“The range of them” is a great phrase. Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee used it in speaking of the battle of the Falkland Islands. “The range of them” seems a sure prescription for victory. Nothing in all the history of the war appeals to me as quite so smooth a bit of tactics as the Falkland affair. It was so smooth that it was velvety; and it is worth telling again, as I understand it. Sir Frederick is another young admiral. Otherwise, how could the British navy have entrusted him with so important a task? He is a different type from Beatty, who in an army one judges might have been in the cavalry. Along with the peculiar charm and alertness which we associate with sailors--they imbibe it from the salt air and from meeting all kinds of weather and all kinds of men, I think--he has the quality of the scholar, with a suspicion of merriness in his eye. He was Chief of Staff at the Admiralty in the early stages of the war, which means, I take it, that he assisted in planning the moves on the chessboard. It fell to him to act; to apply the strategy and tactics which he planned for others at sea while he sat at a desk. It was his wit against von Spee’s, who was not deficient in this respect. If he had been he might not have steamed into the trap. The trouble was that von Spee had some wit, but not enough. It would have been better for him if he had been as guileless as a parson. Sir Frederick is so gentle-mannered that one would never suspect him of a “double bluff,” which was what he played on von Spee. After von Spee’s victory over Cradock, Sturdee slipped across to the South Atlantic, without any one knowing that he had gone, with a squadron strong enough to do unto von Spee what von Spee had done unto Cradock. But before you wing your bird you must flush him. The thing was to find von Spee and force him to give battle; for the South Atlantic is broad and von Spee, it is supposed, was in an Emden mood and bent on reaching harbour in German Southwest Africa, whence he could sally out to destroy British shipping on the Cape route. When he intercepted a British wireless message--Sturdee had left off the sender’s name and location--telling the plodding old _Canopus_ seeking home or assistance before von Spee overtook her, that she would be perfectly safe in the harbour at Port William, as guns had been erected for her protection, von Spee guessed that this was a bluff, and rightly. But it was only Bluff Number One. He steamed to the Falklands with a view to finishing off the old _Canopus_ on the way across to Africa. There he fell foul of Bluff Number Two. Sturdee did not have to seek him; he came to Sturdee.