Spirits which had drooped when Cradock was lost were revived ten days later by the most welcome piece of naval news the British people had had since the war began--the destruction of the Kaiser’s champion commerce-raider _Emden_ by the Australian cruiser _Sydney_ off the Cocos Islands and the capture of her intrepid commander, Captain von Müller, and many of his crew. The _Emden_ sank seventeen ships and cargoes worth eleven million dollars before her career was ended. But von Müller won universal renown and even popularity in Great Britain for his daring, "sportsmanship" and gallantry to vanquished merchantmen. Germans do not appreciate such a spirit, and do not deserve to be its beneficiary--the utter lack of the sporting instinct in the Fatherland is responsible for that unfortunate fact--yet if von Müller had been landed a prisoner of war in England and could have been paraded down Pall Mall, he might have counted confidently on a welcome which Englishmen customarily reserve for their own heroes. Here and there in London protests were raised against the encomiums which almost every newspaper, and for the matter of that almost every Englishman, uttered in praise of von Muller’s vindication of the nobility of the sea, but the overwhelmingly prevalent opinion was that he had "played the game" and, pirate though he was, deserved well of a race which still holds high the traditions of the naval service. Ever-changing and stirring were November’s events--the capitulation of Germany’s prized Chinese colony of Kiau-Chau to the besieging Japanese; Lord Roberts’ tragic death in the field among the soldiers he loved so well, the Indians who had come to Europe to fight Britain’s battles; the still victorious advance of the Russians in East Prussia, though Hindenburg’s smashing blow in the Tannenberg swamps had been delivered many weeks before; the honorable acquittal of Rear-Admiral E. C. T. Troubridge, commanding the Mediterranean cruiser squadron, on the charge of having allowed the German cruisers _Goeben_ and _Breslau_ to slip through his meshes into Constantinople--the Admiral had applied for a court-martial, to clear himself of a grotesque accusation that a relationship with the captain of the _Goeben_ had induced him to let the Germans through. But all these things combined left no such indelible impression on my mind as the Lord Mayor’s dinner at the Guildhall in the city of London on the night of November 9. That function, the inauguration of the new chief magistrate, is celebrated in British history as the annual occasion on which leaders of the State promulgate some great new line of Governmental policy--a national keynote for the year to come. The Guildhall dinner in the midst of Britain’s greatest war was sure to be of immemorial significance, and my heart beat high with anticipation when Lord Northcliffe assigned me to attend it and record an American’s impressions of England’s most august feast.