SOLDIERS WHO DON'T EAT.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 November 1915, Page 10 (Supplement)

SOLDIERS WHO DON'T EAT.

SERVIA'S WONDERFUL ARMY. IRISHMEN OF THE BALKANS. A correspondent of the Times who was lately in Servia says that a most remarkable thing is the capacity of the Servian soldier to live and fight gaily with practically nothing to cat. 'it is a peasant army," the correspondent adds, "and in the best of times its food is of the simplest—bread, potatoes, and curdled milk, and rarely, except on feast days, n little meat. Bread is the staff of life in the real sense. '•For four years Servia has been almost continually at war. It is difficult for the women, with all the men in the ranks, to keep up the agriculture, and the country has become poor to a degree not known in years of bad crops in ■congested districts of Ireland, The .soldiers have been inured to a life of extreme privation. While fighting last winter it was their toughness and their ability,to withstand hardships that gave them the advantage over the Aurtrians. I have repeatedly heard Servian officers say that their men had not eaten for two days. "When the country was knee-deep in mud the Servian soldiers pushed on utterly careless of the commissariat. They simply hunted the Austrian? day and night, not giving them a moment's rest. Only men of iron, to whom semistarvation was almost a normal condition, could have done it, yet the Servians' laughter-loving disposition has remained unspoiled. "Every Briton soon discovers that the Serbian army is absurdly like the Irishman. When he is not laughing he is generally singing. Careless, long-limb-ed, lean, deep-chested, of kindly manner, with cheeks bronzed, the Serbian is an ideal fighting man. When wounded he is almost insensible to pain, and he takes death lightly. The nurses and doctors have unbounded admiration for him. "The chief weakness of Servia's military position is that there are no reserves. The entire fighting strength of the country—almost its entire manhood —is already in the rank*