seeing the ships in the Golden Horn.

In this affair the British, it is true, had many preoccupations--the
hostile Austrian fleet, the doubtful neutrality of Italy, the French
troop movement; the safety of Egypt and Suez. Yet the Admiralty were
well aware that the German Ambassador von Wangenheim was dominant
in Turkish councils and that the Turkish army was mobilized under
German officers. It seems strange, therefore, that an escape into
Constantinople was, in the words of the British Official History,
"the only one that had not entered into our calculations." The whole
affair illustrates the immense value political information may have
in guiding naval strategy. The German ships, though ostensibly
"sold" to the Turks, retained their German personnel. Admiral Souchon
assumed command of the Turkish Navy, and by an attack on Russian
ships in the Black Sea later succeeded in precipitating Turkey's
entrance into the war, with its long train of evil consequences
for the Western Powers.

_Coronel and the Falkland Islands_

In the Pacific the German cruisers were at first widely scattered,
the _Emden_ at Kiao-chau, the _Leipzig_ on the west coast of
Mexico, the _Nuernberg_ at San Francisco, and the armored cruisers
_Gneisenau_ and _Scharnhorst_ under Admiral von Spee in the Caroline
Islands. The two ships at the latter point, after being joined by
the _Nuernberg_, set out on a leisurely cruise for South America,
where, in view of Japan's entry into the war, the German Admiral may
have felt that he would secure a clearer field of operations and,
with the aid of German-Americans, better facilities for supplies.
After wrecking on their way the British wireless and cable station at
Fanning Island, and looking into Samoa for stray British cruisers,
the trio of ships were joined at Easter Island on October 14 by the
_Leipzig_ and also by the _Dresden_, which had fled thither from the
West Indies.

The concentration thus resulting seems of doubtful wisdom, for,
scattered over the trade routes, the cruisers would have brought
about greater enemy dispersion and greater injury to commerce; and,
as the later course of the war was to show, the loss of merchant
tonnage was even more serious for the Entente than loss of fighting
ships. It seems evident, however, that Admiral van Spee was not
attracted by the tame task of commerce destroying, but wished to
try his gunnery, highly developed in the calm waters of the Far
East, against e