GREAT-HEARTED ENGLAND.

Bush Advocate, Volume XXI, Issue 118, 17 November 1908, Page 5

GREAT-HEARTED ENGLAND.

LONDON, September 18. Whatever we think* of the business capacity of the English people, nobody can fail to admire the largehearted open-handed generosity of nation. The little island is not merely the -unfortunate refuge of the scum and dregs of Europe; it is also the proiid sanctuary of the intellectual fugitive and the exiled patriot. The general public here probably know as little as the citizens of New Zealand as to the rights and wrongs of the historic mutiny of the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin in the Black Sea three years ago. The crew, it will be remembered, took the ship to sea and effected a landing on. the coast of Roumania, where they obtained work in the factories or on tho land and made their homes. All went well for a while, but eventually, under pressure it is believed from Russia, the Roumanian Government began to make their position unpleasant, alleging that they were not members of the original crew of the Potemkin. At length they determined to leave the country, and started for London, with the intention of settling in a British colony. They were stranded on the German frontier for being destitute, and were eventually franked through by the German Social Democratic Party. They had more trouble at Hamburg with a shipping company which was inscrutably afraid that they would bo denied sanctuary in England under the Aliens Act. Tho Socialist Party again helped them through, and now they are penniless in London, lacking the £300 necessary to take them to a British colony/ A committee has been formed to look after them, and— there is no doubt whatever that they will be put on their feet in some free country. The committee say: "There is no doubt about their being desirable settlers. There are>32 men, strong, vigorous, healthy, all under 30 years of age, all of peasant extraction, and all good agriculturists. Their return to Russia is out of the question. All of them would be hanged if they returned to their country. On the other hand, it is just such workers that our colonies want." Is 'there another people in the world with such compassion P