The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-08-28

But an imperial order provides that sc
 long as the Austrian empire endures an
 Austrian battleship shall bear his name
 and Admiral Dewey, the next man since | Farragut who damned the torpedoes
 and went ahead, when he rounded the
 Brindisi Heel of Italy and sailed up the
 Adriatic to Trieste, sailed through the
 waters where Tegethoff won his fame,
 and exchanged signals with the batter
 ies of the great Austrian port just one day too late to have his salutes count in
 the celebration of the thirty third anni-
 versary of the Lissa fight,
 | Maybe, as like as not, that was a
 small piece of Dewey diplomacy, rather
 than an accident to the shaft of the ] Olympia-in view of his subsequent
 visits to Italian ports.
 For in that all but forgotten fight of
 the war of 1866 the true benchmark of
 modern naval history, the Italians were i unexpectedly beaten, contrary to all the predictions of the naval experts, and with all the odds of ships, armor, guns | and modernness of material in their fla
 vor It was more than defeat It was ! a national humilia ton. And the young blood of new national life was just then | flowing strong in united Italy. | It was quick to catch the infection | from the fight of the Monitor and Merri-
 mac, and. after going into debt to the amount of over sixty million dollars for naval expenditures, had navy in 1866 which measured quite even with those
 of France, England and the United States, then the foremost naval powers in the world. Her best two ships, the Re dItalia and the Re di Portogallo,
 had been built at Webb's shipyard, New
 York, at a cost of over $1 ,600000 each.
 They carried seven-inch armor and
 formidable armament for their time the first-named two one hundred and fifty
 pounders, with thirty sx-inch guns and four smooth bores; the second two
 three hundred pounders and twenty-six eix-inch guns, They had the Affonda- tore, a turret ram, built in England, armed with two three hundred pound CTS as her main battery and a twenty
 six foot ram, supposed to embody all that had been learned in our civil war. They had other iron-clad vessels besides, and altogether went into the fight off Lissa with an advantage of two hun dred and seventy-six rif1ed guns. against one hundred and twenty-one so largely superior in size that they were able to fire a weight of metal four times that discharged by the Austrians
 The Austrian fleet was In a state of unpreparedness but Tegethoff was a Nelson. The Krupp guns of his flag ship were detained in Germany by req SNf ha hot strio and Prussia, and he filled their places with smooth bores. Another of his largest vessels lacked her bow armor and he put on a heavy thickness of planking. With odds of almost two to one against him from every theoretical point of view he sailed out of Trieste and sought the enemy, as Dewey when he sailed into Manila bay, and. once more, as it was in Mobile bay and at Manila and off Santiago, and as it had been at Trafalgar, the battle and the victory were to the men behind the guns and the brains behind the men.
 The battle of Lissa was almost Ho- merle in some of it's characteristics The Italian vessels were painted gray, and Ram everything gray!" was Tege- Il. formed his fleet in wedge shape, with | his flagship at the point, and when he | the Re d'Italia only one hun dred and sixty-siX were saved of it's | crew of four hundred. It is related in | the official report of the commanding | Italian Admiral Persano, that dts cap | tain Faa ali Bruno, when he saw that | his ship was lost, with the words, "The captain must die with his ship" blew out his brains with his revolver.
 It is of record even in the Austrian re- ports that in the brief time when the Re d'Itala was visibly lurchng before its final plunge an Italian marine nailed | her colors fast, so that they should not be trophy of the enemy. When the Italian ship Palestro was set on fire by the Austrian shells and the fire was ap- it's magazine, its captain, Iapellini, refused to leave his quarter leck, saying:
 Whoever likes can go, but, as for me, stay.'
 And his officers and crew followed his brave example, cheering their country md their king.
 There were two hundred and thirty officers and men aboard the Palestro lnd only nineteen, of whom only one vas an officer, were picked up after the xplosion.
 This is not Casabianca poetry. It is History, and it may suggest one reason vhy Dewey made the port of Trieste ust ir time to do honor to the greatest Austrian naval hero without offending he sensibilities of a country which would be his natural next stopping ,lace.-Chicago Tribune.