At their utmost, therefore, the Germans could not have added more than five vessels to their first line (they had lost one battle cruiser), thus raising it at the utmost to twenty-five battleships and cruisers, as compared with our maximum of forty-two much more powerful and faster ships. Four of their battleships were the obsolete Nassaus with twelve 11-inch guns and two of their battle cruisers (_Moltke_ and _Seydlitz_) were also armed with 11-inch guns. If a successful fight with our Grand Fleet was hopeless in August, 1914, it was still more hopeless in May, 1916. We had not doubled our lead in actual numbers but had much more than doubled it in speed and power of the vessels available for a battle in the North Sea. In gun power we had nearly twice Germany’s strength at the beginning; we had not far from three times her effective strength by the end of May of 1916. It is indeed probable that Germany was not so strong in big ships and guns as I have here reckoned. She did not produce so many in the Jutland Battle. I can account for five battle cruisers and sixteen battleships (excluding pre-Dreadnoughts) making twenty-one in all. I have allowed her, however, the best possible, but long before the year 1916 it must have been brought bitterly home to the German Sea Command that by no device of labour, thought, and machinery could they produce great ships to range in battle with ours. We had progressed from strength to strength at so dazzling a speed that we could not possibly be overtaken. Had not the hare gone to sleep, the tortoise could never have come up with it—and the British hare had no intention of sleeping to oblige the German tortoise. There is every indication that Germany soon gave up the contest in battleships and put her faith in super-submarines, and in Zeppelins, the one to scout and raid, and the other to sink merchant vessels and so between them either to starve or terrify England into seeking an end of the war. CHAPTER XI THE CRUISE OF THE “GLASGOW” PART I.—RIO TO CORONEL (July 27th to Nov. 1st, 1914)