Assuredly this is not the Cossack of legendary fame, the “implacable knout” of the czars. It requires almost courage, in the face of the savage of literary tradition, to assert that the Cossack is other than a dehumanized monster of oppression. Why then did he cut down with utter ruthlessness the helplessly frozen grenadiers of the Grande Armée? Why will he massacre indiscriminately men, women, and children on his path from Tien-tsin to Peking? Why will he beat with his knotted whip the striking girl students of Kiev? Who shall tell? To a certain extent he is callous to suffering because of a defective imagination. He will ride his best horse to death if need be. Loving it, he will yet leave it out in weather forty below. He is cruel, often, because he has not the substituting gift needed to translate another’s suffering into terms of his own. He is valorous because, even so far as regards himself, he cannot think beyond the immediate privation into the future of imaged dread, so he goes fearlessly into unpondered peril. He offends the traditional ideas of humanity and civilization in killing people, because of his failure to recognize a wider radius of sympathy than circles his own tribe. But if the tribe circumscribes his idea, the nation circumscribes the sympathies of others who make tariffs to crush an extra-national industry and raise armies to destroy a foreign liberty. But if outside the Cossack’s recognized circle, you are to him beyond the pale, in his home, you are, _ipso facto_, a member of the tribe, a brother in whose defense he will gayly risk his life, and spend his substance. The deeds that are recalled to the Cossack’s discredit often fall for judgment really to those who plan and issue the orders which loyalty makes him obey. Where his allegiance has been once given, there it remains. His _hataman_ is more than a superior officer; he is the chief of the clan, the head of all the tribe, and the subordinate is united to him by the traditions of centuries of mutual dependence. Where other than blood-kin officers are put over the Cossack he mutinies, as when, in Manchuria, Petersburg-schooled lieutenants were drafted and raised to command. But give him his own rightful chief, then if the Cossack is told to do something it is done. He will cross himself and jump from the tower, as in Holland did Peter the Great’s guardsman at the word of the chief to whom he had given his loyalty. The savage valor of the warriors in Verestchagin’s picture, _The Cossack’s Answer_, is typical of the spirit of these soldiers. Surrounded by battalions of the foe, fated to annihilation when the summons to surrender is rejected, the leaders, laughing uproariously in approval, hear their _hataman_ dictate the insulting reply that dooms them all. If one would ride to China he can have no better guards and comrades than the Cossacks.