A Human Tiger.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 426, 16 June 1904, Page 5

A Human Tiger.

Alexei Nicolaevitch Kuropatkin is recognised as the Czar's ablest general, but he enjoys an unenviable reputation for blood-thirstiness and savagery in his campaigns against the Turcomans, Fere is a pen-and-ink sketch of him at the sack of Khokand : “ It has been twenty-two years since the capture of Geek Tese. Perhaps Kuropatkin has become less sanguinary with age. But if he should live to be a hundred, and in that time should become as mild-mannered and softhearted as any humanitatian of the age, he could never live down the memory of that dreadful day. Geok Tepe was a fortress in .Central Asia held by the Turcomans, and besieged for a month by Russian forces under Skobeleff, Kuropatkin was the active com • mander, and when at last the strong* hold fell he gave orders to give no quarter on account of age or sex. And here he added the crowning touch to the unlovely reputation as a human tiger which he had gained in the RussoTurkish War. The words of an eye witness give a faint idea of the glories of civilised warfare as exemplified by this famous general. He says ‘The whole country was covered with corpses. The morning after the battle they lay in rows like freshly-mown hay, as they had been swept down by mitraileurs and artillery. Hundreds of women were sabred, and l l myself saw little babies bayoneted or slashed to pieces; Many women were dishonored before being killed. The troops, mad with drink and the lust of fighting, were allowed to plunder and kill for three days after the assault/ "