THE RUSSIAN SOLDIER.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 January 1916, Page 2

THE RUSSIAN SOLDIER.

GERMAN GENERAL'S PRAISE, GREAT INDIVIDUAL MERITS. ! The Hungarian war correspondent. 31 Fram-i* Moinar, has had an interview with General Arz, in the course of which he gave an expert' opinion of the Russian soldier.. General Are was attached to the army of General Slackensen for five months, and fought with him from Gorlice to lirest-Livotsk, always as the right-hand neighbor of the - Prussian Guards. M. Molnar describes this interview as follows:—Who knows the Russian soldier more intimately than General Arz, who was in continual tmieh with the Russians for a period of live months? We have read so many thing* about the Russian soldiers that it ii time that someone should tell us the plain truth about them. General Arz has every right to criticise the' enemy and to speak highly of him. He said:

"The Russian counter-attacks were much stronger in the beginning of our offensive than later on. As time passed these became weaker and more rare, as the Russian reserves began to diminish. My experience throughout the campaign was that the 'Russian.? were' never totally short of ammunition. They had ample artillery and infantry munitions all the time. Whenever we took Russian positions we always found great quantities there. The Russian infantry soldier is very good. He is an active, brave and determined soldier, not afraid of death, and those stories which assert that their officers drive them into battle with machine-guns are all nursery tales. , His individual merits are indisputable. Only in the mass does he Jail. Russian soldiers are absolute!? dependent on their leader, and if till leader fails they are lost. Their officers, therefore, are much more burdened and have a. g v nate.r task to perform than onrß, but it must be acknowledged that wherever their officers chose to lead them the men put up magnificent resistance.

EFFICIENT ARTILLERY. '■' The Russian artillery is very good. It is indeed most annoying, but fortunately wo encountered always less and less artillery as we 'progressed, so that towards the end of the offensive it was not dangerous any more. Whatever artillery ,they had they shifted far back, for their main object was that we should not take any more guns from them. The Russian cavalry had very little to do during the offensive. "The prisoners," continued the general, ''whom I came across were all very handy and good-hearted people. T(\.y never behaved in'a hostile inaaner towards us, unlike the prisou-i.'s on olli.-r fronts, who could not c-ur-cai their enmity and contempt. As I inspected the many thousands of Russian prisoners I always found that' they were first-claw material in every way. Most of them arc tall, strong, and very healthy: The only trouble is their inferior intelligence. I studied them very carefully, and T say that they have'very little knowledge of events; and some of them even thought that the French Emperor was coming on behind lis with his hosts and that we would be crushed between the two armies.

DETERMINED LEADERS. "Tin- Russian military leadership is very energetic and determined, and 1 must acknowledge that in this respect the Russians are quite up-to-date. 1 need not say that in fortifying positions and in retreating they are exceedingly elever. As far as field fortifications are concerned, we simply adopted their methods. In their retreats the striking feature is the way they always managed to save their supply columns. Throughout the campaign we succeeded in capturing the supplies of only one regiment. together with a field kitchen and the cooks.'' In his comment M. Molnar savs: "These, impartial sentences are worth while recording. It is ihe fashion of civilians le pooh-pooh at the enemy, but a soldier who lias fought them in two countries speaks quite differently about them.''