The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-12-01
MANNING OF BALTIC FLEET
MOST OF THE OFFICERS AND
 CREWS
Without Any Previous Sea Experi-
 enec.


 From much daily intercourse with the belligerent bureaucrats of the ad- miralty-always in their full naval un- forms, swords included, though many of them have had no sea service at all, their rank coming from automatic sen iority promotion or by direct promotion |I have gleaned nothing to substanti- ate the charge made abroad that the Baltic fleet is running amuck under the spell of vodka; drunken bullies," a Vi- enna paper calls them. But there is ample evidence that the fleet is most criminally deficient in the matter of professional competence and that it's crews are in the last stage of the vol la Pennemi" frenzy, which is not easi- ly distinguishable from insanity and involves tremendous danger for any peaceful commerce they may encoun- ter.
 They are improvised scratch crews; certainly nothing like them ever put to sea since modern battle ships were built. Tn Russia's 1aring enlistment system, which is conscript, like the army's, not nearly half the men whose service falls due are required for the ships, but they are put on the strength of the fleet as gunners, bluejackets. stokers or what not.
 The men actually trained for work on board modern WarshiDs have all been drafted already out to the Orient, and the equipment of the Baltic fleet is made up almost entirely of landsmen. Such Of their officers as are not direct from the reserve are men of backyard and academic training, and not really navigators in the sense in which any other naval service in the world would use the term.
 Several of the examiners of the naval cadets seeking commissions have told the Sun correspondent that ninety per cent. of them had no right to be in trusted with anything afioat, but that it was hopeless to make the examina- tion a serious test, because any cadet who was rejected by them could get commission all the same by presenting a petition of special circumstances. which anybody with relative in the senior grade of any department can have granted. The result is what the world sees.
 If it should prove that Rodjestvens- ky's report is a dishonest afterthouglat, probably his department will not be surprised, certainly not ashamed. It is a document, they seem to indicate. produced for the purpose of settling this silly bother. Its truth is a secon- dary consideration.
 When a report is called for from an unwilling person in authority here, what he sits down to write is some thing that he calculates will most plausibly get him out of 8 hole. There have been many such reports, especial- ly from the Red Cross financial admin istration officials, since the war began; and most marvellous, most mendacious documents they are But they have passed with impunity; they have be- come the model form Of report because the men who write them are still out of jail.
 The frame of mind of Rodjestvens- ky's friends is that England has launched a calculated insult at Russia by not accepting his report with wink and an intimation that she, too, under stands the game The dead fishermen's families would have been suitably com pensated, and an irritating, exaggera- ted trifle soon forgotten.
 With the people at large it is differ ent. Among those that are poor and of no account there is wistful unbelief that i: can be true that Russia has been threatened with war for merely shooting at fishermen, who they believe are in all countries, like themselves, poor and of no account. They suppose it really must have been Japanese, and that England is merely making more trouble, as she has done through the war.
 The cook in this house assures me that there cannot be war, because Eng land has given her word not to go to war for seven years. She does not at the moment recall how she first heard of this solemn promise, but it entirely satisfies her,
 III InG us C1eSoS EC1SllGu llAt lIbIiS= papers the matter has been settled by the announcement that England has apologized for mobilizing her fleet. Coming to the idle people with money you have the jingoes. They cry that no war could be more popular; if it5 comes to that, then it is the best thing that could have happened. A group of this type were talking very loudly in fashionable restaurant one night.
 Would Rodjestvensky fire at the British if they called him to stop?' was asked.
 They hoped he would. To show best that he would brook no neddling, what should he do? What should he do? Many doughty kinds of defiance were imagined for him. A Frenchman sit ting by was asked, What should Rod 1estvensky do?" He replied, He should get straight away for connec- tion with a wireless telegraph station, and ask pardon from the whole world , 4St. Petersburg Letter in the New York Sun.
 THE NOISY BIRDS OF THE NIGHT.