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Show LODZ FALLS INTO HANDS OFGERMANS RUSSIANS REPORTED TO HAVE RETREATED AFTER SUFFERING SUFFER-ING SEVERE LOSSES. Desperate Conflict In Russian Poland That Had Raged for Days Is Finally Decided in Favor of Kaiser's Soldiers. London. The official announcement comes from Berlin that Lodz, the second sec-ond city of Poland and lying seventy-five seventy-five miles to the west-southwest of Warsaw, has fallen to the German arms. It was occupied Sunday, according ac-cording to the announcement. Around this important town a desperate des-perate battle has raged for days. Here countless thousands have fallen in desperate hand-to-hand conflicts and from the shells of hundreds of guns. It was evident from the occupation of Lodz by the Germans that the heaviest kind of fighting has been going go-ing on, for late advices told of a vicious vi-cious attack and bombardment , of Lodz and fighting on the outskirts ot the city, and previous to that, of operations op-erations twenty miles west of Piotr- kow, which lies considerably south of Lodz and along a line from Glowno, sixteen miles northeast of Lodz, to the Vistula river. Lodz has long been an objective point of the German army. It has grown in recent years from an insignificant insig-nificant place to be one of the most populous cities in the Russian empire. em-pire. In 1910 its population numbered num-bered 415,604 and with this important impor-tant place as a base it is expected that the Germans will make a strong effort to reach the Polish capital of Warsaw. T.ndz is the chief manufacturing center of Russian Poland. It has numerous nu-merous textile mills, the majority of them for the manufacture of cotton goods. In addition, it has flour mills, dyeing establishments, brickyards, machinery plants and breweries. The population is made up of Poles, Germans Ger-mans and Jews. |