ROZHESTVENSKY AND TOGO

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21940, 14 November 1936, Page 13

ROZHESTVENSKY AND TOGO

THE BATTLE OF THE STRAITS Tsushima. By A. Norikofl-Priboy. Translated from the Russian by Eden and Cedar Paul. Allen and Unwin. 407 pp. (16s net.) This book was first published in Russia in two parts, which had an enormous sale; the two are printed with “trifling condensations here and there” in this translation by Mr and ftflxs Paul, in whose English it makes an absorbing but terrible narrative. The one apparent defect traceable to them is an occasional stiffness and awkwardness. When the exclamatory, disjointed speech of the sailors is reproduced. One expects ah idiom as natural as, no doubt, the Russian was. The author was a paymaster s steward on the ironclad Oryol, one of the Russian Second-Pacific Squadron whiph blundered round the world to engage the, Japanese fleet and relieve the pressure in Manchuria but was helplessly battered and defeated in the Strait of Tsushima; His voluminous first-hand notes, compiled with the aid of suryivors from nearly all the ship's, were destroyed after a political disturbance in the Japanese internment camp; his second compilation was hidden and lost in Russia for years; at last Ihe notes were retrieved, and the material was “renovated” by further enquiries and discussions. There is no other book quite like the one that results: an account, from a multitude of witnesses, of the assembling, fitting, voyage, action, and fate of a fleet, doomed from the first by inefficiency and blind ignorance in, the highest places. The shameful episode of the Dogger Bank, when British trawlers were mistaken for Japanese torpedo boats and bombarded, promised the mistakes of the battle, when Russian mistook Russian ship for Japanese and the whole engagement was fought ds confusedly as if there had been no high command, no strategic plan, no directing intelligence. Rozhestvensky never consulted his staff, never issued any but one general order, vague and useless, be-, fore the battle, issued only two orders, ineffectually, during the battle, and made a disastrously bad arrangement for the devolution of command, if he and his flagship Suvoroff should be put out of action. The Russians could not shoot straight, for few ships even had gunnery practice. The Japanese ships were scarcely marked by their opponents. The commanders were most of them incompetent men, who did not know how to work their own ships and cared nothing for the specially trained officers who under-r stood modern ironclads and their equipment. But the fleet was a mixed one, in which modern units were hampered by obsolescent. Yet even the new ones were imperfectly equipped. None had more than two Barr-Stroud range-finders, for example, and the system of fire-con-trol was faulty. The discipline was often bad and the crews were discouraged by knowing how poorly they were led and trained. Fear of the outcome of battle together with the spread of revolutionary opinions sent the Russians forward in a very unfit temper. Yet the pages of this book are often remarkable as records of individual henoism and collective devotion. In painful ' contrast are those which recount the surrender of the destroyer Bqdqyyi, under Vho had on board Admiral fffi|hestvensky and the remnanSs of .laji Staff. Tables and maps assist the careful reader.