RUSSIA DELIBERATE EVACUATION.

Gisborne Times, Volume XLV, Issue 4003, 9 August 1915, Page 5

RUSSIA DELIBERATE EVACUATION.

AMERICA X ('ORE ESPON a«ENT 4 >S cSTOR Y. VATY CLEARED IRICHT OOT, EVEN THE GHEROH BELLS REMOVED. (Received August 3, 4 p.ru ■) STOCKHOLM ..AuguM 8. The correspondent of the “Chicago Daily News has arrised I - com Warsaw/ He says the first intimation of the evacuation ~f flu* city was on drily- 13. when the authorities inquired how many passes were required for the British Colony; and the evacuation began on the 35th. I housanns or goods svaggons had already been accumulated and goons, men, women ana chiJdien were hurried eastwards as fast as they could be taken. ruli\ half the population went and also hundreds of thousands of peasunis from tlie villages, whose lionies were nnr it and the eiops •rath(*red or destroyed. Everything of value m Wars ass tele- • iraph and telephone wires, horses, vehicles. every scrap of "metal, and even the church hells —was removed and the factories destroyed after the machinery had keen taken or smashed All the art and antiquarian treasures and also Chopin s heart from the Church of the Holy Cross were sent to Moscow. The “Chicago Daily News” correspondent's vivid descrip lion of the systematic evacuation of Warsaw, extending over a fortnight, forms a fine tribute to tfie calm and pnn'cless methods of the Russian authorities. The Allied Consuls and their archives have reached Moscow." The American Consul remains in Warsaw. The refugees also include the odieials of the law courts, with 1100.000 of the court funds. When the .evacuation was announced the Warsaw police visited every house and sought to induce the inhabitants to leave Roland and go to Russia. While 350,000 citizens were thus departing almost another 350,000 trooped in from neighboring districts. They were chiefly peasants, though in some'cases, there were men worth TTOO.OOO a month ago and now penniless. - Endless lines of tired, dust-whitened peasants wdh their cattle and portable goods thronged the roads and bridges converging on Warsaw. y Meanwhile, the factories were being feverishly stripped, the owners being granted free transport for their plants on the eastward road. The dynamiting of any plant embedded in concrete could be heard day and night in all parts of the c>ty, and every fragment of dynamited metal was immediately railed eastward, y* The newspapers made their final appearances and then their linotypes were rooted up and carted away. The police visited every printing office and dismantled the presses and took the type. Hardly a ton of copper fittings was left in Warsaw. Gangs of soßßers stripped the telegraph wires from the poles for leagues. Even the machinery for the public water supply was removed, thus.making a typhoid epidemic probable. ■ The huge bronze bells- in the churches were unslung lest - they be converted into Krupp cannon. Jewellers buried their stocks and joined the endless columns of laden carts and lorries crowding the eastward roads. . Only a group of soldiers were left with legs under sacks distinguished by peasants belongings. From the banks millions of roubles in paper money were hastily thrust into potato sacks. Two thousand mjelaipv carriages, driven bv their owners, y> Traversed the thousand miles to Moscow. Throughout,‘the cuurehes remained open and were crowded by weeping Poles and Russians putting up final prayers. All crops were destroyed s/here no troops could be spared to gather aud finish them. •’ .

The bridges, including the new Praga bridge, which is a mile long, and cost £1,200,000, were lined with sandbags and wires set in readiness to explode landmines as the Germans enPive thousand wounded were left behind, their eases being too serious to remove. . , The only Britisher left was Miss Kennedy, who was Pi hospital witli pleurisy. .... -p. -i The Russian police hastily trained many civilian boles in their duties, supplying them with revolvers and rifles. The pro-German Poles prepared a list of pro-Russian 1 oles and handed it to the Germans and, as the German generals signified their intention to hang leading anti-German 1 oles, the well-to-do Russian Poles acordingly fled. . , The police at the last moment, shot five pro-Germans found brandishing a rope and jeering outside the house of a proRussian. . . ~, Count de Paris has returned to London and considers that the Germans are absolutely inferior to the Russians in morale and strategy, and deeply impressed with the Russian soldiers courage, faith and endurance. * Russia is at her splendid best in this war and though he went anywhere he liked on the Russian front, he saw nothing bestial or brutal. The Russians fought almost too humanely and their kindness to prisoners wore down the German sulkiness. He found the men extraordinarily gentle and unselfish among each other and displaying a wonderful courage and a passionate devotion to their officers. The German troops on the other hand were brutal and arrogant and often drunk. There was probably not a single case of drunkenness on the whole Russian line.