ing arms for twenty years, serving twelve years in active service in special Cossack regiments and eight in special regiments under the command of local officers. The Cossack soldier differs from other soldiers also in the matter of equipment. He himself provides his picturesque uniform-the high fur cap papaha; the blue, crimson, or green kaftan (a three-quarter belted coat); and his small arms. If he belongs to the cavalry, he provides also his own horse and saddle.

Every Cossack is a born horseman. Before he can walk he has sat on one of the small, strong, and swift Cossack horses-the real horses of the steppe, therefore almost wild and extraordinarily intelligent. The Cossack saddle, too, high and narrow, is essentially the saddle of men used to spending days, and not only hours, on horseback. From an early age also the Cossack learns to handle firearms, and every boy waits with impatience for the day when he will be eighteen and will begin his service as a full-blown Cossack soldier. Removed as they are from the ordinary population, possessing unique rights, bearing arms for so many years, and growing up with only one career in view, it is only natural that the Cossacks should have but one idea, and that is to serve faithfully and blindly the Government which has always shown itself considerate and generous towards them. They are far less civilized in many ways than other Russian. peasants, for, the communities having remained isolated for centuries, their traditions of hostility to other "camps " have not been greatly modified by outside influence.

In aspect they are picturesque, and have retained the characteristics which have belonged to the Cossacks for centuries. As a rule, they intermarry among their own kind.

They are in general larger than the average Russian. Strongly built and bearded, with high cheek-bones and the far-seeing eye of the steppe dweller, fierce, excitable, and ruthless, used to physical fatigue and hardship, indifferent to pain and suffering both where he himself and others are concerned-such is the Cossack.

In time of war the Cossacks supply Russia with 900 squadrons of cavalry and 108 companies of infantry with 236 guns-that is, with over 180,000 soldiers, 150,000 of them invaluable for reconnoitering service. It is natural that men such as are the Cossacks, strong and courageous, with an inherited instinct for

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guerrilla warfare-a method which even now plays such an important part in every war-should add considerably to the success of the army to which they are attached.

IV-COSSACK WOMEN

The heroic act of the Belgian women who defended their homes against the German invaders, resorting to boiling water when their ammunition gave out, has a historical parallel which will no doubt be of interest at the present time.

In this case the defenders were Cossack women, and the scene of the encounter a small town not far from the Sea of Azov.

In 1774, during the first Turkish war, the town of Naaur was being besieged by nine thousand Tartars-a large army in those days. All the men of the town had left for the war, which was proceeding at some distance, and the town remained undefended save for a handful of soldiers. It had, however, the advantage of being surrounded by a wall, and was well supplied with ammunition. The enemy imagined that they would only have to overcome a very few soldiers and the town would be theirs. Instead, to their amazement, they had to face an army of women, young and old, arrayed in their best red sarafans, fully armed, and eager to fight. And these women not only defended the walls of their town, but they sallied out and fought valiantly in hand-to-hand skirmishes. They also tended enormous fires and heated pitch and boiling water to pour on the heads of their enemies when they approached the walls of the town. The story goes that not only did they pour water and pitch on the foe, but the broth that was cooking for dinner went the same way.

That was the first experience the Cossack women had of "active service." Later it became a tradition and a custom that in battles the women should take their share of actual fighting. And during the continual raids and battles which occurred they became expert soldiers, standing side by side with old warriors and often helping with less usual weapons, such as scythes and pitchforks.

The Cossack. woman of to-day has retained her traditions, and she is not only independent and generally efficient, but she is also often an excellent shot, and is quite capable of defending her village, if necessary, as fiercely as her ancestress.

WO British Units. Two sovereigns join hands at the head of the British army and navy in the greatest danger that Great Britain has experienced since the days of Napoleon. King George V is a descendant of William the Conqueror; he is Plantagenet, Tudor, Stuart, and Guelph at the same time. He stands for the traditions of nine glorious centuries-he is the living squire at arms of Edward the Black Prince, the knight of Henry VIII, the standardbearer of William of Orange.

The second element of England's rule is the uncrowned king chosen from time to time to be chairman of a committee called the Ministry. Just now it is King Asquith, whose claim to royal power is that through him speak the manufacturers, the vesselowners, the mine operators, the bankers, the capitalists, and the larger circles of workers with their hands, tools, and machines-in a word, he represents the people of England.

The forces of England's tradition and prestige and family pride and titled honors on one side, and those of capital and labor on the other, are closely knit together in the national struggle which is becoming one for existence. England's part in that struggle can be understood only in the light of the relations between royalty and commonalty. How far does the British royal family represent or lead the British Empire in this crisis? How far does the power of Parliament, acting through its Ministry, of which the spokesman is the Premier, fit into the needs of the war?

The Stuarts and Parliament. The place of the Crown in the English Government goes back to 1485, when Richmond with his sword made himself Henry VII, first Tudor king. Thereafter there has been orderly succession; but in two instances the crown passed into a new royal house-to the Stuarts in 1603, to the Guelphs in 1714. All the Tudors (except poor little Edward VI) were strong, positive people, with faults that stood out like wens; but they had their virtues also. We can forgive Henry VIII a wife or two because of the popular saying, King Harry loved a Man.' Elizabeth

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swore at the bishops and cut off noble heads and persecuted the Catholics and disturbed the Puritans; but she was always an Englishwoman in the midst of a nation whom she recognized as kinsfolk.

Her successors, the Stuarts, have had a bad name in history, because they were trying to do what their Continental neighbors accomplished. Nearly all the European kings of the seventeenth century had estates, or vestiges of them, in which nobles and cities claimed a share in the government. While James I was floundering in an effort to get on without Parliaments his French neighbor, Louis XIII, ceased to summon his States-General. King Ferdinand of Bohemia cut off the heads of the proudest Protestant nobles not long before the English cut off the head of Charles I.

Half a century later, when James II undertook to be a little Louis XIV, and to repeal laws without consulting Parliament, he found that King Commons was more powerful than King James. When in 1688 Parliament deposed James and put William and Mary on the throne, it was establishing a new principle in European government-the supremacy of the Right of Representatives over Divine Right. The next question was, Can Parliament protect the realm against enemies and keep order within? Would it prove that it could both govern and fight?

The Guelphs. Into the midst of this popular government was inducted a new royal family in 1714. Under the Act of Settlement of 1701, the King must be a Protestant and a descendant of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, granddaughter of James I. That narrowed down to George I, Elector of Hanover, and scion of the ancient house of Guelph. inally the word Guelf or Welf was applied to foreigners, to outsiders-non-society men, so to speak. Then it became a royal family, German from bark to core. Hanover was simply one of the dull and arbitrary little courts of Germany, and George did not relish the transfer to a foreign land; as long as he lived he was still in heart and in fact Elector of Hanover.

There is something droll in this Germani

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mons so willed. To this régime George IV, the "First Gentleman in Europe," easily accommodated himself. Under his successor, William IV, "the sailor prince," the final stage was reached; it became an unwritten law of the Medes and Persians that the Ministry was a solid body, which would resign if the House of Commons voted down a ministerial proposition, and must resign if the Opposition showed a majority.

England's Defense. When the Guelphs first came in, Great Britain was a weak power with only eight million inhabitants. In 1789, notwithstanding the loss of the thirteen American colonies, England was a world power with many distant dependencies, holder of Gibraltar, and mother of navies. In the five European wars from 1689 to 1789 England had come forward as the greatest naval power in the world, and at times swept. the French from the seas.

With this prestige England entered the wars arising from the French Revolution, and for twenty-two years, from 1793 to 1815, knew only a year and a half of peace. For the first time in ages the danger of invasion loomed up before the British people. For more than a year Napoleon kept an army at Boulogne ready to cross if the plaguy British navy could be put out of commission. It was just such a crisis as that of 1914. The Guelphs rendered no service to their country in this crisis. It was King Premier that organized and directed the fleets. It was Admiral Lord Nelson, under command of the Ministry, who in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 swept away the French fleet and saved England. It was the Ministry that concentrated the forces of the country, selected Wellington, sent him to Spain, and began the long process of wearing down Napoleon.

Victorian Government. The first Guelph to strike the popular imagination was Victoria, who came to the throne, a girl of eighteen, in 1837. She quickly encountered King Premier in the rather chilly personality of Lord Melbourne. The spirited young Queen resented it that the ladies of her bedchamber had to be changed when a new Ministry came into power. At various times she took. a direct share in public affairs. Lord Palmerston drew down her wrath by cordially recognizing the Second Empire of France in 1852 without submitting the despatches to her. All good Americans believe-probably with reason that Queen

Victoria and her Consort, Prince Albert, interfered to lighten the tenor of the instructions to the British Minister in Washington over the Trent episode in 1861. Certain it is that Thurlow Weed, at the house of Lord Russell, a member of the Ministry, was approached by Lady Russell with the remark: "Ladies, you know, are not supposed to have any knowledge of public affairs. But we have eyes and ears, and sometimes use them. In these troubles about the taking of some men from under the protection of our flag, it may be some encouragement to you to know that the Queen is distressed at what she hears, and is deeply anxious for an amicable settlement."

The only European war in which England was a party between 1815 and 1914 was that against Russia in 1854. For the first time in ages French and British troops fought side by side instead of face to face. With the alliance of little Sardinia, the warring forces penetrated to the south coast of Russia and hammered the fortified post of Sebastopol till it surrendered.

Victoria was English to the core, yet singularly German in habits and outlook. She had a German sense of good womanhood and performed a service to the world in showing that a Court could be decent. She courted and married a capital GermanAlbert of Saxe-Coburg. When he was once assailed as being a "Papist," he indignantly replied that he was the lineal descendant of the first Protestant who ever protested. Victoria's eldest daughter married the Crown Prince of Prussia, later the Emperor Frederick. Various alliances came later between children and grandchildren of Victoria and scions of German houses. Her second son, the Duke of Edinburgh, accepted the dukedom of SaxeCoburg, which would have been his father's, and died the head of that little German state.

Edward VII and the Triple Entente. Victoria seemed a British permanence-like the clock on the Houses of Parliament or the Beefeaters at the Tower. She fitted admirably into the Parliamentary system, and was stately with the successive Prime-Minister-Kings Derby, Aberdeen, Disraeli, Gladstone, and Salisbury. The Queen said that Gladstone "always speaks to me as though I were a public meeting." She was a good sort of presidress; yet it hardly seems to have entered her royal mind that the Sovereign of Great Britain must do something to save her country.

The English military men and statesmen

saw the steady growth of universal military service on the Continent. They watched the wondrous German military machine mowing a swath across Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866, and France in 1870. They stood by while Italy and Germany consolidated, armed, and built navies. Yet the only lesson which they seemed to take to heart was the awful danger from a possible Channel tunnel, through which legions of troops would rush. to capture London-a tunnel which at this moment might be worth a hundred thousand men to England.

The practical effect of the new military system of Europe was to compel Great Britain to maintain a fleet equal to that of any other two Powers-which came to mean that it must equal that of Germany and Italy or Germany and Russia. The Prince of Wales can take no part in politics. A popular conundrum compared Victoria to a Scotch mist because it reigns and reigns and never gives the sun a chance." When Edward VII came to the throne in 1901, he showed a statesmanlike view of the critical situation. Heused his remarkable personal gifts, journeyed overseas to confer and suggest lines of policy, and was the first King since George III to show himself a power alongside King Premier.

The first step of this far-seeing Guelph was, in conjunction with the Ministry, to propose a mutual understanding with France. That country had already an alliance with Russia. Possibly Mademoiselle suggested that it would be nice to ask her big bearded friend to the party. At any rate, the three Powers in 1909 united in an agreement; in form it went no further than a promise that, in case matters arose which interested them all, each Power would consult with the others before taking action.

Wars and Alliances. Meantime the English had on their hands the Boer War of 1899, in which a rude Teutonic folk set themselves against English control and influence and taught the significant lesson that 75,000 Boers in arms could resist all the available armies of England for two years and a half. What was the world coming to if rough and untutored frontiersmen, armed with modern weapons, could resist one of the greatest Powers of Europe? Emperor William of Germany aroused the wrath of the English by a cheering message to "Oom Paul" Kruger, head of the Boers. Nevertheless the two and a half years of war de(Continued on page following illustrations!