RUSSIAN TROOPS. 389 



acquaintance with the railway having come to any other 

 conclusion. So one of the chief essentials in which the 

 Russian Empire is superior to Japan — that of numbers — 

 is, as long as Japan has command of the sea, to a great 

 extent discounted. 



As far as mere material goes, she has little to com- 

 plain off. In her Cossacks she has a magnificent force 

 of scouts and a mobile body that would constitute a 

 valuable asset in any army. Brave, hardy, intrepid, 

 accustomed to nothing but the most strenuous life, the 

 Cossack is ready at any moment to go anywhere and to 

 undertake any adventure. As to the soldier of the line, 

 to quote Mr Henry Norman once more, "from the 

 point of view of the military martinet he is ideal 

 kanonen-futter — chair cl canon." He has, on the other 

 hand, what many will vote a serious defect in modern 

 warfare — a complete lack of intelligence. The Russian 

 soldier of the line is in fact a mere rather dirtily clad 

 machine, who is never under any circumstances ex- 

 pected to be able to think for himself. He will fight 

 with a stolid stubborn persistence because he is ordered 

 to do so, and not for any reason that his own intelli- 

 gence might suggest. That, however, is not the fault 

 of the material, but of those who have moulded it, 

 though the fact is in no way altered because the re- 

 sponsibility for it rests upon one part of the whole 

 rather than upon the other. It has, moreover, yet to 

 be proved that the Russian military system is capable 

 of producing strategists of a standard necessary to 

 predicate success when pitted against a foe whose plans 

 of campaign are so thoroughly and so systematically 

 devised and so conscientiously and so doggedly carried 

 out as are those of Japan. 



From a brief consideration of such points as I have 

 ventured to call attention to, it will be seen that the 



