AN AUSTRIAN CAPTAIN ON THE RUSSIAN NAVY.

Press, Volume XLI, Issue 6118, 28 April 1885, Page 3

AN AUSTRIAN CAPTAIN ON THE RUSSIAN NAVY.

During the visit of the Mayor and Aldermen of Sydney to the Austrian man-of-war,. Saida,. at Sydney, the converpation with her commander not unnaturally turned upon the somewhat perilous times in which we are living, and the result of what Captain Fayenz said must a decidedly diminishing rather than magnifying tendency upon any apprehensions at present entertained of a visit to Australia by Busman cruisers. Ihe "Evening News" says:—"ln" the first place, as to this powerful Eussian fleet reported in various places, from the Cape of Good Hope to Cape Howe, with a misty appearance at Backstairs passage, Captain Fayenz simply laughed consumedly at the notion of there being anything to fear about it. The vessels comprising it are small and old-faehioned (he saw some of them himself at the Cape), and the Nelson alone could blow the whole lot out of the water, 'and- even,' said the captain, 'if the gentlemen of the Nelson happened not to be in Fort Jackson, and the Roesiane ran the gauntlet of your batteries, and got into your harbor (which they might do at night), they would be very useful to you afterward for commercial or other purposes, for they would never get out again.* The captain evidently thinks that, despite our batteries, there should be no groat difficulty in any steamer dodging them so far as to get inside them; but, as he says, that would be all the worse for the steamer. But on the Anglo-Eussian question Captain Fayenz and several of his officers went even further than this, and said plainly that they did not think Bussia meant fighting in the long run, but was merely bullying as far as she could go, knowing that a constitutional governed nation like Britain will always make peace even at the last moment if her enemy gives indications of a fair desire for peace."