It was reported on Thursday that at the naval yard
near Trieste an Austrian cruiser had been destroyed by fire, which broke out on the scaffoldings. Though the flames were finally got under, the ship is said to have been most seriously damaged. She was to have been launched on Sunday. It is rumoured that the fifteen hundred men who were at work on the vessel, and who were mostly Italians, were being cruelly treated by the Austrian authorities, and took their revenge by soaking the woodwork in paraffin and then setting fire to it. The story does not sound unlikely, but at the same time there is always an inclination to attribute even the most natural fires to incendiaries. In this context we may note the statement that the `Goeben' and the 'Breslau,' now, of course, nominally Turkish vessels, have been steaming along the western shores of the Black Sea, and have been convoying two German cargo ships which were lying at Braila. It does not look as if the rupture with Turkey could be delayed very much longer.
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