CORRUPTION AND MUTINY.

Feilding Star, Volume XXVII, Issue 39, 8 September 1905, Page 4

CORRUPTION AND MUTINY.

The lvpurt. of Admiral Roundest veiitski to thy Czar on the battle of Tsushima, which has hitherto been mppresfiul, hrn at hist leaked out, and h a wwy sad document for all the friends of Russia. Tbe Admiral attributes bis defeat to the condition ! of his squadrons, due to diihongity of the builders, to tbe ineapaoty of the crews, and to the spirit of ! mutiny among the seamen. In il lustration of the first point, he affirms tbat on none of the v«?aels did the armourplating correspond with the official figures, while of the shells two-thirds would not explode. Tbe second source of failure was so bad that two thirds of the crew were incapable of performing the duties required of them. As to the third cnuao of the defeat, the Admiral had to quell a mutiny off Madagasdar by fourteen executions, and in Admiral Nebogatoff's squadron the mutineers nearly became masters. Hi? own squadrons, indeed, had agreed, when oil' Madagascar, to deliver themselves up to the Japanese, and in tbe battle of Tsushima Admiral Nebogatoll's men seom to have hesitated to fire, while tbe men of the united squadrons, after Rozhdestven?ky had received his wound and Nebogatoff had taken command, ro fused to fight. No such record has ever been written of the condition of a fleet, and it suggests a degree of corruption, tyrauay, anl incapacity in the naval administration of Russia which it almost incredible. The taint thus officially admitted is indeed so deep and so widespread that it is hardly pos.-ibla, in spite of the splendid self-sacrifice shown in many battles, to believe that the military administration has entirely e.-caped the infection. The whole system of national defence must have begun to ! rot before such evils could have grown up under it.