WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XLIX, Issue 12593, 6 September 1905, Page 6

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

A correspondent of the "Pall Mall Gazette" has drawn attention to an almost forgotten scrap of history affecting Tsushima Bayj the retreat from which Admiral Togo issued to so effectively .crush the balance of the Russian sea force. Some forty- years ago, in the early sixties, two frigates detached from the squadron which watched over British interests in the Far East slipped into the bay. The officers of these two ships were chafed with inaction, and with a vague sense of failure. They had been warned to keep a sharp lookout for certain Russian vessels supposed t-Ti bo occupied on some scheme in the China Sea, but they had sailed along the Chinese and West Korean coasts without any s'uceess, and they were bound back to Shanghai to report that they were unable to find the Russians. Tsushima Bay was the last place of call, and they entered the magnificent harbour, where half the British Navy could havo bee2i concealed amongst the numerous islands and tortuous channels, more with the idea of a pleasant holiday than with any notion of success in their search. On the second day a boat happened upon a Russian frigate snugly moored, with its crew ashoi'e. The. Russians had erected a cottage ashore, nominally for the accommodation of a sick sailer, and had started to fence and cultivate an extensive plot of ground. Over the cottage the Russian flag waved, while at the door a guard of marines represented Russian authority. The British captains explained to their Russian: confrere that he had no right to take possession of land in that neighbourhood^ and he was eventually persuaded to complete the cure of his sick man with a sea voyage to Vladivostock. Had. tho British not discovered and "moved on" the Russian vessel, it is easy to imagine that"the coarse of events in the Far East might have run rather differently. The intention of the Czar's representatives was clearly to establish a colony in Tsushima' Bay, and had they been left undisturbed. for a few years a Russian "protectorate" would probably have been admitted by the nations. Another Port Arthur tnight havo reared a lusty head, and it ij pretty certain that Japan would have been forced into battle or submission years ago, when neither its naval nor its military power was as formidable as it is at tho present time.