HOW DIFFERENT MEN ACT IN BATTLE.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 11 January 1917, Page 3

HOW DIFFERENT MEN ACT IN BATTLE.

THE DOGGED BRITON AND THE TERRIBLE RUSSIAN. As to the qualities and characteristics •f the various non-Teutonic soldiers of Europe, German army officers speak interestingly and not without generosity. The French soldier is gallant, neryous, and very brave. The English fighter is dogged and individually resourceful. The Italian, though ferocious in assault, is discouraged by failure. He goes on one impulse and hates to re-pass his own dead for a second charge. As to the Russian, the German volunteers nothing but if he is pressed he will add : " The Russian is terrible." It is not that the individual Russian soldier is particularly terrible. No, that is not what he means to say. The Russian cannot be singularised. You have to think of Russians, infinite in plurality, a slow-moving, ominous, imposing mass. They come in lines, ten and twelve feet deep, heedlees and heavy, so controlled by their own momentum that they cannot stop. They will go anywhere, into anything, again and again, as if they did not know how to be afraid. "The only thing you can do," gays the German officer, "is to slaughter them and pray you will have ammunition enough to keep it up."