"I was told that the German authorities," said the officer in charge of the victors, "do not openly encourage enlistment by women, but they do wink at it. The men in the trenches, the officers know perfectly well that this and that soldier is a woman, but they pretend not to know it officially." The Russians could not have been surprised at seeing women soldiers, however, because hundreds of women are apparently fighting in the armies of the Czar. Mme. Alexandra Koudasheva is the most distinguished woman soldier in the Russian army. She commands the Sixth Ural Cossack Regiment, which has covered itself with honors in many battles in East Prussia. Wounded twice, Mme. Koudasheva bears the Cross of St. George, that is given only for exceptional bravery, and many orders of inferior significance. She is back again to her regiment which consists of many Cossack woman volunteers, though the majority of the soldiers are men. A few more successful battles and Mme. Koudasheva will be promoted to a general. When the war began Mme. Koudasheva entered the army as a volunteer. She distinguished herself in daring raids on the German Uhlans, and was made a lieutenant, and soon thereafter a colonel of the same regiment in which her husband had served two years ago. During the two months that she has acted as a commander of the regiment she has given proof of exceptional strategic gifts and courage. She has never stood behind, but always in front, of her men. Naturally, no man likes to be surpassed by a woman, and this has given her company a reputation for unusual bravery. Colonel Koudasheva is by no means a semi-barbaric adventurer or a Salome who revels in bloodshed. She is a lady of highest culture and refinement. Besides being a talented poet and brilliant writer, she is a fine musician and a passionate lover of sports. She has made twice a trip on horseback from China, through Manchuria, Siberia and European Russia to Petrograd. She made the trip alone, and passed the most dangerous deserts of the two continents without having had any great difficulties. "I have felt just as safe in the wildest deserts of Siberia, as I do in the streets of Moscow or Petrograd, simply because I have absolute confidence in my ability to command the man, regardless do I meet him in a fashionable society of a big city, or as a highway robber in the wildest wilds. A woman--if she only knows her feminine powers--can conquer any man," thus writes Mme. Koudasheva in her "Diary of Ride Through Siberia." This is how she writes in a letter to a friend in New York of one of her adventures while she was still a lieutenant and was out to ascertain the strength of the enemy at night: