An American doctor who offered his services to Russia because "Russia stuck to us during the Civil War," tells us that though the Germans are better rifle shots than the Russians, they cannot compare with the Tsar's soldiers when it comes to the bayonet. "When these moujiks,"[25] said the doctor, "climb out of their trenches and begin to sing their national songs they just go crazy, and they aren't scared of anything; and believe me, when the Germans see them coming across the fields bellowing these songs of theirs, they just don't wait one minute, but dig right out across the landscape as fast as they can tear. I don't think there's a soldier in the world that has anything on the Russian private for bravery. They are a stubborn lot, too, and will sit in trenches in all weathers, and be just as cheerful under one condition as another. One big advantage over here, as I regard it, is the good relations between the soldiers and their officers."
Mr. Washburn tells us[26] how the colonel of a Russian battery "had a great laugh on the enemy. What happened was this. A German Taube flew over the line several times, and it kept coming back so frequently, and hovering over the battery, that the officers who were watching it became suspicious that they had been 'spotted.' When darkness fell the men of the battery became extremely busy, and by working like bees moved their guns perhaps 600 yards to the south, and by daylight had them in the new positions and fairly well masked. Shortly after sunrise back came the aeroplane, and when over the old position it gave a signal to its own lines and then flew back. Almost instantly shells fell fast and thick on the abandoned spot. Six hundred yards away the men of the battery watched the shells falling, and laughed their sides out at the way they had fooled the Germans. . . . From glancing at the field torn up with shell fire one begins to realize what observation means to the enemy. With modern methods a single signal from an aeroplane may mean the wiping out in a few minutes of an unsuspecting battery that has been safely hidden for months."
[Footnote 25: _Moo´ziks_, Russian peasants.]
[Footnote 26: _The Russian Campaign, April to August_, 1915, by Stanley Washburn.]