WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1904.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 101, 26 October 1904, Page 4

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1904.

THE DOGGER BANK TRAGEDY.

Ifc would be difficult to uame any naval j incident — we cannot say any incident of I naval warfare — since the Battle of Trafalgar which has so astounded the world as. the performance which was opened by i Russia's Baltic fleet at midnight on the ninety-ninth anniversary of that famous fight. And as the world was much smaller in those days, and got its news piecemeal and at long intervals, the immediate moral effect upon the world at large of the greatest naval victory of all time was not so great as that of the tragedy upoD the Dogger Bank which, by the aid of the ekctric telegraph, has been able, as the American press says, to | " fairly stagger the world at once." The world has had another twenty-four hours since we last wrote to think and speculate upon the subject, but ib is still wrapped in the same inscrutaHe mystery. "What inspired a squadron of twenty ships to fire upon the fishing fleet of a friendly Power thousands of miles away from the seat of war? To what does Russia owe her most notable naval success since her Vladivostock squadron succeeded in sinking the Knight Commander three months ago? In the latter case the vessel was at least accused, though not according to law, of carrying contraband, and the triumph was a bloodless one, but in the North Sea murder has been added to piracy, and not even a. Russian Admiral could have mistaken the luckless tsawlers on the Dogger Bank either for Togo's squadron, which if his plates hold together he may sight in five months, or for a fleet of merchantmen' carrying contraband to Yokohama. The German press, adopting Admiral Fremantle's theory of panic, suggests "incompetence or vodka" as the special cause, and the. Pall Mall Gazette, in language quite unnecessarily lurid, desires to have ''the gang of panic-stricken and probably drunken officers" brought to book. If it had been the case of a single vesselXmisbehariour, drunkenness or lunacy on the part of her commander would have been a natural conjecture, but it is beyond belief that twenty commanders can have been taken at the same time in the same way, and the mistaks of one or two must have been atoned for by the others, at any rate to the extent of their delaying to give what help they could in repairing the mischief. If, however, the mistake were originally that of a subordinate, it has clearly been condoned and adopted by the Admiral himself, for the fleet acted as one, and the unfortunate fishermen, after being brilliantly lit up by the searchlights, were deliberately bombarded for half an hour by a squadron which slowed down for the purpose. One vessel is actually said" to have been detached from the squadron to watch the

results, and to hajje steamed on without offering assistance after waiting till 6 o'clock. Some light •is thrown on the - panic- theory by the report of the Danish "pilot, w4io was on board the Russian flagship, that "he never caw such panicstricken sailors and commanders," but if they were really dreading Japanese mines in the Kattegat, and afterwards went. .sixty miles out of their course to meet them or evade them on the fishing grounds, the nursery, the lunatic a«ylum l or the museum is the proper place for such men, an« not the open sea. After trying every conceivable theory and making every conceivable allowance, the whole story remains so incredible that the British Government is very wise to take the preqaution of having every available scrap of evidence preserved. The bodies of the victims, with knives and pieces of fish in their hands, have been photographed to show that the poor fellows were not engaged in works of war, and the fragments of shell will help to disprove any alibi which the criminals concerned may ■endeavour to set up. The position of the British Government is now one of terrible responsibility, and one is not surprised to hear of conferences between the Premier, the Minister for War, and Admiral Seymour, nor of Lord Beresford being ordered to coal the Channel Squadron, at Gibraltar, and await orders there with steam up. Few of the Baltic fleet would survive to sink any more British trawlers if Lord Beresford presently gets his orders to cut them off ; but we have no such fear. Not only is British opinion absolutely united on the subject, King Edward, " the Peacemaker," and Lloyd George, the pro-Boer, joining with the Jingoes in resenting "the unwarrantable action of Russia," but European opinion, and indeed the opinion of the whole civilised world, Germany included, is to the same effect; and when Russia is allowed to know what it is, she cannot but yield to it. The Tsar, now more than ever the unhappiest man in Europe, is reported as much sh6cked at the news, but it is studiously kept back by the folly of the censor from the press and the people, and allowance must be made for this in our estimate of their attitude to the subject. Russia's difficulties are aggravated by division in her councils, but unless the fire-eaters, who have often ignored Count Lamsdorff's pacific advice and deliberately ignored him hi the matter of the Smolensk's commission, are prepared to sacrifice every man and vessel of the Baltic fleet, they must yield to him for once and avert disaster by the fullest apology and reparation.