PRESS COMMENTS.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 130, 29 November 1904, Page 5

PRESS COMMENTS.

(Received November 29, 9.43 a.m.) LONDON, 28th November. . The Times and most of the newspapers consider the North Sea Convention thoroughly satisfactory. According to previous cable messages, the Convention provides for the appointment of a Board of naval officers—British, Russian, American, and French— .who will themselves choose a fifth. If they disagree in tho selection, the King of some other neutral country will select the fifth Commissioner. The Commission will sit in Paris as soon as possible. It will report on all the circumstances of the disaster, establish the responsibility for firing on the trawlers, and settle the subsequent procedure. The parties to the Convention agree to supply all the necessary information and facilities for the purposes of the enquiry. It was subsequently announced that the Russian Admiralty refused to communicate Admiral Rozhd.cstvcnsky's reports or authorise the officers of the Baltic Fleet to testify unless a clause empowering the Commission to ascertain the responsibility and allot the blame of the officers concerned was deleted. A serious crisis continued for sevdral days. Ultimately Count Beckendorff made it clear to St. Petersburg that if Russia receded from an engagement which tho Tsar had sanctioned Britain would take the matter into her own hands, and Count Lamsdorff induced the Admiralty to agree to a modification of the agreement empowering the Commission to determine whether the persons concerned in the incident — of whatever nationality — deserved blame and were to be held responsible, this excluding a prima facie presumption of Russian culpability. „ . -. I