THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1904. THE VIGO SETTLEMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12699, 31 October 1904, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1904. THE VIGO SETTLEMENT.

At the eleventh hour Russia gave way before the determined front of the British Government, with the result that a provisional settlement of the Baltic Fleet outrage has been arrived at. . This settlement is unmistakably a diplomatic triumph for Britain, although the London Standard may find many sympathisers in its protest against submitting such a case to an "international and mainly foreign tribunal." But it must be evident if we regard the question in a calm and judicial spirit that it would not be possible for a responsible British Government to refuse to submit a charge, so serious that we were prepared, to affirm it at the cannon's mouth, to the consideration of an international tribunal which our treaties declare and assume to be impartial and to voice international opinion. Mr. Balfour, speaking at Southampton, stated that Count Benckendorff, the Russian Ambassador to the British Court, had authorised the announcement "that Russia expressed profound regret on the discovery of the facts, and that any person found guilty by this tribunal will he thereafter tried and punished adequately." This, with compensation for the injuries inflicted and a guarantee that there will be no recurrence of the outrage, constituted the sum of the British demands. That Russia has acceded to them in actual fact and not by empty words alone is shown to the watching world by the fact that the division of the Baltic Fleet which perpetrated this unparalleled crime is detained in Vigo so that the offenders will nob escape nor the witnesses vanish. '• We must confess that in this lies our satisfaction with the settlement. However it may be veiled in diplomatic language, the world knows, as we know and as the Russian Government knows, that the piratical squadron is in custody awaiting trial. The trial may be unsatisfactory, Russian perjury so unblushing as to make the evidence conflicting, the finding uncertain and the ultimate punishment of the murderers utterly inadequate. But this will not obscure the lesson read aloud to the world that Russia was cowed by the thought of British ships converging in stem silence upon her Baltic Fleet, eager and able to annihilate it if the Dogger Bank murderers were withheld from justice. The settlement, as Mr, Balfour tell us it is, may be honourable to both Russia and England, but it is very far from honourable to the individuals who slaughtered innocent fishermen, found excuses in : lies and shrunk in Vigo from Beres- ! ford and his bluejackets. We may ! regard the crisis as over, fox the j International Court, to be constiI tuted under the Hague Agreement, | to which the incident is to be subi mitted, is not only presumably imI partial and intelligent, but will be | balanced, as Mr. Balfour pointed j out, by both the coroner's inquest ; and the Board of Trade inquiry. ! And the crisis is not only over, but lis over in a manner entirely satisfactory to the British peoples.

But though the crisis is over, though neutral rights have been thus far vindicated, we are only at the commencement of the international movement to which the tragedy of the Dogger Bank will give rise. Swedish, Norwegian, and German vessels have been fired upon by these Russian ships, whose admiral and officers have been publicly stigmatised by the British Premier,. Ihc-ir own Government tacitly acquiescing, as liars as well as murderers. The extraordinary story which these Rougemonts composed in order to cover their crime is so impossible that it is ridiculed in every civilised country. It has only served to emphasise the fact that the Muscovite is not only brutal beyond European conceptions, but that he is utterly untruthful and unreliable. Not a civilised man hesitates between the statements of our simple and humble English fisherfolk and the statements of aristocratic Russian officers, many of whom must have been received oil terms of social equality by English gentlemen. Whidi mcaiK-i that tb* world cannot go en depem. ; - ' vague and fined internatic u law, which assumes that all those who come I authoritatively into its field are humane a ; - * honourable men, Civilised nations must and will recognise that the Dogger Bank episode is only the blimax of the barbaric infringement of customary rights of neutrals in which Russia has been indulging since the war began. Now that'her submission to our demands has jo a considerable extent dissipate! the very reasonable supposition that Russia deliberately set the Baltib Fleet to perpetrate outrages that I would precipitate, war with Englind, it is increasingly probable that her admiral and captains only acted as even sober Russians imagined they had a right to act. For wifchdut Mr. Balfour's merciless exposure of the tissue of lies they afterwards fabricated it is absurd to supiKse that they thought them-

selves actually attacked by Japanese torpedo-boats, lot the last thing the Japanese would do would be to estrange British feeling by carrying war into what are practically British waters. The Russians appa* rently conceived, as they have evidently conceived all along, that belligerents have every right and neutrals none, and that they, aa the Prime Minister put it, could make the high seas a place of public danger to peaceful neutral fleets. He asserts that "such a policy ought to be hunted out of existence," and has taken the first step towards doing bo. Nor will any civilised country hesitate to support the necessary alteration and amendments in international law which will make it plain that peaceful neutrals are not only not to be attacked by every barbarian whom the possession of modern arms fills with an unbounded sense of his own importance, but that they are not to be otherwise molested at his will and pleasure. The unanimity of civilisation during the past week is a most pleasing and encouraging sign, assuring us that the world has reached the limits of its toleration of Muscovite aggression, and is at last determined to assist the law and custom of the Western nations against the insolent attempt of Russia, to establish an Asiatic procedure.