OVER TEN MILLION RUSSIANS WITH THE COLOURS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 16550, 28 May 1917, Page 5

OVER TEN MILLION RUSSIANS WITH THE COLOURS.

ONLY A SMALL PERCENTAGE AT THE FRONT. EXCESSES OF SOLDIERS IN THE INTERIOR. Australian and N.Z. Cable. OtoceiYed 7 p.m.) LONDON, May 25. The Petrograd correspondent of the Morning Post says it is estimated thai Russia has between 10,000,000 and 12,000,000 men with the colours in various stages of training, but only a small percentage are fighting at the front. Inspired by the example of the revolutionaries many bodies of soldiers in the interior are running amok. Twenty thousand men recently seized a South Russian estate, and another party seized a town on the Volga with a population of 100,000, and demanded a large contribution for their own purposes. The soldiers also seized the Volga steamers. Despite these happenings Russia cherishes the belief that the Empire can be ruled by kindness. The Government has promised to publish a disciplinary code for the army next week A telegram from Odessa reports the exhumation by the revolutionaries of the remains of Lieut Schmidt, the leader of the mutiny on the warship Potemkin in July, 1003, and of his three companions who were shot. The bodies were removed from the island Berezane with imposing ceremonial, and will be reinterred in Sebastopol. They were carried through Odessa on the way to the Crimea.