“Here she was caught and forced to fight by His Majesty’s Australian ship _Sydney_ (Captain John C. T. Glossop, R.N.). A sharp action took place, in which the _Sydney_ suffered the loss of three killed and fifteen wounded. “The _Emden_ was driven ashore and burnt. Her losses in personnel are reported as very heavy. All possible assistance is being given the survivors by various ships which have been despatched to the scene. “With the exception of the German squadron now off the coast of Chile, the whole of the Pacific and Indian oceans are now clear of the enemy’s warships.” The material news was that _Emden_ had been caught and sunk. She was one of Germany’s small fast cruisers, armed like the rest with 4.2 guns, and therefore no very formidable match for the ship that met and encountered her. The work of her destruction, we afterwards learned, had been done by Captain Glossop of _Sydney_, with a rapidity and neatness unsurpassed in any naval engagement of the war before or, indeed, since. But at the moment when the news came, the method of the thing was of far less importance than the thing itself, for it is no exaggeration to say that at the end of the first week of November the spirits of the nation were at an exceedingly low ebb. There was a marked uneasiness as to the naval position. The successes of the Fleet had been achieved without fighting, and it looked as if, in the naval war, we were not only watching, almost abjectly, for the initiative of the enemy, but that we were unable to defeat that initiative when it was taken. The public therefore forgot that 98 per cent. of our trade was carrying on as before, that our sea communications with our armies were under no threat, that the enemy’s battle force was keeping completely within the security of its harbours. There had been but one active demonstration of British naval strength--the affair of the Bight of Heligoland. But a dropping fire of bad news had made our nerves acutely sensitive. It was submarines people feared most. Writing at the time, I summarized the general attitude of the public as it appeared to me: