And we find that we can throw a ball on the Minie principle with equal
precision twice as far. This will double the force of all our batteries.'
'Are _you_,' he asked me, 'among those who have taken shares in the
Russian railways?'
'No,' I said. 'They are the last that I wish to encourage.'
'Englishmen or Frenchmen,' he answered, 'who help Russia to make
railways, put me in mind of the Dutch who sold powder to their besiegers.
'The thinness of her population--that is, the vast space over which it is
scattered--alone prevents Russia from being the mistress of Europe. If
her 64,000,000 were as concentrated as our 34,000,000 are, she would be
irresistible. She loses always far more men in marching than in
fighting.'
'The events of the war,' I said, 'lead me to believe that the goodness of
the Russian soldier is exaggerated. They were always beaten, often by
inferior numbers.'
'In the first place,' he answered, 'those who were beaten at Sebastopol
were not the best Russian soldiers. They were short small men, generally
drawn from the neighbouring provinces. The Russian Imperial Guards and
the Russian Army in Poland are far superior to any that we encountered in
the Crimea.
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