The ways and means by which the provisions of the military statute were carried into effect during the reign of Nicholas I. we do not learn from official documents, which seem to have drawn a veil over this dismal strip of the past. Our information is derived from sources far more communicative and nearer to truth--the traditions current among the people. Owing to the fact that every Jewish community, at the mutual responsibility of all its members, was compelled by law to supply a definite number of recruits, and that no one was willing to become a soldier of his own volition, the Kahal administration and the recruiting "trustees," who had to answer to the authorities for any shortage in recruits, were practically forced to become a sort of police agents, whose function it was to "capture" the necessary quota of recruits. Prior to every military conscription, the victims marked for prey, the young men and boys of the burgher class, [1] very generally took to flight, hiding in distant cities, outside the zone of their Kahals, or in forests and ravines. A popular song in Yiddish refers to these conditions in the following words; [Footnote 1: Compare on the status of the burgher in Russian law Vol. I, p. 308, n. 2. Nearly all the higher estates were exempt.] _Der Ukas is arobgekumen auf judische Selner, Seinen mir sich zulofen in die puste Waelder..... In alle puste Waelder seinen mir zulofen, In puste Gruber seinen mir verlofen_..... Oi weih, oi weih!_....[1] [Footnote 1: When the ukase came down about Jewish soldiers, We all dispersed over the lonesome forests; Over the lonesome forests did we disperse, In lonesome pits did we hide ourselves.... Woe me, Woe!] The recruiting agents hired by the Kahal or its "trustees," who received the nickname "hunters" or "captors," [1] hunted down the fugitives, trailing them everywhere and capturing them for the purpose of making up the shortage. In default of a sufficient number of adults, little children, who were easier "catch," were seized, often enough in violation of the provision of the law. Even boys under the required age of twelve, sometimes no more than eight years old, were caught and offered as conscripts at the recruiting stations, their age being misstated. [2] The agents perpetrated incredible cruelties. Houses were raided during the night, and children were torn from the arms of their mothers, or lured away and kidnapped. [Footnote 1: More literally "catchers"; in Yiddish _Khappers_.] [Footnote 2: This was the more easy, as regular birth-registers were not yet in existence.]