"THE KILLING OF A COUPLE OF FISHERMEN."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12698, 29 October 1904, Page 1 (Supplement)

"THE KILLING OF A COUPLE OF FISHERMEN."

[BY tohuxga.]

"It would be ridiculous to go to war over the killing of a couple of fishermen.": Thus the officials of the Russian Admiralty. Fitting imply, of the Tartar to the suave

suggestion—that stuck like a fish bono in

the throat of our Parliament—" that none will regret the untoward event more than the Tsar of Russia and tho Russian na-

tion." For which narrowness of Saxon gullet, inuoh thanks! It left us in bettor humom to acknowledge the fore© of the soft answer wherewith the Tartar would turn away our Wrath.

Ridiculous indeed! For what are "a couple of fishermenV" ' Nameless men, whose living of dying is of no concern to the mighty, any more than is the living or dying of baited Jews in Kirschnieff, of Poles in Warsaw, of Swedes in Finland, of the millions upon millions of victims of official insolence and cruelty throughout, the realm of the Tsar. Say no more about it! My lordship has unfortunately shot a couple of your lordship's pheasants! An, incident to bo settled while we crack our walnuts and sin our wine! There we have the Russian attitude. ' .None will regret more,, etc.," was a remarkaole forecast. Can you not picture the scene! Over tho Dogger Bank the lifting moon of midnight; and the foamless water heaving on the shallows as the North Sea draws 'long breath for tho November gales! Above tho mackerel sky of autumn and the gray goose winging its. secret flight from the chasing Winter of the Far North! And the gray pixm looks upon the lights of England, clown to the westward, upon the glow of city lamps and the gleam of lighthouse and beacon, and the twinkling points that tell of sick-beds and of birthbeds and of death-beds, and the moving glitter of ceaseless trains! And beneath ; him the gray goosie sees the tossing signals of English trawlers and hears tho hum of English voices, a:u.d the rattle of English gear' Ami coming down, across the heaving waters of the Dogger Bank he sees the 1 warships of Russia, steaming sullenly into the track of the trawlers, bringing the methods of tho Tsar into English fishinggrounds! Then, without word or warning —unless perchance it be by signalled Russian, that: all Englishmen will have to learn sihoui'd tho Tsar become their master —battle, thunder, and flame! Flash of cannon and shriek of shell, and roar of explosion! Murder suddenly unmasked. The Tartar raiding. A lino of battle formed against unarmed fishing boats, of friendly nation, guiltless of ail offence. The lesson, given to fly the path of the Russian, and the warships steam on after the gray goose, southward. Only one of them, remains—to help, think you, to prove that "non« will regret the untoward event more, etc." Not much! To watch what happens through the night, and to rejoin th& Tartar "horde in the morn. '■:■].

\ The English language contains words j which express with some degree of accuracy our English feelings. But they are not printable. " Untoward event" will do as well as any other. It is as close as we need get to publicly stating what we think —until our Engliiili sailors take the Tartar by the beard. "The thought of the Dogger Bank has stirred the Berserk. Without doubt, if war comes ; now, we have already won— any single English cruiser would ask no greater gift than to bo allowed to fling herself alone J upon the whole Baltic fleet and drag - all : she could clutch with her to Valhalla. ..To the Russian, "only a couple of fishermen," seems ridiculous. To the British, it ii; as though the whole world had been set afire.

Shaft 1 we never understand it? How much shall we have to suffer, how much to endure, how much to learn, before we realise and understand that Russia is Asiatic, as utterly heathen as when Genghis Khan came over it, as en-tire' savage as Dahomey or Aehantee? Whereever it comes, all liberty perishes, all human progress dies. It annihilates all freedom of thought, of word,; of action. It makes of all in authority" tyrants and •all civilians as dust under their fleet. "Only a couple of fishermen 1" speaks the Tartar from the bottom of his heart.

In international crisis we may appeal to France, to Germany, to America, not to shame humanity, not to become as the beasts. But we might as well appeal to the tigers against the killing of a lamb by a tiger an to the Russians against their official murder of our English fishermen. What can they care, who have turned over jto sleep unconcerned when young girls were dragged from their beds and set barefoot on the road to Siberia for daring to wonder if freedom were not possible, even in Russia, who have shrugged their shoulders when cannon-balls crashed into unarmed crowds that sympathised with factory strikers, who have looked on and laughed when the tortured Jew cried to them for protection? Is it not mildness to think that thev will care the snap of a thumb for our English murdered, or feel one throb of indignation at the slaughter of humble fishermen that dared to trawl in the path of the ships of the Tsar? They would have considered it a natural thing, this vilhiny, had the fishermen been Russians. Why should they think it unnatural and evil because the fishermen were English? It is the way of the Tartar, that is all.. We have been given a taste of it. Why should the Russian think it Dad for us when it is quietly submitted to throughout every square inch of most unholy Russia? The North Sea murders are extraordinary only to us ; to the Russian they are the most ordinary of happenings? regrettable if his attack upon unarmed British fishermen leads to an attack upon him by armed British sailormen. Uninfluenced by fear, of such vengeance he would not dream of making reparation. Whatever comes he will believe that he has beevi taken at disadvantage by perfidious and treacherous Albion, whe made an excuse to wreak an ancient grudge. For he is savage, brutal, about as capable of understanding our feeling as we are of understanding his. It is "only a couple of fishermen." We are told that we should not blame the Russian people. Why not? The}' are governed as they deserve to be, under institutions which suit them, or they would not have them, with a hideous indifference to all that we hold sacred, a contemptuous scorn for all the rights that we regard as fundamental. This Tsar of theirs, whom those Englishmen who love every country but their own have landed to the sky, is tt tyrant whom every freeman must hate ; and yet he is clear "to the Russian heart which conceives slavery and tyranny to be the necessary condition? of all men. And one by one". State by State, they have crushed the Slavonic and Teutonic peoples of the Baltic to the level of (heir own degradation, as they would crush us if they were strong enough, or if wo were afraid to resist them. And we are told not to condemn them.

Frankly, the Russian people if? not fib to exist as a State and a Power, is not fit to carry arms, is not fit to have warsbins on the seas or cannon in its forts. Wo might as well allow the Turk to sail across English fishing grounds or the Malay pirate to carry his craft into Auckland Harbour. For the Russian is a low and degraded savage, whose national strength is directed to the distraction of fill free institutions, and to {.he subjugation of the earth to the will of his wretched despot. We may hum and haw about it, but that is the 'truth. Only a couple of fishermen" would he the final verdict if these murders were left i>> Russia, and the world mav well s>ve thanks on its knees that the fishermen belonged to a people not only eager, but able to avensrc them, and to make this an "untoward event" even for Russia. For whether we have peace now or war, the spilling of this innocent blood will not Ik 1 forgotten or forgiven until the flag of the Tsar is driven from the waters and the seas made safe for all honest men.