NO ARCTIC WARRIORS.

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 5, Issue 201, 18 August 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

NO ARCTIC WARRIORS.

MEN WHO DON'T KNOW HOW TO FIGHT. Battle history halts at the Arctic Circle. Beyond that, human life is so difficult to sustain that its wilful waste, is unthinkable. The Lapps and Samo yeds of Arctic Russia, like the Eskimos of North America and Greenland, are so often compelled in times of dearth and famine to" sacrifice their aged weaklings that this form of death has become a vague religions and social principle with them. . The armies of the Great Wh te Isar. like those of the King-Emperor, are not recruited in such distant places y-m. deed, tho men are of such meagre ' stature and intellect that a military training is next to impossible— certain ly not a thing to be persevered with m tho days of a great campaign.. The population of Arcfcc Russia, both in Asia and in Europe, outside the official and mercantile classes, contain few elements which are truly Slavonic, but in the minds of insular Br tons the reputation of Arctic dwellers portals to all the people living an -Siberia, which is always portrayed as a land of ice and snow nnd unhealthy marsh.

APOLOGISE BEFORE KILLING A BEAR.

Tho Siberian Battalions, which havo won so great a fame in the Russian campaigns, are drawn mainly from territory as near the Equator as Great Britain. It is undeniable that their winters are terribly sewere, but m the hot summer crops of the utmost value can be sown, ripened, and harvested. It is not impossible to lead a robust nte in tho Siberia of military Russia.. The real natives of the Arctic can endure hunger and fatigue—can march in their own fashion through hurricane and blizzard—but their value is rather to the explorer of the 'inhospitable North than to the soldier. As hunters they are wonderfuMy clever, yet they are curiously formal in administering the coup do grace. They will apologise to the fierce white bear which they have cornered before advancing to a close attack with bonetipped arrows and spears, a duel in which tho odds seem decia vely on the bear destroying the man. limy are therefore not cowards in any sense, and few British sportsmen would risk their lives against bear and wolf and walrus protected only by futile weapons and their own personal dexterity.

NOT HEARD OF THE RUSSOJAPANESE WAR! How goes the news of war to theso Arctic dwellers? Most casually and slowly without a doubt. There, are colonies in the frozen North which have not yet heard of the Russo-Japanese war, and certainly have no knowledge of the present war. They *are free from nab onal duties and taxation, and their intercourse, even with fur-traders of Wood alien to their own, is meagre indeed, lhcie are dialects spoken by those tribes which have never been interpreted and never reduced to writing, and the J ideas of the great world outside the tundras and steppes are very <y ide - A generation may pass before the story of the Grand Duke s great campaign filters North, and even then it will be incomprehensible to persons to whom a crowd of even a lum« man beings would be a marvel. Now and again a stray whater or fxplopmg ship comes within sight of the shore camps, and a Btle barter by means of siaiis is earned on, but the inland dwellers have not even tlrs communication with the outer world.