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Show POOR RUSSIA. It was a wicked act to dispatch that Russian fleet from the Baltic. The Japanese had shown their absolute superiority on the sea. All the men in the ships knew this. When the fleet reached the west coast of Europe at every port they landed the utter demoralization of the crews was apparent. To send those peasant lambs into the jaws of those Oriental sea-wolves was little less than murder. If the act was necessary as a moral reinforcement reinforce-ment to Port Arthur and the army of Kuropatkin, then the thing to have done was to sue for peace, for the course pursued was merely putting off the inevitable. The Russian-Japanese war, as did our war with Spain, has demonstrated that even the bravest races when kept for centuries in ignorance and cowed by tyranny and superstitious fears, as soldiers sol-diers will fail when confronted by free and country-loving men. The Russians are a great race, but they will have to be reorganized on new lines, or the nation will be disintegrated. What the effect of this new, awful defeat will be cannot at this writing be told. Whether there will be an appeal for peace or whether one -more great fight on land will be essayed is the present question. We can imagine that every trained Russian officer will clamor for a battle, and quite possibly Oyama may determine to supplement on land Togo's work on the sea. As for Russia she has become the world's pity. A great helpless whale assailed on every hand by a whole school of sword fishes. We can imagine the confusion that must reign in official circles in the stricken empire, with defeat everywhere, every-where, by sea and land, and by riots, insurrections and the frenzy of dispair urging the people to violence. All Europe, too, must be troubled, with every thoughtful man wondering what this uprising of the brown and the yellow races portends. It will not escape, either, the attention of our own people that Japan is sovereign of all the Oriental waters, and when her triumph is cpnu.1sted she will be saucy to all the world. This is a year of sun-spots, and the earth responds re-sponds in great storms and trouble in the hearts of men. |
