HOW RUSSIA BROKE NAPOLEON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11284, 12 January 1915, Page 1

HOW RUSSIA BROKE NAPOLEON.

The tale of Napoleon's disastrous bid) for European domination when Moscow 1 was bis objective is lucidly told* by Mr Edward Foord in " Napoleon's Russian Campaign in ISl'2.' ! The book is strangely suggestive and significant now that Russia again, after the lapse of a century, is pitting her armies against another would-be worla-domin-ator, <ind that France, no longer the Aggressor, is lighting for her life in the same cause. Comparisons are inevitable as you rend these vivid pages. "Weapons now are infinitely more powerful and deadly, and the treatment of the wonnd'ed has been revolutionised. Yet the waste and misery of the grim game repeat themselves, and the extremes of nobility and barbarity! in human nature meet in every day's i work now as then. The heroism of Fble and his pontonniers in building the bridge at Studianka for the passage of the Be rosin a- with scarcely any ma-terials--Napoleon having had the bridge-train burnt- which saved the : remnants of the ''Grande Armee " from destruction, is inspiring reading.- j A parallel to the German atrocities in Belgium is found' in the sinister savag- \ cries of Figner and his Cossacks. One of his api>allin;i deeds was to shut, up hi> prisoner.-, in a church, and then deli bun itch" to lire it! A very striking difference noticeable in to-day's warfare is the absence of those long trains of female camp followers (often with children) which accompanied Napoleon's 1 army—s miscellaneous horde, ''whose 1 ; sufferings during the retrea.t constitute ed its most harrowing feature."