our coasts generally, and the blockading of the
German-garrisoned ports particularly. Thirty-six hours had not passed
when the German battle-ships _Hohenzollern_ and _Kaiserin_, and the
cruisers _Elbe_ and _Deutschland_, were totally destroyed off Portsmouth
and Cardiff respectively; Britain's only loss at that time being the
_Corfe Castle_, almost the smallest among the huge flotilla of armed
merchantmen which had been subsidized and fitted out by the Government
that year.

I believe all the authorities had admitted that, once it was known that
our declaration had reached Berlin, the British tactics could not have
been excelled for daring, promptitude, and devastating thoroughness. It
is true that Masterman, in his well-known _History of the War_, urges
that much loss of life might have been spared at Portsmouth and
Devonport "if more deliberate and cautious tactics had been adopted,
and the British authorities had been content to achieve their ends a
little less hurriedly." But Masterman is well answered by the passage in
General Hatfield's Introduction to Low's important work, which tells us
that:

"The British plan of campaign did not admit of leisurely tactics or
great economy. Britain was striking a blow for freedom, for her very
life. Failure would have meant no ordinary loss, but mere extinction.
The loss of British life in such strongly armed centres as Portsmouth
was very great. It was the price demanded by the immediate end of
Britain's war policy, which was to bring the enemy to terms without the
terrible risks which delay would have represented, for the outlying and
comparatively defenceless portions of our own Empire. When the price is
measured and analyzed in cold blood, the objective should be as
carefully considered. The price may have been high; the result purchased
was marvellous. It should be borne in mind, too, that Britain's military
arm, while unquestionably long and strong (almost unmanageably so,
perhaps), was chiefly composed of what, despite the excellent
instructive routine of _The Citizens_, must, from the technical
standpoint, be called raw levies. Yet that great citizen army, by reason
of its fine patriotism, was able in less than one hundred hours from the
time of the declaration, to defeat, disarm, and extinguish as a fighting
force some three hundred thousand of the most perfectly trained troops
in the world. That was the immediate objective of Britain's war policy;
or, to be exact,