The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-08-26
RUSSIA'S
TROUBLES
The Reservists Slow To
Respond To the
Summons.

wheels of the army mobilization ma
chine are revolving so exceedingly
slowly that sometimes they seem to
have come to a dead standstill. Two
months ago the order was issued call
ing out the reservists who had most
recently left the colors, to join the
army corps forming in the three chief
military districts of Russia and pro-
ceee to the war. None of these armies
is in being yet.
The work was to be Quickened by
the Cars tour of encourageme in the
south; but while the we'll drilled shout
OF loyal devotion from his guards
which followed on each patriotic
speech-was still in his ears, the peo-
pie he had hoped to fire with enthu-
siasm were back in their old inertia
They had seen the outskirts of the
imperial procession; and they went
back to their villages as they had often
gone back from performance at a
fair, and discussed the two spectacles
in the same way.
In spite of the empty results of his
April journey. the Car has again be-
stirred himself. He started on fresh
tour yesterday-this, time to the Kazan
and Samara districts, much further
east than his last recruiting mission,
almost on the eastern border of Eu-
ropean Russia. Images of st. Nicholas
the Miracle Worker, for presentation to
regiments ordered to the front, are
again a great part of the imperial bag
gage.
The blank, negative which the agri-
cultural population has opposed to the
mobilization order has compelled the
authorities to abandon the original
scheme of choosing the new army
corps from among the regulation mill
tary districts. They are now taking
artisans from the towns anywhere
they can get them, because they are
nearest the railroad depots and can be
entrained for the war with less ex-
pense and difficulty. The army order
is still posted on the doors of the vii
lage council houses in the south; the
people look at its contents as some
thing that can be put off till next year
or later. Their feelings are the more
unanimous from the fact that the or
der affects every one of them, man
woman and child.
The lands surrounding the village are
divided by the number of legal souls
that the community contains, and to
each is assigned an equal portion. Those
who remain behind must till and har-
vest the portions of those gone to the
war. The man of thirty who is being
summoned for Manchuria is the most
valuable villager from every CONNER
cial point of view, and the one who
can least be spared.
The most active resisters to the call
on the reservists are the women who
work the fields equally with the men.
Their opposition is by no means a
matter of tears and entreaties. The
standard of female attractivenesS
among the peasantry is measured by
strength of muscle and hardness Of
constitution. When the grown-up son
thinks of marriage his parents keep
in mind that this means another mouth
to feed. His mother, who knows that
she too was chosen for her usefulness
as a farmland. takes care that her
prospective daughter-in-law is a per-
son likely to be able to earn her own
board. Prettiness and the fragile kind
OF beauty are altogether at discount.
The opposition, therefore, comes from
iegions of broad backed, deep chested
women who need to be pretty nearly
outnumbered if they are to be over
come by recruiting; parties. Their an
swer is: we can spare nobody just
now. The hay is not gathered"
Later it will be the corn and then
the root crops. AS plainly as they can
Intimate the women show that the
arming of Russia's enormous reserve of
peasantry is to be met with obstacles
at every turn. And there is no staff
numerous enough to compel obedience.
The younger conscripts actually in the
ranks and stationed in the district
barracks are the only body that can
be called on to enforce the enlistment
of the reservists, but it is hardly safe
to tntrust them with the work OF herd
ing their elder brothers on beard trains
on the Trans Siberian Railway Ordin-
airy legal punishment for disobedience
Is out of the question. for the jails
would not hold a hundredth part of the
men who have ignored the mobilization
order
The omission of the authorities to re-
port the names of men in the ranks
who are killed, wounded or missing in
the war has had the worst imaginable
. effect on recruiting. Scarcely a peas
ant family that has sons or brothers
at the war but believe that the casual
ties are about ten times more than the
true figures
| As they cannot read or write, the
peasants hear no news from their peo-
1oT he leaso- r~al- S,,c