Winter begins officially in Russia with the closing of navigation
on the Neva, but already snow is lying on the ground on the western
frontier, and in Poland there are severe frosts at night.
A new touch of horror is introduced by the freezing of the ground,
which makes it practically impossible to dig graves for the great
number of dead in the woods, where recent floods washed the bodies
from the shallow graves in which they had been hastily buried.
The villagers report the presence of an unparalleled number of
wolves, and have petitioned the army authorities to detach soldiers
to shoot them.
The Germans are suffering intensely from the cold. In every town
which they occupied they carried off all the available winter
clothing, furs, sheepskins and leather coats. At Lodi and Shiradow,
where there are great cloth factories, they commandeered the whole
of the stocks and kept the plants working day and night providing
materials for export to Germany. They failed, however, to bring
away much of this owing to the destruction of the railway bridges
by Polish guerillas, whose activities are acknowledged to have
contributed to the Russian success.