THE LOST LIBERTE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 50, 13 October 1911, Page 4

THE LOST LIBERTE.

The destruction of the French battleship Liberte, with the loss of so many of her officers and men, is one of those ghastly calamities in which peace seems to almost mock at war as a creator of disaster (says an Australian exchange). Mere accident is sometimes more deadly, than the actual shock of battle, as is apparently instanced in this case; for if the explosion was due to the decomposition of powder, it was freshly-ship-ped powder which had been specially tested both before and after the manoeuvres of a few weeks ago, consequently what happened was what human vigilence could scarcely have provided against. Very impressively the explosion attests the awful power of modern ammunition. Here is a great battleship split, clean in two, her parts torn asunder, and splinters and fragments of metal hurled away with such force as to kill and wound men on a vessel lying two miles distant. From such particulars we get a grim suggestion of the Titanic forces that will bo engaged when the hanging-off great naval battle has begun, and the new monsters of the sea are battering each other. And of the individual bravery of the men directing all this power, for the sailors who boarded the burning Liberte after the explosion in the hope of rescuing some of their comrades showed the world that the modern man-of-warsman is a man of unquenchable pluck. According to “The Times” the disaster has an international significance, since the loss of the Liberte might affect the balance of power, especially in the .Mediterranean. France only had four Dreadnoughts, including the one that, is gone, and her building plans propose a total of eight by 1913, when Germany will have seventeen and Austria* and Italy probably three or four each. Consequently the competitive strain on Great Britain is so severe that the loss of a single ship might be verv grave, bv such a narrow margin may the supremacy of the sea soon be held by one combination as against another. Serious as the affair is in that aspect, however, humanity’s sympathy will be more poignantly touched by the thought of so many brave lives lost.