TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 1905.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 8172, 21 March 1905, Page 2

TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 1905.

RUSSIAN SOLDIERS' VIEWS.

The recall of General Kuropatkin, and the establishment in his stead of General Linevitch, gives an immediate interest to what is respectively thought of those leaders by representatives of the Russian army. Views concerning these generals have found their way into public prints outside of Russia, and reveal facts that have been untarnished by the pen of the censor. A London paper devotes a. column to a summary of these letters. The strongest feature of them is, perhaps, the contempt which is shown for General Kuropattcin. We are actually told that "he is absolutely devoid of from an administrative point of view, and is guilty of personal cowardice into the bargain," the last part of which indictment cannot be (rue in the light of the cable messages we have published stating that both at the battle of the Shaho and in the recent fighting he freely exposed himself to danger in covering the retreat. "As long as Kuropatkin is in command," says another, "there cafe be nothing but disgrace W stow for Bwdfc T^;* riil^ rw !?¥ fi fA.

a disorderly rabble in a pothouse rather I Ihan an organised force." Another correspondent states that "Stackelberg's disastrous fiasco" was not the result of orders from St. Petersburg-, but was the work of Kuropatkin, for the writer saw the latter's signature at the foot of the plan which led to the disaster. General Linevitch is apparently the only general loved by the army — "Papa Linevitch" the soldiers call him. As to the officers, we are told that "the great rate of mortality among them is not due to the good shooting of the Japanese," but to that of our own men," who in the confusion of battle thus pay off old scores. The same writer adds that it is a notorious fact that many officers hide themselves while fighting is going on, and this is confirmed by an army doctor, who writes that his hands are full of malingerers from the commissioned ranks, who as soon as tney have received the merest scratch rush into hospital, and do their best to get back to Russia. "There is an enormous number of carpet knights from St. Petersburg." The doctor, however, does not think the conduct of these officers is without excuse; "in the state of general confusion and demoralisation which everywhere reigns, why on earth should they aimlessly sacrifice their lives in a senseless and utterly useless war?' As for the rank and file, their opinion oi the Japanese has changed greatly fron the time when a Russian private remaned, "these yellow monkeys are so small I am told, that you can spit five of then on one bayonet." "The state of ou men," writes a soldier from Mukden, "sur passes all belief. Filthy, tattered, bare footed in many cases, or in Chinese slij pers tied on with string, they have lost a semblance of an organised force, and hay been converted into a miserable rabble."