[Illustration:  GENERAL VON KUSMANEK

Whose stubborn defense of Przemysl made it one of the most notable sieges of history.

(Photo from Underwood & Underwood.)]

[Illustration:  CAPT.-LIEUT.  OTTO WEDDIGEN

Whose submarine exploits have done more damage to England’s navy than all Germany’s gunners.

(Photo from The Photo News.)]

[Illustration:  Figure 14.]

[Illustration:  Figure 15.]

The sub-officer Klemt relates how, on the 24th of September, his regiment having left Hannonville in the morning, accompanied by Austrian batteries, suddenly came up against a double fire of infantry and artillery.  Their losses were terrible, and yet the enemy was still invisible.  Finally, says this officer, it was found that the bullets came from above, from trees which the French soldiers had climbed.  From this point let me quote verbatim, (Fig. 16:)

[Illustration:  Figure 16.]

They’re brought down from the trees like squirrels, to get a hot reception with bayoneted stock; they’ll need no more doctors’ care.  We are not fighting loyal enemies, but treacherous brigands. [Note—­It is scarcely necessary to point out that it is no more “treacherous,” but quite as lawful, to fire from the branches of a tree as from a window, or from a trench, and that, on the contrary, it is rather more venturesome and more courageous, as the sequel of this story will show.] We crossed the clearing at a bound.  The foe is hidden here and there among the bushes, and now we are upon them.  No quarter will be given.  We fire standing, at will; very few fire kneeling; nobody dreams of shelter.  We finally reach a slight depression in the ground, and there the red trousers are lying in masses, here and there—­dead or wounded.  We club or stab the wounded, for we know that these rascals, as soon as we are gone by, will fire from behind.  We find one Frenchman lying at full length upon his face, but he is counterfeiting death.  A kick from a robust fusilier gives him notice that we are there.  Turning over he asks for quarter, but he gets the reply—­“Oh! is that the way, blackguard, that your tools work?” and he is pinned to the ground.  On one side of me I hear curious cracklings.  They’re the blows which a soldier of the 154th is vigorously showering upon the bald pate of a Frenchman with the stock of his gun; he very wisely chose for this work a French gun, for fear of breaking his own.  Some men of particularly sensitive soul grant the French wounded the grace to finish them with a bullet, but others scatter here and there, wherever they can, their clubbings and stabbings.  Our adversaries have fought bravely.  They were elite troops that we had before us.  They had allowed us to come within thirty, and even within ten, meters—­too close.  Their arms and knapsacks thrown down in heaps showed that they wanted to fly, but upon the appearance of our