November was a month of kaleidoscopic sorrow and joy for the British. It began in gloom, with Turkey’s entry into the war and the inherent menace to Egypt which that event denoted. Then came the great naval action off Chili, with first blood to the Kaiser in the only regulation stand-up battle in which British and German warships had so far met. The sinking of Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock’s flagship, the cruiser _Good Hope_, and her companion, the _Monmouth_, by Admiral Count von Spee’s cruiser squadron, with the loss of one thousand four hundred precious lives, was a bitter blow. Lord Charles Beresford, under whom Cradock had once served, told me that his death was a more serious loss to the British Fleet than a squadron of cruisers. It was a depressing beginning for the First Sea Lordship of Lord "Jackie" Fisher, who succeeded Prince Louis of Battenberg. Churchill was still First Lord of the Admiralty--what we in the United States should call Secretary of the Navy--but Fisher, as First Sea Lord, was in practical control of everything connected with the actual activities of the Fleet. The First Lord of the Admiralty’s business is to get ships for the navy. The First Sea Lord’s task is to man, arm and fight them. Fisher lost no time in angry remorse over Cradock’s disaster. He set about to repair it. He applied forthwith the "Fisher touch." He ascertained that it was Rear-Admiral Sir Frederick Doveton Sturdee, Chief of the War Staff, who had been chiefly responsible for dispatching Cradock’s squadron to waters in which it would have to meet a German force superior in both tonnage and gun-power. Whereupon Fisher ordered Sturdee to place himself at the head of a squadron which was to find and destroy von Spee, and not come back until it had done so. Sturdee "delivered the goods" with neatness and dispatch. Almost a month later to the day--it is a fortnight’s journey from British waters to the Southern Atlantic even for twenty-seven-knot battle-cruisers--he carried out Fisher’s imperious orders. On December 8 Cradock was gloriously avenged. Von Spee in his flagship, the _Scharnhorst_, together with the sister cruiser _Gneisenau_ and the smaller _Leipzig_, was sent to the bottom off the Falkland Islands, and the remaining units in the German squadron, the _Dresden_ and _Nürnberg_, were accounted for later. Britain breathed easier. The bulldog breed in her navy was still to be relied upon. Everybody instinctively felt that there was any number of more Sturdees and ships and guns and sailors ready to do equally invincible service for England if the Germans would but give them the chance von Spee had offered at the Falklands.