THE SKETCHER.

Otago Witness, Issue 2892, 18 August 1909, Page 78

THE SKETCHER.

I THE TRAGEDY OF ROJESTVENSKY. i J J "Rasplata (The Reckoning)," by Wladi- i j mir Semenoff (John Murray), is a thril- r ling, a powerful, a profoundly saddening , book. Filled though it be with technical details, which can be intelligible and even. ' interesting only to professional sailors, it J i& yet a volume whose every page beats i with such thunderous hammer-strokes of human anguish that you find it difficult to lay it down once you have taken it up ; you scruple -skipping even a line. It is the- record of a tragedy — a sanguinary, gigantic, unrelieved tragedy — this tragedy ! of Rojestvensky and of the expedition of J which he was in command. Perhaps I i should not be altogether incorrect if I spoke of it rather as the story of a crime ; for this expedition, futile, doomed to destruction and failure from its first hour, i sent across 12,000 miles and two oceans ; to be swallowed up in hideous and whole- j sale death — this expedition was the greatest crime of our times. The book deals with two epochs and 'two very different scenes in the history of the war. The author volunteered for service, and was sent out to Port Arthur to be second-in-command of one of the vessels. On his way he gives us glimpses ( * of all the unpreparedness, of all the fatu- , T ousness, of all the illusions in which the war opened. There is a colonel among ."< those wlhom our author meets in the train on his way to Port Arthur, and he '- £ epitomises and symbolises the folly which J brought the war. First he argues that j there will be no war ; ! On February 9 the Colonel and I had * particularly warm discussion. "They will never dare ! Never !" he was exclaiming eagerly. "Why, iii ; would be playing la banque for them, j or even worse — a game already lost, j Assuming even that they scored a sue- ] cess at starting, what would be the next step? Surely we should not throw down our arms after the first reverse? I could almost wish them, an initial success. Just think what the effect of this would be! The whole of Russia would rise like one man, and never sheath the sword until " "God grant it may only be a reverse and not a serious defeat." "Well, and even, if we do have a serious defeat? 'The effect can't last long. We snail simply wait until we have collected enough, forces, and we'll • drive them into the sea. You, with your, fleet, will surely not allow th© t enemy to get home again. But what I ] is the good of all this discussion? It ' £ will never come to that. They won't ' \ dare ! There'll be no war !" 1 x Beaten !from this point, however, the t doughty colonel falls back on another ' 1 argument.' The Japanese may declare \ c war, but they will certainly be beaten: [ t "The agents ,of all th© EtKropean j I Powers agree in their reports that ; . J.apan cannot mobilise more than I I 325,000 men," he began again in the ' manner of a lecture, "and of those she ' c must keep some at home." f * "Do you believe these figures? Japan • has a larger population than Franse. . c ! Why should there be this difference in ' '. the strength of their armies?" j c "They haven't the organisation — no , c properly-prepared contingents." j "They have been preparing themselves for ten years. Even the school- x boys are tanght something of soldiering, j a Every schoolboy there knows more than ' f one of our soldiers in his second year of service. " j* "They only possess arms and ammunition for 325,000 men." a "Tben they will buy more aibroad." c r "Oh, nonsense "~ '' . 1 turned out the electric light and rolled myself into my blanket. I "Thalfc is no proof," growled the ' colonel, and retired. — Unreadiness. — When our officer gets on board hie f vessel he finds the same ghastly exhibition of entire unreadiness. Here, for instance, is the kind of sailor he had to lead into action^ As a matter of fact, 50 per cent, of the whole crew were peasants dressed as bluejackets. A single cruise from Port Art-bur to Vladivostok and back was the entire .^ea experience of a good half of the remainder. Planners and customs had grown up amongst the men which were anything but man-of-war-like. Even in the barracks things were different. I could have imagined myself to be. not on board a warshi2>, but in a small village. At every kind of \voik one never heard a proper word of command or a clear order. The petty -officers '"begged" the men to do this or that. Not even the boatswain knew how to act as a superior. He requested the "children" to «o to the work in a friendly way. Everything Avas carried out in a hurry and >uperfieiaily. I don"t exaggerate in the lea^t. These were facts. Amid the gathering gloom there stands out, however, the fine figure of Admiral Makaroff. He was one oi the men whe-e untimely death led to the terrible breakdown of the Russian defence. Old, greybearded, genial, he is called by the men "Little Graudfatber." Everybody loves, everybody trusts him. He is indefatigable, laring, brings back some vitality of the defence. But his efforts are paralysed by Alexieff, that fatal figure of the whole tragedy. Alexieff exudes, if I may use the phrase, an atmosphere of hesitation and of apathy, and, what is worst of all, he is one of those weaklings and incompetents whom it si impossible to contradict. All around him are therefore reduced to servile agreement or servile silence. When anybody shows any enterprise, Alexieff immediately putg upon him his dead hand of inaction SemeaoflL the

author of this book, shows some enterprise 1 in the management of his vessel; he is transferred to a transport vessel. When he goes to his admiral to remonstrate, that old sea-dog tries to prove to the angry officer that this change is to be interpreted as promotion. Captain Semenoff answers • "If the service is so honourable, you will easily find candidates who are older and worthier than L I don't aspire to this, at all. I was. appointed' second-in-command of the Boyarin. She has gone down, and it won/Id be absurd for me to demand to be appointed to another ship in a like capacity. I don't think of it. Bat I merely ad£ to be &snt to a fighting ship. That is what I have come for. Yon know me. I am' an old navigator and know every • spot hereabouts. • Can't I- become navigating officer, or even watchkeeper ? I shall be content with anything." The admiral had never been a good diplomat-. Ist, and now ceased acting. He leaned over the table and raised his arms in a

helpless attitude. "What can I do? Just consider: he wrote it -with his own hand, and with the green pencil." . What I thought when I left the office I would rather not say. — A Panic. — I pass on. Makaroff is kiilled>, as everybody knows, by ,the blowing up of the vessel in which he was manoeuvring. The tragedy is intensified' by one of those wild outbursts of teniporajry vnsanity which so often come upon larges bodies of soldiers * or sailors in the excited nervousness of battle : Our ship now commenced an irregular fire. I was standing on the upper bridge with the gunnery lieutenant. At first we looked at one another, dazed, as if neither of us would believe his own senses and wanted to have his observations corroborated by the other. "What is the matter?" be asked. "Panic," I said. There was no need to say more. We both dashed down from the bridge. On the lower deck I caw the captain standing at the door of the conning tower. "WKat are they, firing for?" "I don't know who has ordered it, 6ir." "Stop it ! They are off their heads !" What was now going on around us was incredible.' Mingled with the thunder of the guns cams cries' such as "It's all jp with us !" "Submarines !" "The ships are all sinking!" "Fire, fire!" "Save yourselves !" The men had completely lost their heads. — Sent to Certain Doom. — The second part of the book is even more tragic. Captain Semenoff leaves the Port Arthur fleet and returns to Europe, and then took service in the Fleet No. 2 that was sent out from St. Peters-burg under Admiral Eojestvensky. Here the tragedy can be seen deepening hour by !

hour. You breathe quickly and feverishlj as you follow the vessels to their certain doom, until the whole story ends in a passage of almost .Apocalyptic honor. What makes the story the more terrible is that all along no ome, from the fearless admiral downwards, has the least doubt as to what the ultimate result is going to be. The disastrous battle of Tsushima is foreseen in all its horror and devastation almost from the first hour the great voyage across the world begins. No one foresees the certain result more clearly than the officers on whose shoulders is thrown by tbs authorities at St. Petersburg the terrible, odious, degrading responsibility of leading all these 6hips and men to destruction. With ever-deep-ening horror, now by one indication, now by another, our author builds up the great drama from one act to another, until it reaches the awful denouement with a sureness of foot and a closeness of connection that make yon sometimes feel as if you were reading some mighty literary drama, and not the terrible reality of truth. Semenoff talks to a navigating officer. "Why," he asks, "was the squadron ever sent off?" Here is the airawer : What could we have done? Ought the admiral to .have sent in< a report — I foresee with certainty that we shall all go to the bottom., and as I am frightened of this 1 can't go out to the war? Or what? Was he to state publicly that we had no fleet, but merely a collection of stage properties? No one would have believed him. . . . We should simply have been called traitors and cowards. Well, then, it is better to go to the bottom. Now and then there comes a moment of fahe pretence oi confidence. The Czar, foi- instance, sends an affectionate message ; there are loud cheers, "but not

everywhere" : The half-lowering looks, the expres sions on come faces, a word spoken ai random — all this showed that many i one would have welcomed the news o; the enforced return with a feeling oi relief, though not one of them woulc have turned his back voluntarily. "Pitj it did not come to open rupture with England," my old acquaintance, Lieutenant B , eaid, half serious, halj jokingly, "because then they would have scattered us directly we had got outside. Xow we have got to go all that distance for the game object." — The Despairing Admiral. — Now and again the author gets a glimjve into the abysses of even the admiral's foul. He speaks less freely than his subordinates, but it is clear that he shares their opinions — that he shares their de ipair At the moment when the English cruisers are accompanying his vessels — ready to attack if the Dogger Bank tragedy had not been settled amicably — the author hears behind him the words, "Do you admire this?": I tuTE?d round. Behind me stood the admiral, who could not take his eyes off the English crui&eTS. "Do you admire this?" he repeated. "That is feom?thinj: like. Those are seamen.

Ohl if only we _ /* and he fan down the ladder without completing the. sentience. In his voice there was sup-* pressed anguish j an expression of so much suffering passed over his face that! I suddenly understood. ... . I realised that though be did not allow himself any hopes which could never be realised, though we well knew the- true worth of his squadron, yet he' was faithful to his trust and) would cede to no one the honour of being the first in tho ranks of those who wer voluntarily hastening to pay the reckoning. Now and then, however, the admiral had to let the whole world know something of his anguish. He orders regularly some ntanceuvres, in the hope that his undisciplined anct untrained officers and men will have learned something of the rudiments of warfare before they come to the encounter with those terrible Japanese ships and sailors. In vain. One order of the day quoted in this book reprimands nearly every captain, nearly every ship, winding up with these tragic sentences: ' As regards the firing of the 6-pounder quick-firing guns, which are intended to repel torpedo attacks, one really feels ashamed to speak of it.' We keep men at these guns every night for that express purpose, and by day the entire squadron .did not score one single hit on the targets which, represented the torpedo boats, although these targets differed from the Japanese torpedo boats to our advantage, inasmuch as they were stationary. — Inefficiency and Corruption. —

There are constant disappointments, too, as to the arrival of supplies and of ammunition. The rottenness of inefficiency and of corruption is to be traced everywhere. Take this passage as- to the food supply : On 'board our provision ship, the steamer Espexanoe, the refrigerating machinery b&gan to give more and more , trouble. The defects were always dealt with at onoe by the rer>air ship Kamtchatka, but the more frequently these breakdowns occurred the more serious was their nature. A committee, under the presidency of the chief engineer of the fleet, did not find sufficient evidence to justify the assumption of wilful damage ; all the same, there were suspicions — and rather grave ones. After every repaii was effected the machinery was started in the presence of this committee, and examined in all its parts. Everything appeared in order, when, suddenly, after a day or two some inexplicable damage again made its- appearance. The steamer had been taken ■>ver direct from a company trading between Argentina and "London at the very time when she was carrying a cargo of frozen meat. She teas by no means an old vessel, but she had been bought neither by the Board of Trade nor by the Ministry of Marine, but simply by a merchant, who intended to exploit • her for his" personal interest. . . . Be this as it may, in consequence of the frequent stoppage of the refrigerating machinery, the temperature rose steadily in the store rooms. The meat began to thaw and rot. Finally, the struggle- with this evil proved to be hopeless. Over 700 tons of spoilt meat had to be thrown overboard, and the Esperanoe returned to Prance. Thus the rats and cockroaches I leave the vessel which is doomed to ; destruction. It is the same as to the expected . ammunition : On March 11 the Irtysh arrived. The long-expected powder and shell she did not bring. Besides coal, the most important part of her cargo for us consited of 12,000 pairs of boots. I beg the reader not to laugh. This is not meant as a joke. In our repeated coaling's boots and shoes had been worn out so rapidly that by this time the greater p*art of \he men. were going about in self-made shoes, plaited out of hemp yarns. —The End:— So it goes on to- the hour before the dread battle. Aa they are entering into that fight there is this conversation between the author and the comrade with whom he had exchanged despondent confidences throughout the long voyage : Our range of vision is reduced by the rain to two or three miles, so that from tb* southern point of Formosa up to now no one has seen us. That is not so bad. Let us hope that it will continue like this. S is wandering up and down the bridge, blacker than the night. I took him by the arm. . . . "Well, don't yon see we have come co far. and- . " "And?" "And we shall get further yet." "We are going . . we are going. . . . How did you put it then?" I don't recollect. . . . Oh, yes — to our reckoning." These are the final words of this terrible book. This is the passage I have described as Apocalyptic. Is there anything more awful than this story, than these words at the beginning of a battle?— T.P.s Weekly.