This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1916. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... STARO-RADZIWILLOW BROKEN RIFLES SOMEWHERE in Poland there was a smiling plain fringed by dark woods from which the roar of guns was heard by day and night. On three sides, beyond the purple pines and silver birches, a thousand yards across the forest strip, the Russian first-line trenches faced those of German build. The gulf of ground between them was forty yards across. The plain itself was sliced by wide, muchrutted roads. Where two paths met there stood a weather-beaten cross. Deserted trenches zigzagged amongst the rye and past sparse groups of trees and sleepy, thatch-roofed farms. But for these scars across the fertile land, the intermittent roar of guns by day and the flaring rockets that rose behind the woods at night, the fields might have known no war. True, army wagons crossed them every hour, but they were veiled by swirling clouds of dust by day and so shapeless, indistinct, when night had come that they might have been farmers' carts toiling on to market. At the edge of the wood there was a Red Cross camp where wounded men were brought from hour to hour. Two hundred yards across the field, behind a little grove, stood a cottage where broken rifles were repaired. The broken men came to be patched that they might go to fight again. The broken rifles were mended that once more they might be levelled against the invading foe. Some men--some rifles--were beyond repair. . . . To the little cottage arsenal amongst the trees were brought six thousand rifles in a dozen weeks. Perhaps three thousand rifles were made good. Sometimes three broken guns were needed for the production of one serviceable weapon. One rifle, for instance, would have all its parts complete except the cartridge magazine and the firing bolt. Two other rifles would be wholly smashed ex...