Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 November 1908 — SU AVIVORS OF TSU-SHIMA. [ARTICLE]

SU AVIVORS OF TSU-SHIMA.

T *K of the Awful Hardship and Rough Treatment by Officers. A writer in the Slovo draws a painful picture of the attitude of the naval authorities toward the survivors of the Baltic fleet, which was destroyed in the battle of Tsu-shima. < “You cannot imagine the treatment to which we were subjected,” said a young officer of one of the Baltic cruisers to the writer. “It made one feel ashamed of wearing our uniform. For more than a year we did work equal to penal servitude. Our crews worked 18 hours a day carrying coal, transporting it to small boats in the ocean, languishing under a tropical sun, feeding on salt meat and tinned food. “During eight months we lived in dirt and slept.in rubbish. During eight long months not a single night passed without alarm or without expectation of the enemy’s attack. And before us we had still greater labor and privations in blockading Vladivostok in case we succeeded in reaching it. And reproaches and insults were our only reward. You know the rough nature of our sailors. Well, our chiefs have succeeded in touching them to the quick by their humiliating invectives, and I have seen them cry, broken down by this new kind of welcome from their mother country after the labors they have undergone. Truly, we envy those who perished.”—St. Petersburg Dispatch.