"ORDERLY RETREATS."

Manawatu Standard, Volume XL, Issue 7917, 24 September 1904, Page 4

"ORDERLY RETREATS."

The Russians, according" to late cablegrams, are still being driven northwards,' but following his custom General Kuropatkin will, no doubt, inform the Czar that he is still luring on the Japanese. This "luring-on process" has, however, proved costly business for the Russians. When they have had the honesty to admit a retreat it has always been described as "orderly," but just what this means is explained by General Kuroki in a recent despatch in which one of the most terrible incidents of the war is recorded. It appears that after one of Kuroki's victories a solid column of three regiments—a body which, even" if we allow for the heavy losses they have sustained, cannot have been less than from 4000 to 5000 strong at leastwas ponderously falling back when a Japanese force, stringing out along its entire length in ?flarik,, fired into it at j from 200 to 1000 yards. It is, perhaps, hardly possible to convey what that means with modern quick-firing. rifles. The column, helplessly unable to reply, must? have been literally mowed down in its ranks. . In can have been nothing hut'a quite ? helpless target. " Orderly retreat" of that kind •:'■ is probably more easy with the Russian soldier than with any other 'uniformed or ununiformed being on earth. His helpless stupidity, his mechanical obedience, his stolidity/ all tend to make him submit to. the punishment with an acceptance of lis fate which is in its way pathetic and sublime. As long as he is commanded by officers who do not shrink? from exposing him to such shambles, he dies placidly, not because, he likes it, but; because he cannot help it. To get out of such a body is not an easy matter.? Those not immediately exposed to the fire in so •dense a mas-? hardly know what is going on till the path for? the bullets to thenown breasts is cleared by the.fall of then* comrades between them and the rifles of their foes. Only the passivity, the meek, stupid. submission does not make the column under these circumstances any more formidable weapon of war than is the ox who is slaughtered by the blow of the ' butcher.y ''That simple proposition must be clear .to every man. On that account the assertion is justified that against the modern tactics, of the Japanese these Russian columns are. utterly arid "merely help- • less, and that until the Russian: soldier has undergone an; entirely new education he is not- a formidable warrior at all. ''