by the north country gunners, had prevented her evading. The squadron that bombarded Yarmouth made off in the thick weather. It was obvious from the terms in which the Admiralty announced the fact that the bombardment had taken place that it was considered quite certain that they could not escape a second time. Unfortunately, however, they did; but they lost the _Yorck_ by a German mine when re-entering harbour. The details of the arrangements made for anticipating them were quite properly kept secret, but it became known that a sudden fog explained why these arrangements did not succeed. Both in the case of the Yarmouth and the Scarborough raids the enemy appeared at daylight. He had evidently crossed the North Sea during the night. From Whitby to the mine-fields off Heligoland is about 275 miles, a distance which each of the ships employed could cover quite comfortably in thirteen or fourteen hours. Had the squadron left Heligoland an hour before dark it could have fetched the English coast by daylight, hardly using more than three-quarter power. If it started for home at 8:30 it would have nine hours of daylight before it. At twenty-five knots 225 miles could be covered. This would bring them within fifty or sixty miles of the minefields, and it is probable that at some greater distance from Heligoland than this a rendezvous for submarines and destroyers had been arranged. These raids were doubtless planned on the theory that the battle-cruiser fleet would be based on some point so far north that no difference in speed between the British and German ships would enable the former to overtake them before the mine-fields, or at least the waiting submarines and destroyers were met. And it may well have been hoped that an exasperated English Admiral, if he came up with them then, would not willingly give up the hope of an engagement. It may have seemed a very feasible operation to draw him either on to the mines themselves or within range of the submarines. It is, it seems to me, not difficult to reconstruct the German plan for both the Yarmouth and the Whitby raids. It has often been pointed out--and with perfect justice--that in shelling open and undefended towns, and even a commercial port like Hartlepool that did have a 6-inch gun or two to defend it, the Germans were employing their fleet to no _immediate_ military purpose whatever. It has been suggested that there might have been the very excellent military object of keeping our battle-cruisers in home waters and so securing Von Spee a free hand abroad. What has not been so often insisted on is that had there been any military centre, fort, or magazine worth attack, the fugitive character of the bombardments robbed them of any probable hope of hitting it.