DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES IN BATTLE

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLI, Issue 11650, 19 August 1916, Page 6

DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES IN BATTLE

According to an Anrericau writer, German officers bold the following views of the Italian qualities and chracteristics Jof the various nonTuetonic soldier“ The French soldier is gallant, nervous, and brave,-omy it is difficult to make him return a second or third into the same fire. The English fighter is dogged and individually resourceful, The Italian, though ferocious in assault, is discouraged ty failure. He goes on one impulse aim hates to repass his own dead for a second charge. That is how a German sees three of his adversaries. As to a fourth, he volunteers nothing, hut it he is pressed, he will add f‘The Russian is terrible.’ The meaning of that assertion develops slowly, with many hesitations. It is not that the individual Russian soldier is particularly terrible. No, that is not what he means to say. The Russian cannot be.singulansed. You have to think of Russians, infinite in plurality, a slow-moving, ominous, imposing mass. They come in lines ten and twelve deep, heedless 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 bow to be afraid. ‘The only thing yon can do,’ says the German officer, ‘is to slaughter them and pray that you will have ammunition enough to keep it up.’’ ’