Of warlike policies he had a choice of two. He might either keep his ships together and embark on a war of squadrons, or he could scatter his ships and devote himself to commerce destruction. In the first case, as we have seen, he could only look for objectives in the east. In the alternative the greatest fields of his operations were either north of the Carolines, where the Chinese trade could be attacked; or northwest, where the Asiatic and Australian trades converge to Colombo; or still farther to the west, where the whole eastern trade runs into the mouth of the Red Sea. To the eastward there was no focal point of trade where great results could have been achieved--unless indeed he took his ships round the Horn to attack the River Plate trade or, better still, the main route that passes Pernambuco. It was an obvious truth of the situation that, according as the attack on trade promised great results, so would that attack encounter the greatest dangers, for it seemed to be a certainty that the focal points would be the best protected. The most frequented of these, the approaches to the Red Sea, were also the furthest from his source of supply, and had he in fact resolved upon commerce destruction, his ships would have had to maintain themselves, as did _Emden_, by coaling and re-victualling out of the prizes that they took. The advantage of scattering and going for the trade ruthlessly would have been the virtual certainty of inflicting very formidable damage indeed of an economic kind. The advantage of keeping his squadron together was the chance of some _coup_ that would turn the scale--even if only for a time--in his country’s favour. The disadvantages of the first policy were that there was the certainty that each ship would ultimately be run down and destroyed by superior force, and grave risk that one or more ships would be paralyzed by want of supplies, before a sufficient destruction of trade could justify the sacrifice. The weakness of the second was that, as a squadron, his ships might accomplish nothing at all. I have so far discussed the German Admiral’s alternatives as if they had been debated at the time when war became certain. But it can be taken for granted that the principles on which he acted were not solely his own, but had determined German policy in this matter long before. And, in the main, the decisive arguments probably arose from the character of his force.