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A Cossack village—Province of the Don

A group of Don Cossacks at breakfast

years, which is the period when her armies just began their sanguinary march into this ancient corner of the world. What these people need is not military subjection, but education, enlightenment, and contact with civilization, and an administration based on the principles of humanity and the enlightenment born of learning and culture. But it is outside of my present purpose to suggest what ought to be or what might be; it is rather my restricted duty to give the picture of the scene as I found it unfolded before me—all these different villages of the many tribes of Caucasia, living in their backwardness and their idleness; knowing not the advantages of education, consequently craving it not; crude in their superstitions; quaint in their customs; bold and medieval in their attitude toward their fellow-men. On the south slopes of the Caucasus as well as here on the north slopes are these villages found; though instead of being Circassian, Kabardine, and Ossettes, they are Mingrelians, Kurds, Georgians, Gurians, Persians, Medo-Persians, Tartars, Armenians, and other tribes spilled out of Asia. The crying need universally throughout the region is for a wise administration, making for increased enlightenment and education, instead of which is maintained the brutal iron régime of militarism.

Upon our return to Vladikavkaz I donned my Cossack uniform, which was awaiting me, rejoined my friends the officers, and the second day thereafter we began our journey eastward to the oil city by the Caspian Sea. During the first days that f appeared on the streets in uniform I could not get over the sense of bewilderment and surprise occasioned by the salute I received from every soldier whom I met; for it is a rule of the Russian army that an officer shall be saluted at all times. Had any one of these soldiers stopped to speak to me, the hopelessness of my predicament would have overcome my wits, I am sure, for at that time I knew scarcely any Russian at all. I certainly could not have understood or answered a single sentence. I was saved the embarrassment of such a situation, however, through the fact that the discipline of the Russian army is such that no soldier would think of addressing an officer until he was spoken to. Secure in this knowledge, I did not hesitate to go among the men even when unaccompanied by one of my officer friends.