“It’s always better to be on the safe side.”
CHAPTER XX
A FIGHT WITH WILD COSSACKS IN POLAND
The leader of the villagers escorted his young guests to the largest house in the town, where immediate preparations were made for the finest dinner that German housewives—and there are no better!—could make. All of the townspeople who could crowd into the room did so, and both windows and the doorway were jammed with the curious faces of others who wanted to hear news of the Great War.
There were not stools enough to go around, so they all sat cross-legged on the floor and talked as they ate.
“First of all,” said Bob, “what is this place called and in what country is it?”
The question struck the simple villagers as being very funny and they all laughed uproariously.
“You will have to excuse us,” smiled the spokesman, “but we supposed that everybody had heard of Kolwinsk, which is the name of our town. You are now in East Prussia, about twenty miles over the boundary from Poland, and perhaps thirty or thirty-five miles from where the nearest fighting is going on. Lying this far to the northwest, we are out of the line of invasion and so far have been lucky enough to escape Russian raiding parties about which such terrible stories are told. They say that the Cossack horsemen have perpetrated the most inhuman atrocities. No village through which they pass is left unpillaged. They butcher or torture the aged in cold-blood, dash out the brains of babies against tree-trunks, and reduce the screaming, helpless women to worse than shame. If they resist, the Cossacks mutilate them in awful fashion.”
“Oh, I can hardly believe all that,” interposed Alan. “The Russians are civilized people.”
“Maybe so,” replied the village head-man with some heat, “but remember the old saying: ‘Scratch a Russian and you’ll find the Tartar underneath.’ This war has made brutish beasts of everyone taking part in it. Also remember that this Russian army is made up not only of full-blooded Russians, but also of Baltic Province men, Jews from Riga and Libau, huge, hairy Siberians, barbarous Circassians and Kalmuck Tartars, who are half Chinese—as mongrel and savage a horde as ever devastated a Christian country. But, of them all, the wild Cossack from the steppes is the worst and most to be dreaded. He knows no religion, no law, no pity, and couples with that a daring which even our own gallant Uhlans cannot surpass.”