Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/118

106 "The police will accomplish nothing, for he will not come."

"Why not?" queried the indignant judge. "They will compel him to come."

"They will have to bring him," the Georgian mumbled.

"How so?"

"Because I killed him this morning."

And in addition there was still one more cause which helped to people Siberia with unwilling colonists from Georgia—the primordial warlike custom of attacking neighbouring tribes and villages to rob them of horses and cattle and to carry off their women. This practice, looked upon by the djighits in the light of knightly valour, has persisted in the Caucasus from time immemorial.

The Georgians, with their really passionate love of freedom, cannot be kept long in prison or under compulsory labour. Somehow they always manage to escape and hide themselves away in the nooks and corners of towns from which they stage their bold robbing expeditions. During the Russo-Japanese War there sprang up and flourished a special Georgian band, which became a terror not only to the Japanese but also to the Chinese population, even harassing small Russian detachments, particularly those convoying army-supply trains. In every town in the Far East there were restaurants, inns and buffets kept by Georgians in good standing, which were made the hiding-places of their countrymen, wanted by the law and the police, and from which these banditti carried out their operations. As almost all the Georgians came from families belonging to an old knightly nobility, a djighit never lowered himself to be a common thief nor attacked a lone and disarmed man. Every Georgian expedition must be crowned with a battle and with blood. This characteristic naturally left the Russian police with