Here I would insert a note which I discovered this very afternoon sent me by an unknown friend when Admiral von Spee and all his host went to the bottom. Before that event there had been a series of disasters at sea, and a grave uneasy feeling about our Navy was spreading over the land. The three great Cruisers--“Hogue,” “Cressy” and “Aboukir”--had been sunk near the German coast. What were they doing there? Did they think they were Nelson blockading Toulon? The “Goeben” and “Breslau” had escaped from our magnificent Battle Cruisers, then in the Mediterranean, which had actually boxed them up in the Harbour of Messina; and they had gone unharmed to Constantinople, and like highwaymen had held a pistol at the head of the Sultan with the threat of bombarding Constantinople and his Palace and thus converted Turkey, our ancient ally, into the most formidable foe we had. For is not England the greatest Mahomedan Power in the world? The escape of the “Goeben” and “Breslau” was an irreparable disaster almost equalled by our effete handling of Bulgaria, the key State of the Balkans; and we didn’t give her what she asked. When we offered it and more next year, she told us to go to hell. Then there was the “Pegasus,” that could neither fight nor run away, massacred in cold blood at Zanzibar by a German Cruiser as superior to her as our Battle Cruisers were to von Spee. And last of all, as a climax, that sent the hearts of the British people into their boots, poor Cradock and his brave ships were sunk by Admiral von Spee. I became First Sea Lord within 24 hours of that event, and without delay the Dreadnought Battle Cruisers, “Inflexible” and “Invincible,” went 7,000 miles without a hitch in their water tube boilers or their turbine machinery, and arrived at the Falkland Islands almost simultaneously with Admiral von Spee and his eleven ships. That night von Spee, like another Casablanca with his son on board, had gone to the bottom and all his ships save one--and that one also soon after--were sunk. I have to reiterate about von Spee, as to this day the veil is upon the faces of our people, and they do not realise the Salvation that came to them. 1. We should have had no munitions--our nitrate came from Chili. 2. We should have lost the Pacific--the Falkland Islands would have been another Heligoland and a submarine base. 3. Von Spee had German reservists, picked up on the Pacific Coast, on board, to man the fortifications to be erected on the Falkland Islands. 4. He would have proceeded to the Cape of Good Hope and massacred our Squadron there, as he had massacred Cradock and his Squadron. 5. General Botha and his vast fleet of transports proceeding to the conquest of German South-West Africa would have been destroyed. 6. Africa under Hertzog would have become German. 7. Von Spee, distributing his Squadron on every Ocean, would have exterminated British Trade. That’s not a bad _résumé_!