Von Spee actually did, then, what it was fully anticipated he would do. He kept his ships together and travelled slowly eastward, maintaining himself in absolute secrecy from the outbreak of war until November 1. What were his exact hopes in the policy pursued, and what the consideration that led him to adopt it? His hopes of achieving any definite strategic result can only have been slender. The composition of his force was so well known that he could hardly have supposed it possible that he would ever meet a squadron of inferior strength. He cannot, then, primarily have contemplated the possibility of any sort of naval victory. Failing this, he may have had various not very precisely defined ideas in his mind. There was to begin with the possibility of picking up a sufficient number of German reservists off the South American coast to have made it possible, not only to attack and seize the Falkland Islands, but actually to have occupied them by an extemporized military force. This, as we know, he did attempt. He might further have contemplated crossing the South Atlantic to the Cape, with a view to supporting an insurrection of the Boers, if that materialized, or in any event of backing up the German colonists, who would be open to attack. Or, having struck a blow at the Falkland Islands, he might have sent his ships on a final mission in raiding the Atlantic trade. So long as his squadron was afloat, there were many possibilities--and always a certainty that it would force counter concentration on his opponents and thereby embarrass them in the task of searching for him. But one thing was certain. He could not combine squadron war with commercial war. _Emden_ he detached in August to attack the trade in the Indian Ocean. But the only support he could lend her was such immunity from pursuit as would result from the concentration he forced upon the British forces. It is highly probable that, had he sent all his ships on the same mission, he would have had at least a month’s run before effective measures could be taken, if only for the fact, possibly unknown to him, that so large a part of the Allied forces were being devoted to convoying the Australian troops. CORONEL But whatever the risks and difficulties of trade war, the uncertainties of doing anything at all as a squadron were really greater, and the final fate of his ships more certain. Whatever his hopes of striking a blow for his country’s profit or prestige, he could hardly, even in his most sanguine moments, have anticipated anything so extraordinary as Admiral Cradock’s attack on him on November 1. The full story of this ill-fated British force is still to be told. Nor can what we know be made fully intelligible until we have at least the actual words of Admiral Cradock’s instructions. But certain inferences from his actions show that whatever those instructions were, his own understanding of them is not in doubt at all. Briefly, the facts of the case are these: