A SLIGHT MISTAKE.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVI, Issue 43070, 19 March 1907, Page 4

A SLIGHT MISTAKE.

The Davis-Swet.tenha.iii- affair led to an , amusing little incident in home poliiris. The fact that a British colony rO.y .V; first-a:d for its wounded from ships of a foreign fleet was promptly; Be-ized as a stick wherewith to thrash; that dog, the Liberal Government | (writes Mir H. W, Lucy). In several newspapers of large circulation it was wept over as “a humiliation” —'“the result,” one wrote, “of the policy of our present patriotic Government, which’can 'but bring the blush of shame to all true Englishmen,” Whilst the pack was in full cay it wais suddenly called in by the whip. Someone remembered that the new system of cionedntraiting the fleet, necessitating the withdrawal of cruisers from Jamaioai and other colonies, was the work not of recreant Liberal Ministers, but of their predecessors. More than two years ago, under the administration at the Admiralty of Lord Sel borne—of course with the approval of Mr'Balfour and hns Colleagues in Cabinet' — the new system was approved. It came into full effect under Lord Cavdqr, who succeeded the Earl of Selbpm'e at the Admiralty, and was ‘n full swing; a year before the Liberals came into office. In accordance with its regulations, when the earthquake burst- forth, the British ships nearest at hand; were the cruiser Brilliant at Bermuda-, and the Indefatigable at Trinidad, both points within a thousand miles of Jamaica, near enough \o hei of use on threatened outbreak oi war, butunot nimble enough for an earthquake, which, among other pleasantries, destroys communication by breaking cables.