The conduct of Cradock and his captains at Coronel, of Von Müller in _Emden_, and of the captains of _Gneisenau_, _Leipzig_, and _Nürnberg_, raises an interesting point in the ethics of war. Captain Glossop, it will be remembered, after driving _Emden_ on to the rocks at Direction Island, had to return towards Keeling Island to look for the _Emden’s_ tender. When he came back with certain prisoners on board, he appealed to Von Müller to surrender. No reply was given, and the prisoners on board the _Sydney_ informed Captain Glossop that no surrender would be made. It therefore became necessary to open fire again. This brought about the hauling down of the German flag. _Gneisenau_ had lost 600 killed out of a crew of eight or nine hundred when, at 8:40, she hauled down her flag. _Leipzig_ and _Nürnberg_ were in a similar case. _Bluecher_ was similarly defeated long before she was sunk. Both _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_ were apparently out of action within five minutes of action beginning. Now in each instance it is obvious that fighting was carried on, and that therefore men were sacrificed, long after the ship was hopelessly beaten. But in many cases not only was the fighting carried on, so to speak, gratuitously, but the ship herself scuttled, thus ensuring the drowning of several wounded men and risking the drowning of a very large number of unwounded. In all, taking the _Emden_, _Gneisenau_, _Nürnberg_, _Leipzig_, and _Bluecher_ together, it is not improbable that over 1,000 lives were thus thrown away to no immediately military purpose. The alternative was to surrender the ship. Why is it taken for granted that no ship, however fairly defeated in action, however hopeless further resistance, may not quite honourably yield herself a prize to the enemy? It is an entirely new doctrine, unknown in an age surely not inferior in naval skill, in military spirit, or in chivalrous feeling. Does it date from the howl of execration that went up in Russia when, after the flower of the Russian fleet had been defeated at Tsushima, Nebogatoff surrendered his archaic craft to the overwhelming force of the victors? So far as I know it was in that war that the great break with the old tradition was made. The old tradition, of course, was that a ship that had fought till it could fight no longer could be surrendered to a victorious enemy without shame. The records of the wars of a century ago abound in courts-martial on officers who in these circumstances had yielded a beaten ship, and they were always honourably acquitted, when it was shown that all that was possible had been done. It was evidently thought to be mere inhumanity to condemn a crew that had fought bravely to death by fire or drowning. Not that there are not grim stories that tell of a sterner resolution, like that of Grenville in the _Revenge_.