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Show Traits of the Russian Soldier. Sincere and unaffected love of his 71 on-arch, on-arch, profound religious piety intimately united with th idea of the Czar, and of the fatherland, attachment to the fatherland, father-land, unlimited confidence in his chief, strong esprit dc corps, and a faculty of enduring gayly and naturally the greatest privations such are the most - marked characteristics of the Russian soldier. To these traits must be added remarkable bravery and a rare contempt of death, combined with naive kindheartedness and a genu and indulgent disposition. The Russia soldier ts distinguished by a good I humor that never abandons him. even in f the most difficult moments, by his brotherly broth-erly understanding with his comrades, and by his gay and contended way ot facing fac-ing all the decrees of fate. Obedleuc IS) so deeply rooted in the mind of the Rta -stan soldier that during my thirty years experience of the army, 1 do not remember remem-ber to have witnessed one single case of insubordination, either in times of peace or In times of war. The Russian soldier dies st hie rest. I have seen him In winter on sentry duty on the helrhts of Shlpka die standing, surrounded sur-rounded with snow and transformed literally liter-ally into a statue of Ice: I have seen him die on the march, striding over th sandv desert and yielding up his last breath with his last step; 1 have seen hlra die of his wounds on the battleflHd or in the hospital, hospi-tal, at a distance of 3'X miles from his native village and In those supreme mo-aaents mo-aaents I have always found the Russian soldier sublime. Although a child of the plain, where hi T rarely descries the moat modest hiil. we see him boldly scale the topmost summits sum-mits of the Caucssu snd ciirob th rocks and glaciers of the Thlanshan, fighting all the timeA He feela at home everywhere, whether In th steppe of th fatherland, in the tundras ot Siberia, or the mountains moun-tains and deserts of central Asia. He has an exceptional faculty of putting himself at his ease wherever he mar be, even in places a her others would die of hunger and thirst. I have seen the Russian soldier at horn In time of pesce. or during truce In th eneny's country, rocking the peasant child in the village, where he was sta. tioned; I have seen him bivouacking in the desert with his tongue parched and burning, receive hi rations wf a. quarter litre of salt water; I have seen him In beat and In cold, in hunger and in thirst In peace and in war and I have always found in him the same desire to oblige, the same abnegation of self for the safety and the good ot others. These special characteristics of the Russian soldier his A self-denial, his simple and natural self-sacrifice self-sacrifice give him peculiar power as a warrior. From the chapter on Russia in "The Armies of Today," written by a Russian Rus-sian General. |