On Monday similar proclamations were posted up in Portsmouth, Devonport, and Chatham, and caused quite a scurry of correspondents from these towns. The Government and the Admiralty were most furiously attacked for this interference with liberty, and, but for the terrible series of defeats and the rapid progress of the German invasion, the Government would probably have thrown the Admiralty over and surrendered to the cries of the mob. Most violent were the attacks upon the Admiralty for its foolish and unwise reductions in the Navy, for selling old ships which might in this emergency have done good service, for its failure to station torpedo craft along the east coast, and to instal wireless telegraph stations there. These attacks had reason behind them, and they greatly weakened the hand of the Admiralty at a dangerous moment. Fortunately, however, the young officers of the Navy had been taught fearlessness of all consequences, and they carried out with an iron hand the regulations which were essential for success in regaining the command of the sea. Nor were the Germans even on the east coast, where they were as yet left undisturbed, to have matters all their own way. Their cruisers, indeed, were stationed right up the coast, maintaining an effective blockade and transmitting wireless signals. At Lerwick was a considerable squadron; off Wick was the _Kaiserin Augusta_; off Aberdeen, the _Hansa_; off Newcastle, the _Vineta_; off Hull, the _Freya_; and farther south the whole massed force of the German Navy. They levied ransoms, intercepted shipping, and did what they liked beyond the range of the few coast batteries. But in the Straits of Dover they had one very serious misadventure. People on the cliffs of Dover on Tuesday morning, watching that stretch of water, which was now empty of all shipping but for the German torpedo vessels incessantly on the patrol, and but for the outlines of large German cruisers on the northern horizon, were certain that they saw one of the big German cruisers strike a mine. There was a great cloud of smoke, and a heavy boom came over the sea; then a big four-funnelled vessel was seen to be steering for the French coast with a very marked list. On the Wednesday it was known that the German armoured cruiser _Scharnhorst_ had struck one of the German mines adrift in the Straits of Dover, and had sustained such serious injury that she had been compelled to make for Dunkirk in a sinking condition. There she was immediately interned by the French authorities, and when the German Government remonstrated, the French Ministry pointed out that a precisely similar course had been taken by Germany at Kiaochau, during the Far Eastern war, with the Russian battleship _Tzarevitch_. * * * * *