The Savannah morning news., 1904-03-20

DkODHlells iOilOWNu mo C<%o1iiiEA~" 49,
it is regarded as the regular thing in
the Russian army for an officer to
have to spend money on his men 40
remedy official shortcomings. 1t is to
be feared that graft" has a great deal
to do with those shortcomings.
Military experts say that only a
small proportion of Russian officers
possess the ability to cope with emer-
gencies and make orderly and efficient
arrangements for the welfare of an
army. The military attache at the
American legation at st. Petersburg
served with the Russian forces in the
Turkish war. He formed very poor
opinion OF the Russian officers capac-
ity in those respects. for he wrote at
the time:
In Event of Prisoners.
'If 10000 prisoners are suddenly
thrown on their hands, as at the sur
render of Plevna, no better eXpedient
presents itself than to herd them out
in the snow in great fiocks like sheep,
and let three days pass before they get
anything to eat; and twelve days be-
fore measures are perfected for march
ing them 20 the Danube, only twenty
miles off-the prisoners meanwhile
perishing by hundreds every night
IF a bridge forming part of the
main line of communication of a great
army is constructed across a large
river one end of it leading into
miserable little town with streets so
narrow that two vehicles cannot pass
you do not find the lines of opposing
travel so clearly marked that there
can be no divergence from them, and
men stationed at every corner to COM
pei vehicles to take a certain direction,
but you see two long lines of small
supply wagons gradually approaching
each other until they become jammed
and blocked in the middle of the town.
Several hours or even a day or more
are occupied in unloading a half a
mile of wagons and dragging them out
backwards in order to reopen the COM
mounication. These are things which
do not occur only during the first days
or weeks, but throughout a whole
campaign of months"
Russian Soldiers Patient.
These defects are, however, largely
offset by the patient endurance of the
Russian soldier. born of his doglike
loyalty to the Car. The American
military attache at Plevna was inn
pressed by that quality.
when his battle results in defeats,
when his biscuits are full of maggots,
when his clothes are shabby, when his
boots drop to pieces, the Russian sol
dier," he said, reasons it all out slow
ly and can only come to the conclu-
sion, so pathetic in its simple faith,
'Ah, if the Gar only knew! Every
one within his reach he freely discusses,
criticises and bames; he half suspects
that his generals may be fools, and he
is sure that his commissaries are ras-
Gals: but no thought of censure ever
crosses his minds against the Car. "
iG hardly To nOint out
the value of this mental attitude as a
military asset.
The Russian soldiers appear, as
general rule. to lack the ability to
shift for themselves" in matters Of
transport and commissariat. If their
elaborate system of baggage trains
breaks down, as it may we'll do under
the strain of a hard campaign, they
are utterly at loss-unless they are
Cossacks, Kalmucks or Turcomans, ac-
customed from boyhood to picking up
their meals wherever and whenever
they can find them.
The Japs Are Planners.
The Japanese, on the contrary, show
ed during their war with China re-
markable ability to create their trans
port and commissariat apparently out
of nothing as they went along. They
did not trouble much about baggage
trains; they had them, to be sure, well
supplied and we'll organized; but the
troops moved so quickly that they were
out of touch with their wagons half the
time. They travelled in the lightest
possible order, and picked up any old
native carts or mules or coolies they
chanced to meet making them serve
the necessities of the moment, and then
letting them go and getting others fur
ther on.
The only drawback of this system
was that, as the campaign advanced,
the armies became clogged by large
numbers of coolies and other camp
followers, who created a great deal of
trouble and committed excesscs which
were wrongfully charged to the regu-
lar troops. Some of the Japanese COM
manders adopted a short way with
these obnoxious persons, driving them
out of the army on pain of death as
soon as their services were over. After
the war, it was pretty generally agreed
that no similar nuisance should be toll
Grated in another campaign.
Know How to Run n Commissary.
During the advance to the relief of
the besieged lega tions at Pekin, the
Japanese commissary was, by COM
mon agreement of the foreign officers,
better than that of any of the Euro
pean troops; and the Japanese soldiers
showed genius for foraging and ac-
commodating their appetites to the
food available in the country
Instead of using heavy wagons Ii
able to be begged or to tire out the
horses, the japanese had a great num-
Der of light hand carts-much like the
push carts OF the Italians in New
York and other American cities.
These carts were drawn hv coolies ~.
by the soldiers themselves, and they
were so lightly laden that they inter-
fered little, if at ALL with the mobility
of the force. The horse and mule
carts were of the smallest type, and
lightly built. Spare animals were
made to carry their own fodder, and
that of the other animals as well.