Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 201, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 August 1916 — KOVEL A STRATEGIC CENTER [ARTICLE]

KOVEL A STRATEGIC CENTER

Junction Point for Several Railways and Capital of Rich Agricultural District. Kovel, a town of 30,000 people at the beginning of the war, owes its immense strategic importance to the fact that it is the junction point for railroads which radiate, like the spokes from the hub of a wheel, in five directions. To the northwest, 77 miles distant, is the strongly fortified city of Brest-Litovsk, over whose possession there was a terrific struggle when the Germans were folding the Russians back through Poland after the first Slav drive early in the war, says a National Geographic society bulletin. To the southeast, 84 miles away, is Rovno, a fortress with a population of 'TfijOOO at the outbreak of the war and at that time the headquarters of the Eleventh Russian army corps. Lublin, with Go,ooo inhabitants, is 100 miles due west, on the railroad running to Warsaw, 209 miles away. Theri to the south is Vladimir-Volynski, 35 miles distant, and to the east runs the line which passes through Sarni on its way to Kiev. In addition to these railway connections, Kovel is situated on the banks of the Turiya, one of the tributaries of the Pripet river, whose extensive marshes lie to the north where forests cover the land. In the neighborhood of Kovel, however, agriculture is well developed and at the beginning of the war fully one-fourth of the lapd contiguous to the city was devoted to the production of cereal crops. The peasant farmers in the district of which Kovel is the capital, like those of Volhynia generally, are more fortunate than the peasants in most of the Russian provinces, for here they own nearly 50 per cent of the land. West of Kovel is the famous battlefield of Dubienka, on the banks of the Bug and ten miles south of Dorochusk, a town on the Lublin-Kovel, railroad. It was here that Kosciusko, atythe head of 4,000 men with ten Camions, offered a heroic resistance to 18,000 Russians with 60 guns. After holding the superior force In check for five days, the “hero of Dubienka” retired unmolested to Warsaw. This brilliant achievement took place just nine years after a grateful American congress had offered its public thanks to this Polish artillery oflicer, conferred upon him the rank of a brigadier general, extended him the privileges of American citizenship, and given him landed estates In appreciation of his distinguished services to this country as adjutant to General Washington during the Revolutionary war.