Weekly Arizona journal-miner. [volume] (Prescott, Ariz.) 1903-1908, 1905-06-07
RUSSIA'S LOSS MAY BE HER
GAIN.

NOW thaJ anOJher chapter ehtlIIeo
"The Battle of Tsushima" has been
added to sea fighting annals. the world
is asking itself: What is the moral of
the story2 The obvious answer is
that the loss of thirteen warships by
sinking and of eight by capture, the
Imprisonment of 5000 fighting men
and three admirals, including the com
mander of the squadron, means the
doom of whatever naval prestige Rus
STA possessed. She has had little to
boast of since the beginning of the war
and that little has steadily diminished
with each engagement until now the
vanishing point has been reached. The
first disaster of Port Arthur was i'll
luck; Prince Ouktomsky's fatal sortie
and overwhelming defeat in the Gulf
of PeehiIi was misfortune; now Ro-
jestvenskv'st rout in the Korean
Straits spells debacle.
Naval experts viii learn from the
fight to appreciate more correctly the
relative Importance of battlcships and
torpedo boats. The japanese have
probably settled that moot question.
hut a much more important result than
that viii accrue. Those who try to
view passing events in such a way as
to get the general effect that usually
comes from the perspective of his
tory read in this browning loss the
possible salvation of the Russian en-
pire. BY land and sea, Russian arms
have suffered an unbroken series of de-
feats ever since Vice-Admiral Togo
took Alexieff by surprise on that his
toric Sth of February. japanese gen
erals have forced their oponents back
mile by mile through Manchuria, while
the Japanese admiral and his captains
have cleared Asiatie waters of the Rus
sian ships. There has been no word
spoken against the Russian soldiers
and sailors. They have fought stub
bornly and died bravely. The blame
rests with their commanders and those
commanders are part of the grand du-
cal regime to which so much oppro-
brium attaches. The revolutionary
party in Russia has attributed most Of
the evils that afhict the country to
the closed circle of brothers and
cousins and uncles which surrounds
the Gar like Gordon of police. The
world has come to agree with them. It
realizes that the Autocrat of all the
Russias is not the weakling who weeps
at the news of defeat. but many head
ed monster that rules the country as
absolutely as it rules the monarch. No
one who csteems law and order viii
approve the bloody determination of
this grand ducaI hydra which the an
archists of the empire arc attempting.
The problem viii not be solved in tina.
way Tt win probably work Itself
ont along lines Of utility. The titled
voluptuaries who mismanage armies
and uavies rs wen rs finances, carrying
their corrupt methods into places where
thousands of human lives are at stake
VIII he thrown ont of authority as the
lrones are driven from the hive.
AleuciT and Roiestvensky are Great
1rcs of the same decadent system
which has produced Boris and the
rest of the vicious coterie that has
lebauched Russia. The lat,7t
crushing defeat which the Russian
ships steamed some ten thousand miles
10 encounter may be pointed out in the
histories of the future rs the immediate
.ause of constitutional government in
he empire