But of the excellence of the _Emden’s_ shooting and of her control of fire--so long as the fire was controlled--there can be no shadow of doubt whatever. It was obvious that if the battleships were equally good, the German Fleet would prove a serious foe. We must certainly esteem it one of the fortunate chances of this war that when Germany was building her Fleet, her naval authorities were convinced that all fighting would be at short range. Their calculation was that at short range a rapid and accurate fire of smaller pieces should prove just as effective as the slower fire of larger pieces. Her cruisers therefore were armed with 4.2’s when ours were being armed with 6-inch, and her battleships with 11-inch guns when ours were being fitted with 12-inch and 13.5’s. In the case of battleships and battle-cruisers, the German constructors had their eye upon a further advantage in the adoption of lighter pieces. The weight saved could be put, and in fact was put, into a more thorough armoured protection. Von Müller, the captain of _Emden_, when he was congratulated, after the capture, on the gallant fight put up, was at first seemingly offended. “He seemed taken aback and said ‘No,’ and went away, but presently he came to me and said, ‘Thank you very much for saying that, but I was not satisfied; we should have done better. You were very lucky in shooting away my voice pipes in the beginning.’” But if the Germans lost their voice pipes, _Sydney_ lost her rangefinder in the opening salvoes. The German fire control had not survived the derangement of its communications. It was not possible to extemporize anything to take their place. We do not hear that the accuracy of _Sydney’s_ fire lost anything when the rangefinder went. Both ships appeared, in this action, to have employed, or at least to have attempted to employ, their torpedoes. In an interview with Von Müller reported from Colombo, he is said to have explained that his intention in closing _Sydney_ at the opening of the engagement was not to lessen the range so as to bring the ballistics of his guns to an equality with ours, but to get _Sydney_ within torpedo range. _Sydney_ seems certainly to have fired a torpedo rather less than half-way through the action when the range was at its shortest. But as in the Heligoland affair, so here, the difficulties in getting a hit were insuperable. That _Emden_ did not fire a torpedo at the same time is explained by the fact that the action had not proceeded twenty minutes before not only was her steering gear wrecked, so that she had to steer by her screws, but her submerged torpedo flat also was put out of action.