The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1915-05-18
COSSACKS SOLDIERS
FROM THEIR BIRTH
THE CZAR'S WILD, CONQUERING,
FREEBOOTING FIGHTERS MOST
PICTURESQUE WARRIORS.
A PEOPLE OF THE STEPPES
More Than Three Million of Them in
Russia, and Are Frontier Folk
Like Our People of the Early
West. Fight for Love OF It.

West. Fight for Love OF Ii.
WASHINGTON, d. C.-"Appren-
ticed at Mars at birth, as were the
Spartans before them, the Cossacks,
survivals from a young, non-indus-
trial, in-the-spur world, are the most
picturesque fighters on Europe's bat
tlefelds A frontiers folk, like the
people of our early West, mixture
of many adventurous elements and
constituting within their own country
a class more distinctive than that Of
the American cowboy, they have IL
nally been subdued to the needs OF
the great imperial government at Pc
trograd, taken over just as they were
into its machinery, and preserved as
a soldier-caste. A wild, conquering,
free-booting folk, the Cossacks OF
Russian civilization as soldiers, de-
scendants of warriors and progenitorG
of generations of soldiers to meet the
future needs of Slav empire.
ut is with these Cossacks, the men
who, in the leisure ofnational peace
conquered the vast empire of Siberia,
for Russia, and who, in each Rus
sian war for the last 100 years, have
formed the Cars irresistible first
line strength, that today's statement
of the National Geographic Society
deals. More nearly defining this mil
itary folk the statement continues:
Are Race Apart
THE Cossacks are a people of the
limitless steppes, a people of close
corporation, situated in Russia as a
race apart, a soldier-caste their state
a military organization, their con-
nection with the great empire main
tanned through the imperial war de-
partment, the administration of their
internal affairs practically in their
own hands, and their privileges as a
caste almost as pronounced as were
those of the Spartan sOldier-citiZen,
or more comparable to the soldier
caste of older Indian organizations
TAa COssacks came of the original
Slav stock, but they were those Slavs
who never bowed their heads beneath
yoke, foreign or domestic, who live
free life on the borders of their
races civilization, wandering, fight
ing, buccaneering Slav tribes, who
penetrate deeply into Tartar and
Georgian lands, who lived by the hunt
and plumber, and who maintained
themselves on the borders of Asia
and Europe free of all serfdom.
Fights for the Love OF 1T.
These sturdy Russian wanderers
assimilated many adventurous ele-
ments, took up among them many
Tartars and SlaVs, and so today the
Cossack type is a more or less dis
tinct one. The total Cossack pOpulo-
ton of Russia is more than 3,OOO,-
600. Some years ago they owned
nearly 146,500,000 acres of land OF
which 1O5,000,00O was arabic and
100000 forest land. This land is
held by the Cossacks in community
partition as a state reward for tnelr
military service. 1t will be seen that
the Cossack holdings amount to ABOUT
so acres for each man, woman ana
child of the people. There is an ad-
miring, half-envious Russian catch
word about being as free and as rlch
as q Cossack.'
THE Cossacks are the rough riders
of Europe AS the cowboys OF the
American plains and the gauchos OF
the ,Pampas the Cossacks are an in
tensely interesting, wild, free, plain
folk, who live in the saddle in the
open places, and whose rough democ-
racy is the expression of the same
naive. rudimentary culture as that OF
their New World brothers-in-spirit
None of their members are allowed to
starve, and none of them nave sue
ceeded in winning overmastering po-
sition through the laying up Of great
wealth.