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Show SINKING OF THE PETROPAVLOVSK. War is terrible, but some features of even war are sadder than others. When a battle is joined and men are slaughtered, that is the expected, but when nearly a thousand men are cooped up in a steel ship and in a moment, through an accident, are drowned like rats, that is a calamity that is followed by regrets that have no compensation. In the royal palace at St. Petersburg a Te Deum is chanted that a Grand Duke escaped, requiem services will be held in all Russian churches for the repose of the souls of the great Makaroff and his crew, but all that will not carry much comfort to the mothers, wives and sisters of those who went down. There will be mourning by the Volga, the Dneiper and the Don for the brave men who, even while standing at their stations ready to ad-ance ad-ance the standards of their Czar, were in a moment mo-ment overwhelmed. It was the more pitiable that the blow came from a mine that had been placed as a means of defense for their own ships and forts. It brings back the words: "So the struck eagle, stretched upon the plain. No more through rolling clouds to soar again; Viewed his own feather on the fatal dart And winged the shaft that quivered in his heait." Surely Kings, before they call upon their loyal subjects to die to add to their own glory and power, pow-er, should estimate how terrible are the aches of the hearts over which the bloody sandals of their ambition march to victory! |