In the dawn of the next day, the lookouts on the Falklands saw the columns of smoke from the enemy ships in the distance. They came on like a cyclone. Admiral von Spee on his bridge was already imagining the telegram which should announce to Berlin next night his extraordinary prowess. But from the islands which they thought were deserted, they suddenly saw emerge in the morning light the prows of the great cruisers with their powerful guns. He counted them. He recognized their strength. His signals ordered flight. But the English pack had sniffed blood, and until evening it ran and killed. I have just read the respectful words which, like an epitaph, the London admiralty dedicates to their fallen enemies. Admiral von Spee has nobly ended a stainless career. Far away in the midst of the beauty of the Levantine, the officers of my cruiser at first rejoiced at the victory. Then they saluted him, for one does not need to know all the final details to respect an end so glorious as his. The _Scharnhorst_ and the _Gneisenau_ were cruisers of our own class, enemies of our own design. Why did they not choose us, three ships with our six smokestacks apiece? The fight would have been glorious, and the glory to the French. Shall we never confront anything but a desert sea, or invisible submarines? _Mediterranean, 13 December._ Our mission is ended; we are going not to France but to Malta. The Cassandras were right, and this twelfth Christmas holiday I shall pass where.... Courage and patience! Our comrades in the trenches are suffering in the slime and mud. We are commencing to freeze on a sullen sea. Winter will be hard for all the sons of France. For several days the _Waldeck-Rousseau_ has displayed the flag along the Levantine coasts. It has proved the vigilance of our country and her attention to the great cataclysms which are preparing in the East. It has encouraged the neutrals and informed the Turk that his turn will soon come. The cruiser has anchored nowhere. Her elegant outline passed far from islands or coasts, and the people who observed the smoke from her six stacks, could prophesy the future from the sight. One morning we crossed the bay which is bordered by three nations, Turkey at Gallipoli; Bulgaria at Dedeagatch; Greece at Kavalla--respectively hostile, doubtful, friendly. Gallipoli: a rugged mountainous peninsula, looking like Corsica. Behind its heights winds the passage of the Dardanelles, the path to Constantinople. For the moment this approach is forbidden us, and our guns quiver in vain. France and England wait their hour; the punishment of the Osmanlis will come later.