The most considerable German force in distant waters was the East Asian Squadron, under command of Admiral Count von Spee. It was located at Kiao-Chau, and its principal elements were the armoured cruisers _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_. Sooner or later this squadron was bound to be defeated, as its commanding officer fully realised. The Japanese declared war on August 23rd, and the fleets of Admiral Baron Dewa and Admiral Kato were stretched out to blockade and intercept him; but he extricated himself very dexterously, crossed the Pacific, defeated Admiral Sir Christopher Craddock off Coronel on November 1st, rounded Cape Horn, and was himself defeated with the loss of his whole squadron in the battle of the Falkland Isles on December 8th. One of his cruisers, the _Emden_, which had escaped the Japanese, made a great noise in the world. Her captain was a very capable and also a very gallant officer, who bombarded oil tanks at Madras, sank the Russian cruiser _Jemtchug_ and the French destroyer _Mousquet_ at Penang, and sent to the bottom seventeen British vessels, representing a value of £2,211,000, besides three sent into port. The _Emden_ was destroyed by H.M. Australian cruiser _Sydney_ at the Cocos-Keeling Islands on November 8th. The _Karlsruhe_ sank vessels representing a value of £1,662,000. It is not the purpose here to describe the depredations and ocean wanderings of the other German cruisers or auxiliary cruisers. The object is to show how, by the all-compassing pressure of naval power, they were successively destroyed. It would be folly to deny that there was something defective in the disposition of the British naval forces at the beginning. Admiral von Spee was at large, with two powerful armoured cruisers, but Sir Christopher Craddock was left in inferior force off the coast of Chile. The obsolescent battleship _Canopus_, which had inferior speed, was to join him, but did not reach him in time. The Australian battle-cruiser _Australia_, which would have been an extremely valuable aid to Craddock’s squadron, did not pursue the German squadron across the Pacific.