The Daily Express of Wednesday published the translation of a
letter received in Odessa from a soldier of the 71st Regiment now stationed at Lublin, ninety-six miles from Warsaw, which relates a most startling incident. The Brigadier commanding the station informed the regiment that it was ordered to the front, but that he was not going with it, whereupon he was saluted with cries of " Coward !" Furious at the insult, he ordered the nearest non-commis- sioned officer to tell him the names of those shouting, and on receiving an evasive answer, shot the corporal dead, and also the officer commanding the company. (The latter may, how- ever, have been unintentionally killed.) The soldiers there- upon flung themselves on the Brigadier, and literally tore him to pieces with their hands. The Colonel of the regiment summoned Cossacks to arrest the mutineers, but the soldiers treated them as enemies, killed thirty of them by rifle fire, and drove the remainder from the field. It was not till the next day that the General in command of the division, who was at Lublin, could rescue the body of the Brigadier, and even he had to make "a long and persuasive speech." If that story is not an invention, it indicates that in some Russian regiments at least the relations between officers and men are as strained as in the Navy.
