Defence; Warsaw Held; Lodz Said Re-Taken 1 THE German High Command announced today Berlin, Sept. 13. open towns,|1 villages and hamlets in Poland henceforth will be bombed and shelled, "in order to crush the resistance being offered by the civilian population."
Advanced units of the German Army have reached Lwow, states another communique.—Reuter, London, Sept. 13.
Important developments, greatly modifying the strategical position in Poland, occurred in the past three days. The most important of these was told in an official broadcast today from Warsaw that the Polish Army hemmed by the Germans in Pomorze (the Corridor), has escaped while the Polish Army in Pozni the great agricultural province in West Poland, also successfully withdrew. Other Polish claims were that the German High Command abandoned the idea of taking Warsaw by force and stopped the advance of motorized columns towards the Polish capital. Instead, the Germans' started two new offensives at the extreme! ends of the Polish lines, but "'the Germans are being held in check, unable to make any headway.
Another Polish claim records the recapture of Lodz, the big manufacturing town 82 miles south-west of Warsaw, which the Germans took on Sunday.
The reported Garman decision to abandon immediate attempts to capture Warsaw is believed by the Poles to have been due to a big concentration of Polish troops between Lodz and the Vistula—a concentration of men who retreated from the Poznan pocket. The Polish Army in Pomorze ig stated to have escaped by smashing through German lines "connecting Germany Proper with East Prussia. This feat is important as that army had been bottled up and was in danger of being crushed, for it had the Baltic at its back, Germany Proper on one side, Bast Prussia on the other, and Garman forces in front. The only way of escape was through these forces in front. After breaking through the Polish Army in the Cor-Fidor it stated to have established contact with the main Polish forces. of whom believe that the long German lines of communication may be in danger, The German advance has averaged "twenty miles a day—a tremendous speed even for mechanized sections—tiving troops and risking exhaustion of supplies, espe-dally for tanks and heavy armoured vehicles, the greediest consumers of petrol." The Poles thus have an opportunity to dig in and a temporary deadlock may ensue, but all observers: warn against optimism. Two railways Aguring least in German strategy, are now worth watching. They are the Koenigsberg-Bialystok line in the north and in the south the Cracow-Przemysl-Lwow line. These might greatly assist the Germans in develop-Ing attacks on the right and left flanks of the new Polish positions between the Vistula and the Bug rivers,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.