Show russian officers who refused to leave their ships correspondence of the associated press tokio aug 9 an officer of the naval staff has made a statement in which he pays high tribute to some of the russian officers participating in the battle ot the sea 0 japan his statement follows there were several russian officers whose conduct in the recent battle deserves to be held high as a model and example for all naval officers amons them the most noteworthy was the conduct ot captain Rod lonoff commander ot the his gallantry is as praiseworthy as that ot commander amrie gt day of the battle the Nak himoff was exposed to the alro ot our main ron and sustained serious damage during the night she was made the subject ot severe torpedo attacks and finally completely drifted close to tsu salma the vessel was sinking and captain seventy ot the crew to land at tsu i shima remaining aboard himself with his chief navigator when a japanese approached the sinking vessel they astred the captain to leave the vessel but he refused the japanese boarded the vessel and endeavored to drag him into a boat but he re alsted the ship was listing badly and threatened momentarily to plunge into the sea the japanese were forced to draw off and the captain went below to there meet bis death suddenly the ship went down and our men the gallant officer was drowned but providence willed otherwise we found the captain and navigator in the water looked in each others arms they had embraced at what they thought was the moment and were partly unconscious when we rescued them there was a dramatic scene when the nomach Mo went down the sado maru which survived the remarkable experience with the vladivostok squadron in which the hitachi was sunk came upon some ot the crew of the Mo nomach and rescued them among them was an engineer officer who died and the officers of tho sado maru gave him a military funeral from the deck later the sado maru picked up tho Mo nomach and getling a line to her endeavored to tow net to tsu shima the mono mach was leaking badly and the attempt to tow her was a failure suddenly there was a great explosion aboard the Mo nomach and she began to settle in the water seeing that she was going down captain kamaya ordered the men of the sado marn to line the decks and calling the buggers buglers bug lers directed them to sound taps it waa a pretty tribute to the ship which had been gallantly fought and to the men who gave up their lives |