Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/471

 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 463 to cover the transit of the French transports sailing singly and unescorted. His action was perfectly sound, seeing that not only were the transports directly protected, but his slow ships were in the only positions where they were likely to get contact with the fast German ships and destroy them. To combine protection of transports with destruction of an enemy if opportunity offers is perfectly possible, but to combine protection of transports with search for an enemy is to invite failure in both directions. If from the first the protection of the transports had been left entirely to the French fleet, the British admiral would have been free to go in quest of the German ships and to destroy them, while arranging to have the exits from the Adriatic watched in order to give warning if the Austrian fleet left that sea. His instructions were not so simple, and, as is well known, the German ships got away from Messina and ultimately entered the Dardanelles unmolested. The failure to stop them was due to many complex causes, of which all are not set out in this book. The reader will do well to reserve his judgement. The problems in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans differed only in complexity from that in the Mediterranean. There was the same German aim to avoid battle with a superior force, the same Entente superiority and single need to destroy the German armed ships, but longer uncertainty as to their positions, wider possibilities of error in their destinations, and the same tempting destination or target offered not only in transports carrying troops, but also in oversea military expeditions and in the carrying trade. The German detachments abroad at the outbreak of war numbered no more than ten effective ships of war. In the Mediterranean were the battle cruiser Goeben and the light cruiser Breslau, together with the whole Austrian navy, which never left the Adriatic ; in the Pacific, under Rear- Admiral von Spec, were the armoured cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the light cruisers Niirnherg, Leipzig, and Emden, and two armed merchant cruisers ; in the Indian Ocean the light cruiser Konigsberg ; in the Atlantic the light cruisers Karlsruhe and Dresden, to which were shortly added two armed merchant steamers. The force opposed to them was greatly superior. The Germans con- centrated a squadron in the Pacific, but elsewhere worked their ships independently. The resulting movements are examples not only of the difference between the use of concentrated and dispersed force, but also of their mutual reaction in secondary operations. On the outbreak of war, Spee in the Pacific with two armoured cruisers and other ships was among the Northern Pacific islands. Threatened by the very superior Entente force in the eastern seas, he was soon forced to move south-east across the Pacific. His position was unknown until 14 September, when he was reported off Samoa with the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Niirnberg ; on 30 September he was reported to have been off Tahiti on the 22nd. It was not until 4 October that an intercepted message indicated that he was bound for Easter Island and presumably for South America. On 12 October he reached Easter Island, where the Leipzig from Iquiqui and the Dresden from the Atlantic joined. His concentration was now com- plete, but his actual strength was not known until he was sighted by Rear- Admiral Cradock off Coronel on 1 November. Down to 4 October