Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 June 1877 — Russian Soldiers. [ARTICLE]

Russian Soldiers.

At Bakau wc encountered the first military train, halted to allow the post-train to pass, which has the precedence according to the convention. The vans of cars were so crammed with soldiers —they are marked to contain forty each—that it was matter for bewilderment how the large contingent tramping up and down the platform, to get the stiffness out of them, could be accommodated. But they squeezed in somehow, no doubt, and without a word of grumble, for the Russian soldier, so far as 1 have seen of him, is the most docile and good-humored of fellows, and not only may a child play with him, but he will play with a child, whenever he can get the chance. The men were munching some food, the like of w’hich I had never before seen, and now that I have seen it, I can’t tell for the life of me what it is, whether it be dried bean, a condiment of the cattle-food order, or black bread made into a pod-like shape and covered with a thin skin. All I know is that it goes by the name of Johannisbrod, that it is very black, slightly sticky in the center, and emphatically not nice to a Western palate, although the sturdy Russian soldiers munched it with great apparent gusto, and then took a pull at their flasks—whether these contained water or quass I could not tell. I noticed that in this train the officers were content to travel in third-class carriages, and I noticed also, as I have done ever since I have been among the Russian troops, that there seems a very pleasant and genial feeling of comradeship and mutual good-will be tween the officers and men. The Russian soldier not only salutes his officer, but looks as if he meant to greet him. The officer not only returns the salute punctiliously, but looks as if it were his meaning to return the greeting also. Ina score of little things the mutual good-will is evinced, and if the young soldiers of the Russian Army are anything like such men in the fight as the more mature but less disciplined Russian volunteers who were in Servia —all of whom had been in the regular army—there will be no need, when the pinch comes, for the officers to lock over their shoulders to see whether or no their men are close behind them, be it swift attack or stubborn defense. — Galatz Cor. London Daily Newt.