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The railroad and single highway were jammed with refugees, walking, creaking along in wagons, only a few so lucky as to have automobiles. A trainload of war-wounded, had to wait hours every few miles while its crew repaired blown up rails. The diplomatic exodus came to rest at Sniatyn, a town near the Rumanian border where there were boarding school dormitories. Ambassador Biddle got a fine "mansion" on the main street. There were no lights, of course, and no running water, but his wife and family were safe. His British neighbors across the way marveled to see him sweating, stripping to his undershirt, as he loaded baggage into his official car, which was taking his girl clerks into Rumania.
Poland's Fate rested not so much on the fate of Warsaw—heavy blow to morale though that would be if it fell—as on the whereabouts and condition of Poland's remaining divisions. If they could form their mass of maneuver, as the French did around Paris, and strike at the separated advancing German armies, they might accomplish a master counterblow. If that did not work, there were still the rains to hope for and the Allied pressure at Germany's back.
The massing of Red Russia's armies on the border east of them did not apparently worry the Poles. They figured that J. Stalin was merely planting his men to make sure A. Hitler did not forget to stop when he reached Russia, and to collect his slice of Poland without fighting, reopen the trans-Poland rail line from Minsk to Berlin, if & when the conquest was complete. Between the Poles and Stalin still lay the Pripet Marshes where they could hole up for the winter, await the outcome of their Allies' effort in the West.