The San Francisco call., 1898-02-14

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 certainty" I beg respectfully to say l that is inaccurate If Captain Mahan indited this opinion he surely must l have had a lapse of memory at the | moment True we have made practi- cally no experiments in sea-coaling, but other nations have with very satis- | factory results, although as stated be- | fore the system is not yet perfect. The battleships Magnificent and Majestic quite recently, under anything but the most favorable conditions, in a five hour trial, coaled at the rate of about 150 tons an hour This would mean 2OOO tons in an ordinary working day, which is very satisfactory progress. And as sea-coaling is more easily done when the vessels are under slight headway the loss of time is not so very great
 Against sea-coaling am aware that it is urged it cannot be done in heavy weather. True, but neither can bat tleship fire her big guns in heavy weather with anything like accuracy. Indeed the admiral who would risk an enga cement, even if he had the superior fighting force, when a big sea was run ming would be tempting Providence, and it is not at all unlikely that he would be punished by the fickle goddess for his temerity.
 A cable dispatch tells us that within a month an Austrian cruiser left her sister ship in the Red Sea going to Alden to send a collier to her assist ance." I am told by master mariner in whom have implicit confidence that he has seen three hundred tons of coal transferred from one ocean-going steamer to another in that very sea, and he says 1t was done in short order and with no difficulty whatever. The man who willingly blinds his eyes to the fact that sea-coaling is certain to be completely successful in the course of two or three years has not my sym pathy, no matter how famous his name.
 If is often asked why it is that Japan looks on with such complacency at our frantic efforts to annex these islands. The little brown man Is something of strategist himself, as the Chinese have lived to find out, and doubtless he sees what a constant source of weakness" Hawaii will be to the power that makes it an integral part of it's territory.
 After the foregoing had been written my attention was called to an editorial in yesterdays Examiner which purports to give the queries put to Captain Ma han by Senator Kyle and his replies. This furnishes another striking in- stance of the rascality of that paper. It garbles each statement in an as- founding manner, emitting everything whereby 1t could be shown that Cap- tain Mahan's opinions were not unas- sailable, and excludes altogether the most important answer. wherein, as is shown above, the distinguished strate- gist was lamentably in error.
 After an absence that has been re- gretted by those seeking Advertisement the Examiners logician is back doing business with accustomed sedulity. He now descries a gift by the people of this city of the capital stock of street railroad to the shareholders of that corporation because a franchise to run its cars through the streets has been granted. The track, the rolling stock and the labor which it took to build the road-and even the cost of main tenance-I suppose, all went with the franchise. If the logician will inter view some reputable financier like MT. Hellmann, for instance, he may learn how to distinguish right of way from an equipment. The franchises men toned were granted because the peo- pie of the city generally wished in- creased transportation facilities and if the abolishment of rapid transit were to be seriously entertained for mo- ment the public (of which the Exam iner is so fond and eternally tries to humbug) would willingly pay $20,000,000 to have the status quo maintained. The logician must produce some sounder argument than this when attempting to excoriate a street railroad company, that is if he seriously hopes to get for his paper another advertising con- tract" which includes the phraseology ''and all in accordance with an agree ment entered into between, etc.
 In an account of the Golden Jubilee celebration which has appeared in liar pers Weekly the question of Marshall's right to be known as the discoverer of gold in California has been given much attention. Marshall is probably due the credit, but that Hubert Howe Bancroft has pronounced him so Gas Harper's points out) is about the greatest doubt that could be placed on Marshall's claim to the distinction. This man of many books has had his character so clearly exposed by the different jour- nals of the State. and the local field of deceit having become about exhaust ed iii consequence, that he has shaken the dust of the city from off his feet and sped to solitude. At any rate, we hear of him no more It may interest Harpers to learn that this particular Bancroft never was historian. His tory is truth, not fiction, and Hubert Howe Bancroft's unquenchable desire not to have the truth told if his pocket would suffer thereby Is known here, if not in New York. Some of the matter that appeared under his name was ac- curate, but the, fiction is so much in evidence that the whole work has been rendered valueless. Much of the hon. est writing in these volumes was done by Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor, a gen., tlewoman who declined to lie for pro-