Under the stress of war the rottenness of that great whited sepulchre,
Russia, feared the revival of the Polish spirit; it might have been
awkward, and so they lied with their tongues in their cheeks, and we
simple Poles believed them; the peasantry flocked to their depots,
little knowing whom they fought, but the proclamations which were read
to them told them they fought for Poland, and we women worked and
prayed for the success of Russian arms.
Then the tide of war swept westward, and all day long and every day the
troops, and the guns and the motor-cars and the wagons rolled through
the village to the west.
Guarded hints in the papers seemed to say that all was not well in
France, but France was so far away, and all the time the Russians were
going west through our village. Mighty Russia was putting forth her
strength, and the Austrian debacle was in full swing; these were great
days, my Karl, for a Russian!
Then one day the long columns of men and all the traffic seemed to
hesitate in the sluggish westward flow, and then it stopped, and then
it began to go east. The weeks went on, and one day, very, very
faintly, there was a rumbling like a distant thunderstorm. It was the
guns! The front was coming back.
Have you ever seen forest fires, my Karl? We had them every autumn in
our woods. If you have, then you know how all the small animals and the
birds, the rabbits and the foxes, and perhaps a wolf or two, and the
deer, and the thrushes and the linnets come out from the shelter of the
trees, fleeing blindly from the great peril, anxious only to save their
lives.
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