that to continue fighting was only a needless sacrifice of life. This view was true, but few naval officers will question that it was also wrong, and the degradation inflicted on Nebogatoff by the Russian Admiralty justified by expediency. We know perfectly well that Japanese similarly circumstanced would never have surrendered. We know that the Oushakoff similarly circumstanced refused to surrender, and sank still firing. So, too, the Eurik in an earlier fight near the same spot. 'Death or victory' is a melodramatic phrase; but it is also a necessity, and the leader who is prepared to accept the latter alternative is not properly prepared for it (or likely to attain it) unless he is equally ready to accept the former. However useless the deaths of those who went down in the Oushakoff may appear, their deaths were at least almost as useful to the Russian Navy of the future as if they had died in the course of a victory. Once the principle of justified surrender be admitted, it is impossible to draw the line, and the slightest suggestion of force majeure becomes a logical excuse for capitulation.[1] This may be ethically defensible; but a navy with such ethics is quite useless for the purpose for which it is created. The action of the Russian Admiralty in its merciless degradation of Nebogatoff and his captains is perhaps its one strong action during the war. Alongside it we may lay the action of the Chinese authorities who executed every man
- ↑ The process was witnessed at one stage of the South African war.
