In November 1913 the _Monmouth_ left the China Station, and before she went, upon November 6th, her crew were entertained sumptuously by von Spee and von Müller. She was paid off in January 1914, after reaching home, but was recommissioned in the following July for the test mobilisation, which at the moment meant so much, and which a few weeks later was to mean so much more. When the war broke out, the _Monmouth_, with her new officers and men, half of whom were naval reservists, was sent back to the Pacific. The armoured cruiser _Good Hope_, also commissioned in July, was sent with her, and the old battleship _Canopus_ was despatched a little later. Details of the movements of these and of other of our warships in the South Atlantic and Pacific are given in the chapters entitled “The Cruise of the _Glasgow_.” The _Glasgow_ had been in the South Atlantic at the outbreak of war, and was joined there by the _Good Hope_ and _Monmouth_. Meanwhile war had broken out, and we will for a few moments consider what resulted. The _Emden_, Captain von Müller, was at the German base of Tsing-tau, but Admiral von Spee, with the armoured cruisers _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_, was among the German Caroline Islands far to the south of the China Sea. The _Dresden_ was in the West Indies and the _Leipzig_ and _Nürnberg_ on the West Coast of Mexico (the Pacific side). The Japanese Fleet undertook to keep von Spee out of China waters to the north, and the Australian Unit—which then was at full strength and included the battle cruiser _Australia_ with her eight 12-inch guns and the light cruisers _Melbourne_ and _Sydney_, each armed with eight sixes—made themselves responsible for the Australian end of the big sea area. The _Emden_, disguised as an English cruiser, with four funnels—the dummy one made of canvas—got out of Tsing-tau under the noses of the Japanese watchers, made off towards the Indian Ocean, and pursued that lively and solitary career which came to its appointed end at the Cocos-Keeling Islands, as will be described fully later on in this book. The Australian Unit, burning with zeal to fire its maiden guns at a substantial enemy, sought diligently for von Spee and requisitioned the assistance of the French armoured cruiser _Montcalm_, an old slow and not very useful vessel which happened to be available for the hunt. Von Spee was discovered in his island retreat and pursued as far as Fiji, but the long arm of the English Admiralty then interposed and upset the merry game. We were short of battle cruisers where we wanted them most—in the North Sea—so the _Australia_ was summoned home and the remaining ships of the Unit, no longer by themselves a match for von Spee, were ordered back to Sydney in deep disgust. “A little more,” declared the bold Australians, who under their English professional officers had been hammered into a real Naval Unit, “and we would have done the work which the _Invincible_ and _Inflexible_ had to do later.