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The only enemies they meet are the dead. Przemysl has fallen again fallen before twenty times as powerful a blow as that which struck it down seventy-two days earlier. Before proceeding with the progress of Von Mackensen and his mighty "phalanx," let us briefly trace the progress of Von Linsingen, whom we left on the road to Stryj and the Dniester, or rather, attempting to force that road.

North of Brzezany Austro-Hungarian troops after hard fighting recaptured positions they lost on July 1, 1917. North of the Dniester Russian attacks broke down before the Austrian lines. South of the river the Russians were driven out of Babin. At Novica German and Austro-Hungarian troops stormed the Russian height positions in spite of a stubborn defense.

But what you take to be the second lake the more distant and larger sheet of water is Dniester Bay, the estuary of the river Dniester; and if you will look away there into the far distance on our right, you will catch glimpses here and there of the stream winding through the landscape."

The surmise that Halicz, the important railroad point on the Dniester, was soon to fall into the hands of the Russians, provided they were able to keep up the strength and swiftness of their offensive, was proved correct on July 10, 1917. Late that day the news that Halicz had fallen on July 9, 1917, into Russian hands came from Petrograd.

That front extended to the north of Nadvorna and Kolomea, by Ottynia across to Niczviska on the Dniester, and from there eastward along the river toward Chotin on the Russian frontier of Bessarabia. By the beginning of May, 1915, the spring floods had subsided, when operations became again possible.

In the region northwest of Stanislau to the south of the Dniester, after artillery preparation, Russian advance detachments pressed back the Austrians in the Jamnica-Pasechna sector and occupied their trenches. South of Bohorodszany Russian advance detachments defeated an advanced post of the Austrians. The Russians also occupied Sviniuchy and repulsed the enemy's counterattack.

On the Dniester sector and farther General Lechitsky's troops, having crossed the river after fighting, captured many fortified points and also the town of Zaleszcyky, twenty-five miles northwest of Czernowitz. The village of Jorodenka, ten miles farther, northwest of Zaleszcyky, also was captured.

Still farther south, on the Dniester, Austrian troops, too, forced back the Russians step by step. On August 11, 1915, Von Mackensen's troops attacked the Russians, who were making a stand behind the Bystrzyka and the Tysmienika. This hastened the Russian retreat to the east of the Bug.

The Dniester was indeed the scene of stubborn fighting for many days, and on the 18th the Russian Government announced that the enemy had lost between 120,000 and 150,000 men in their efforts to cross it on a front of forty miles. But the Russian stand on the Dniester only left it to Mackensen's centre and left to turn the Grodek position and ensure the fall of Lemberg.

This section is an undulating terrace which slopes down to the Vistula and the Dniester; behind rise the Carpathian ranges, forming the natural frontier between the broad, fertile plains of Hungary and Russia. Here the population is quite dense, there being 240 inhabitants to the square mile.