Show THE RUSSIAN SOLDIER sincere and unaffected love for his hia monarch profound religious piety intimately united with the idea of the czar and the fatherland attachment to the fatherland unlimited confidence in his chiefs pry strong empt esprit de e corps and a faculty of enduring gaily and naturally the greatest privations such are the most marked characteristics of the russian soldier says a russian general writing in harpers to these traits must be added re bravery and a rare contempt of death combined with a naive kindheartedness and a gentle and indulgent disposition the russian soldier is distinguished by a good humor that never abandons him even in the most difficult moments by his brotherly understanding with his comrades and by his gay and contented way of lacing all the decrees of fate obedience is so deeply rooted in the mind of the russian soldier that during my thirty years experience of the army amy I 1 do not remember to have witnessed one single ease case of insubordination either in times of peace or in times of war the russian soldier dies at his post I 1 have seen him in winter on sentry duty on the heights of die standing surrounded with snow and transformed literally into a statue of lee ice I 1 have seen him die on the march striding over the sandy deseret and yielding up his last breath with his last step I 1 have seen him die of his wounds on the battlefield battle field or in the hospital at a distance of miles from his native village and in these supreme moments I 1 have always found the russian soldier sublime although a child of the plain where his ye rarely descries describes des cries the most modest hill we see him boldly scale the topmost summits of the caucasus and climb the rocks and glaciers of the chhin aban fighting all the time he feels at home everywhere whether in the steeles of the 11 fatherland berland at in the of siberia or the mountains and deserts of central centra asia he has an exceptional faculty of putting himself at his bis ease wherever it may be even in places where others would die of hunger and thirst I 1 have seen the russian soldier at home in time of peace or during true cruces truces in the country rocking the peasants peasant child in the village where he was stationed I 1 have seen him bivouacking bivouac king in the desert with his hia tongue parched and burning receive his ration of a quarter of a litre of salt water I 1 have seen him in heat beat and li i rd in hunger and in thirst in peace and in war and I 1 have always found in him the jame me desire to 4 oblige the same fame abnegation ion of self for the sake of the safety and the good of others these special characteristics of the russian soldier his self denial his simple and natural self sacrifice give him peculiar powers as a warrior |