held their own for two or three hours until Beatty’s
battle-cruisers, led by the Lion, came safely through
the German mine-fields and submarines to their assistance.
The Lion’s 13.5-inch guns soon settled the issue:
the Mainz and the Köln were sunk, while no British
unit was lost, and the casualties were 32 killed and
52 wounded against 300 German prisoners and double
that number of other casualties. The overwhelming
effect of heavier gunfire had been clearly demonstrated,
and it was further illustrated on 17 October by the
destruction of four German destroyers off the Dutch
coast by the light cruiser Undaunted accompanied by
four British destroyers; but the next exhibition of
naval gun-power was to be at our expense.
Among the incidental advantages which the adhesion
of Great Britain brought to the Entente was the intervention
of Japan, which, apart from its alliance with us,
had never forgiven Germany the part she took in depriving
Japan of the fruits of her victory over China in 1894,
and regarded as a standing offence the naval base which
Germany had established at Tsingtau and the hold she
had acquired on North Pacific islands. On 15
August Japan demanded within eight days the surrender
of the lease of Tsingtau and the evacuation of Far
Eastern waters by German warships. No answer
was, of course, returned, but the German squadron
under Von Spee wisely left Tsingtau in anticipation
of its investment by the Japanese. It began on
the 27th, and troops were landed on 2 September:
on the 23rd a British contingent arrived from Wei-hai-wei
to co-operate, and gradually the lines of investment
and the heavy artillery were drawn closer. The
final assault was fixed for 7 November, but the Germans
forestalled it by surrender; there were 3000 prisoners
out of an original garrison of 5000, and Germany’s
last overseas base, on which she had spent £20,000,000,
passed into the enemy’s hands. Australian
troops had already occupied without serious opposition
German New Guinea, the Bismarck archipelago, and the
Gilbert and Caroline Islands, while Samoa surrendered
to a New Zealand force, and the Marshall Islands to
the Japanese.
Von Spee’s squadron was thus left without a
German naval base; but one of its vessels was to show
that there was still a career for a raider, and the
others were to demonstrate the paradox that neutral
ports might be more useful than bases of their own,
inasmuch as they could not be treated like Tsingtau.
On fleeing from the Japanese menace Von Spee had steamed
eastwards across the Pacific, but two of his cruisers,
the Königsberg and the Emden, were detached to help
the Germans in East Africa and to raid British commerce
in the Indian Ocean. On 20 September the Königsberg
sank H.M.S. Pegasus at Zanzibar, but failed to
give much assistance in the projected attack on Mombasa,
and was presently bottled up in the Rufigi River.
The Emden under Captain Müller had better success.
Throughout September and October she haunted the coasts
