Warsaw is built in the midst of a beautiful plain mostly on the left
bank of the river Vistula. All the main part of the city lies close to
the river, and the streets are so twisted and crooked that it is almost
impossible to picture them. They wriggle here and there like snakes of
streets. The houses, of course, are very old, and with their heavy
barred doors and solid shutters, look very strange and inhospitable.

People, in a way, become like their surroundings. Here in these
twisted, narrow streets are to be found the narrow, twisted souls of
the worst element in Poland; but the worst of them love their country
as perhaps no other people do. To the last man and to the frailest
woman, they are loyal to Poland. For them, it is Poland first, last
and always.

In these low and twisted streets, the devastation was greatest and the
people had scurried like rats to cover. A week before they had swarmed
the streets and crowded the buildings. Now by some miracle they had
gone, utterly disappeared. The houses were deserted, the streets
empty. The destruction had been greatest in these crowded places, but
many of the beautiful public buildings and state departments in the new
part were also in ruins, as well as a number of matchless palaces.

The people from the upper part of the city who had taken refuge in the
holes along the river front, were for the most part a strange appearing
lot. Some of them carried great bundles which they guarded with
jealous care. Others, empty handed, sat and shivered through the summer
night-chills that blew from the river. Scores of little children clung
to their mother's hands, or wandered trembling and screaming from group
to group, seeking their own people.