Show HAULING DOWN THE FLAG Our telegraphic dispatches are frequently fre-quently misleading and so much so as to I cause great annoyance The Associated I press agent sends out from the central I i office dispatch having for its sole point I II 1 the statement that the captain of a British I Brit-ish cruiser boarded an American vessel I and hauled down the American ensign with his own iiands On the strength of such a statement purposely sent out for the news of the insult that it bears the I i I DEMOCRAT wrote something hot at the I time only to find a dispatch coming too late to correct it stating that the American Ameri-can captain of a Revenue Cutter did the same with the British flag when he seized the sealing schooners in Alaskan waters j > < > < c I recently The press agent at Washington I Washing-ton could have learned this fact before the hauling down item was sent out and saved a large number of writers the involuntary duty of using cuss words Two wrongs however do not make aright a-right and until the British Schooners I were condemned by an Admiralty court theywere only held for trial andby no means were they the propertyof the United States Government and they had every right to fly their ensign The Revenue Cutter is in the employ and under un-der the orders of a department of the I Government and has no more right to ape the actions 01 a cruiser or me navy I than a fishing smack would have The action ac-tion of the captain of the Corwin was wrong in the start and the press agent could have learned that fact before he sent out the hauling down item Time whichever which-ever brings the right uppermost begins to show that the telegraph service on the fisheries question has been decidely jug handled and that is not what the American Amer-ican people want If an American willfully will-fully commits a wrong on an Englishman as the captain of the Corwin is said to have done the Englishman has the right of reprisal and all good citizens win not object All this proves that the State Department sharp of the Associated Press needs prodding in the ribs from some one in the home office If the Associated Press dispatcher specially wired the fact that a British navalofficer fired a brickbat brick-bat through the Treasury Department windows the press of the country would at once say he should be punished but when the reporter of that concern found time to ascertain that the janitor of the building fired an inkstand at the officer first and wired that fact it would then be plain that the officer was right as he certainly was in the flag case |