by was still intact, and we had orders to rig up a temporary dressing-station there.
Their resistance produced a situation somewhat resembling that at Lodz, for a rapid concentration of Russian reinforcements swept round to the help of the flank at Ciechanow, while others attacked the German left at Krasnosielce. The Germans encircling Ciechanow found themselves encircled at Prasnysz, and as at Lodz they had to fight desperately for three days to escape.
He was trying to piece together a process, if it was one and the same process, which involved riots in Lodz, fighting at Libau, wild disorder at Odessa, remote colossal battlings in Manchuria, the obscure movements of a disastrous fleet lost somewhere now in the Indian seas, steaming clumsily to its fate, he was trying to rationalize it all in his mind, to comprehend its direction.
But, although losing a large part of its effectiveness, it managed to break through the Russian ring and to connect again with the other German forces by November 26, 1914. At the same time heavy fighting occurred around Cracow and in the Bukowina where the Russians again occupied Czernovitz on November 27, 1914. Lodz fell on December 6, 1914.
And if Russia is to make great industrial progress, the manufacturers of Moscow, Lodz, Ivanovo, and Shui will some day be as hard pressed as are those of Bradford and Manchester. The invariable tendency of modern industry, and the secret of its progress, is the ever-increasing division of labour; and how can this principle be applied if the artisans insist on remaining agriculturists?
Our hostess simply heaped benefits on us by preparing us each a hot bath in turn. We had not washed or had our clothes off since we came to Lodz, and were covered with vermin which had come to us from the patients; men and officers alike suffer terribly from this plague of insects, which really do make one's life a burden.
He is the strategist who plans the movements against Austria and Germany in the East, who surrounds Przemysl and says, "Now, we can take it when we please, but we will not sacrifice Russian troops to take it now; Cracow is more important. Lodz is not important from a military standpoint. We will surround it later."
He greeted us very kindly and said he would take us to Lodz next day in one of the Red Cross automobiles, and that we must be ready at 10 A. M. I think we earned his everlasting gratitude by asking no questions as to where and how we were going to work, but simply said we would be ready at that time and returned to hospital to pack, fully realizing what lucky people we were to be going right into the thick of things, and only hoping that we should rise to the occasion and do the utmost that was expected of us.
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