e
11th of November, 1918) the _Cease fire!_ sounded on every front by sea
and land and air; for that supremely skilful hero, Marshal Foch, had
signed the Armistice as Commander-in-Chief of all the Allied Armies on
the Western Front. One of the terms of this famous Armistice was that
Germany should surrender her Fleet to the Allies in the Firth of Forth,
where the British Grand Fleet was waiting with a few French and
American men-of-war. Never in the whole world's history had such a
surrender taken place. But never in the whole world's history had any
navy broken the laws of war so shamefully as the German Navy had. And
never in the whole world's history had any navy been more truly great
or so gloriously strong as the British Navy had become.

On Friday the 15th of November the German cruiser _Koenigsberg_ steamed
into the Firth of Forth and anchored near Inchcape, which, aptly
enough, is famous in Scottish song as the death-place of a murderer and
pirate. "Beatty's destroyer," H.M.S. _Oak_, unlike all other craft in
her gala coat of gleaming white, then took Admiral von Meurer aboard
the British flagship, _Queen Elizabeth_, where Beatty sat waiting, with
the model of a British lion on the table in front of him (as a souvenir
of his former flagship, _Lion_) and a portrait of Nelson hanging on the
wall behind.

The hundred and fifty surrendered submarines went slinking into
Harwich, the great British North Sea base for submarines. But the
seventy-four surface craft came into the Firth of Forth on the 21st of
November: sixteen dreadnoughts, eight light cruisers, and fifty
destroyers.

"09.40 Battle Fleet meet German Fleet" was the unique order posted up
overnight in the _Queen Elizabeth_. But long before that hour the
stately procession began filing out to sea. H.M. SS. _Canada_,
_Australia_, _New Zealand_, and _South Africa_, were there to remind us
that "United we stand, divided we fall." Admiral Grasset was there in
the _Aube_ to remind us that the French and British had been
brothers-in-arms for fifty-one months of furious war. Admirals Rodman
and Sims were there in the U.S.S. _New York_ to remind us that during
the last nineteen of these fifty-one months the three greatest
self-governing peoples of the world had made common cause against the
barbarous Hun. Finally, and clinchingly, the main body of the whole
Grand Fleet was there, drawn up in two enormous lines-ahead, six miles
apart, and sixteen miles