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Show I CCCIDlUMir -;'. J II TrnaiE sea. eiewbil lf iTJbylowcll Hi iiiuL ' illiillii coarse, he knew the British would be laying for him at botb place. He knew also that they would be after him with swifter and more powerful hips than his own. His one cbanoe wm to beat them to Cape Unrn, lose himself In tbe broad Atlantic, make a run for It, and probably fight bis way through the blockade. By now he was short of botb monitions mo-nitions and coal. A wireless from Germany brought the good news that a supply ship had slipped through the blockade and was now on Its way out to meet him. What a tremendous voyage voy-age he might now have made! What a hair-raising dash at the allied blockade block-ade line be might have made I .' But he never got the chance. As ho rounded the Horn, Dame Fortune For-tune tempted him, and he made what proved to be a fatal error. . le stopped a British collier and took all her coal. Tbla delayed blui for thru days. Meanwhile, a fleet of Britain's mightiest battle cruisers had arriveI at the Falkland. He still might have run by them unnoticed had be not determined de-termined to shell and destroy the wire less station on the Falkland. Thus be stumbled Into that nest of battle cruisers. He tried to run, but Uivj caught and sank him. That day tl it-British it-British had tbelr sea plants, the In defatlgable, the Invincible, tbe Indoid (table, and' along with them a number num-ber of other battle cruisers, that later la-ter were to fight gallantly at Jutland,, and then find their way to rest on the floor of the North Sea. j Only one of Von Spee's ships, the light but fleet cruiser Dresden, showed her heels to the British leviathan and slipped back around Cape Horn. But the Fates were merely playing with the poor Dresden, and a few days later la-ter she was sunk by the more power fill British cruiser Kent off San Juan Fernandez. Robinson Crusoe's lslant( In the Pacific. She was lying In neu. tral waters and should have been shelj tered by the laws of war. Her cap' tain signaled to tbe commander oi the Kent: "We are In Chilean territory." "My orders are sink you on sight.; CHAPTER IX , t -12 The Battle of. the Falkland 1 . ; . Islands Through an oily ea we sailed south and west toward the, Falkland Islands. Many time bad I passed this way In the old days when bound for Cupe Horn. These Islands of the South Atlantic At-lantic have long been the base for whaling schooners. But to every German Ger-man the Falkland will be forever memorable as the scene of a one-sided naval engagement In whlcb one of our twvrt beloved admirals waa over whelmed by a British fleet. Had you aeen our deck aa we tailed soutb during these days, yoo might have wondered what we were about. Along wltb other plunder, we bad looted loot-ed captured ships of several great sheets of Iron. We had ripped them from Iron walls and roofs of forecastles fore-castles and stowed them on our deck. Now the mechanics of the Seeadler'a motor crew got busy with acetylene torches, and from those sheets of metal met-al they welded a great Iron cress, ten feet high. . We drew near a spot on that lonely ocean Just a bit to tbe east of the Falkland Inlands. My navigation officer offi-cer and I figured out the point carefully care-fully on our chart and when our Instruments In-struments told us we were there, 1 called all hands on deck. Somewhere far below on the floor of the ocean were the bodies of hundred of our meet again, we along the far-off China coast may be but a few ships against many enemies, but from you of the High Sea fleet we expect great deeds." We of the German navy knew and constantly gave expression to the thought that Britain was our guide on the sea. Her great seafaring tradition tra-dition was our conscious and admitted pattern. We German naval men liked the English and were In sympathy wltb them. Our navies were alike In spirit The French navy was wm what different. It morale was per haps not so good. French naval officer, offi-cer, all come up from the ranks. The British and German come from cadet schools and are recruited mostly from the first families. That la best It provides a finer corps of officers. L myself, came up from the forecastle, but I believe that unless you have officers and men from different worlds, your men will have little respect for their commanders. It must either be that or your officers must Inspire respect re-spect wltb their fists as In the old salllug-shlp day. Tbe French oavy no longer has a rich tradition. It Is true that the Frencb bad far greater sea fighter than we In past centuries, and they had their fine old naval traditions. tra-ditions. But during the Revolution the old Royal navy of France was swept away and remained abolished for twenty years. At the end of that time, a new navy was formed, but by then the fine old Frencb traditions seem to have been forgotten and new replied tbe Kent "and no matter where yoo are." The captain of the Dresden blew uyi his ship, and wltb his officer anil crew swam ashore. The Island wn not quite so deserted after this shipwreck ship-wreck as It was In Koblnson Crusoe' day I ' That In brief was the' story ot the plucky Von Spee and his gallant men. Hence this dreary waste of waters off the Falklands was sacred to us. We hove to, and from my quarter-deck I presided over a brief memorial service above the watery graves of our comrades com-rades and their ships. First I told my boy the story of my friend Count Von Spee and his men, and every one of us knew that we, too, might soon be on our way to join them. But with the difference that we might not even have a chance to fight tt out On German ships, the captain Is also the chaplain. Every Sunday t. hoard the Seeadler we had our hour of prayer and song. When we bad "guests" aboard from enemy ships, we Invited them to Join with u in the worship of the Great Ruler of tbe Waves. Our service followed the ritual of no particular creed. It waa a simple sim-ple as we simple seamen could make It Tbe table whlcb bore the ship's Bible was draped not only wltb our German flag but also wltb the flag of all tbe allied nations wbose ships we had captured and under wbose color' our prisoner bad tailed. I wanted to make our prisoners feel that tbe service was as mucb theirs as It waa ours, and that we did not feel ourselves our-selves any more a chosen people before be-fore tbe Altar of God than any other people. My life baa not been altogether a: plou one. On the contrary. It bad been decidedly blasphemous. My character was then, and still Is, far from saintly. However, I may not have been wholly unfit for the office of ship's chaplain. I am religious at heart easily swayed by sentimental appeal. Had I not been a member of the Salvation Army in Australia? Those testimonial meetings In Fre-mantle Fre-mantle were still vivid memories to me. So I was not exactly a greenhorn green-horn at conducting a prayer meeting. Before concluding our little memorial memo-rial service, I addressed our comrade three thousand fathoma below us. No mounds were raised over tbelr graves, no green grass or kindly flowers had been placed to cheer them on their Journey to the land from which no. traveler has yet returned. Only iha waves of tbe sea. I spoke to them as though my voice could somehow find, Its way to their resting place among: the mountain range at the bottom of the Soutb Altantlc: ; "Glorious fallen comrades, we bring you a message from home. Your comrades have kept their promise to, your commander. On sea and on land, comrades and the battered bulks of a once proud German fleet It waa In these waters that our gallant Pacific squadron under Count von Spee sank In three thousand fathoms. For here It was that our light cruisers, the Scharnhorst Gnelsenau, Nuremburg, and Lelpslc, with odds agnlnst them, fought tt out wltb a more powerful British squadron. Wltb flag at half-mast we stood at solemn attention. The sky waa gray and melancholy. The sea rolled wltb a gentle swell. In our mind's eye we could picture that disastrous day when, outranged by the guna of the great British warships, our cruisers, two large and three small, had fought a losing and hopeless fight One, a scout cruiser, escaped. The other went down. Pounded from the distance, dis-tance, they trembled nnder the blowa of the shell that rained down upon them. Exploding projective raked the decks and pierced the bulla of the Ill-fated Ill-fated vessels. Aa If In a last Strug- i gle, trying to keep afloat for one more shot at the enemy, they staggered, lurched, and then, one after tbe other, plunged Into the depths, entering port on thelr'flnal voyage fur below on the ocean floor, eighteen thousand feet beneath be-neath the surface. Every man aboard three of the ships was lost A high sea happened to be running at tbe time, so the victor had little chance to rescue tbe men from the doomed ships. Two hundred and fifty members mem-bers of the crew of tbe Gnelsenau were picked up and got to the Falklands Falk-lands alive. As If In a dream, 1 thought of the lest time I saw my friend Count von Spee. It was In tbe days before tbe world went mad. The navy yard at Kiel was In gala mood. Every warship war-ship In the b arbor had aent three hundred hun-dred men. They stood at rigid attention atten-tion while Von Spee and his ataff strode by. Then be addressed tbem. "By order of tbe emperor, I am to take command of our cruiser In Chinese Chi-nese water. My officers and men sail with me tomorrow." Tbe sailors all give three cheers. They think the admiral and his men are merely going for a pleasant vacation vaca-tion to the Orient It Is In 1013. No war Is In sight Yet a darker note Intrudes: Even then military and naval na-val men were unable to escape the thought of war: "We are leaving home and country for two years. We who part from yoo tomorrow will do our duty, knowing know-ing that every man at borne will do his. If war should come, we will be across the world and you will be here. We will be too far away to lend a hand to you, and there Is little that you will be able to do for us. "Ours Is a young navy, but we have had a great teacher. When England built her mighty fleet she taught us how to build ours. Tbe English have great naval traditions, and botb their fleet and traditions have been our model. If war should come before we traditions had to be formed. We Germans, Ger-mans, wltb a new fleet, took over tbe old, solid tradition of tbe British and made It our own. We did everything we could to Implant It In our men, and make It a real, living thing Ingrained In our people. Our sea leadera understood under-stood the Importance of a tradition. That was why we were determined to keep a fleet after the war. When our great ships went down at Sea pa Flow, our Socialists favored the total abandonment aban-donment of the naval arm, but fortunately fortu-nately enough of our people came out of their post-war trance long enough to prevent sucb a fatal error. Per hope It might be only a few small ships that we could retain, but It would serve to keep traditions alive until we could again build up a fleet aa great or even greater than tbe one we lost . Von Spee was a sailor's admiral. Ue was a seaman by temperament open, honest, and Jovial, uncomfortable uncomfort-able on land and only himself when on the bridge of bis flagship. Too many of our professional fighting men, 1 regret to say, were more ornamental than useful. They were good at wearing wear-ing gold lace and that Is aboot all. But not Von Spee. Ue was at his best on a quarter-deck In a storm. I still can see him pacing back and forth with bis bushy brows and piercing blue eyes. The day after be said auf wlederse-hen wlederse-hen to us at Kiel, be and his officers and men left by transport for the Orient, there to relieve the officer and men aboard the cruisers of our small Pacific squadron at Talng Tao. What was to have been their two-year term overseas began as commonplace, quiet routine. It ended under the salvos sal-vos of British guns off tbe Falkland Islanda. ' ' , Von Spee's plan, when the war caught blm 15,000 miles from German waters, was to harass the allies In tbe Pacific and then try to slip back through the North sea to Kiel. Lady Luck smiled on blm for a little while and then deserted blm. After crossing cross-ing the Pacific he caught Craddock, the British admiral, off tbe coast of Chile. Von Spee's star was In Its ascendancy as-cendancy at this time and Craddock'a on the wane. A German secret agent In Chile flashed a wireless to Von Spee giving him the Information that Craddock was waiting for the arrival of the big but old battleship Canopu.i that was rounding the Horn. Without the Canopus, Craddock' forces were weaker than Von Spee's, and Von Spee Instantly dashed to the attack so as to engage Craddock before the Canopus came up. Craddock and his men met their fate like true British sailors. Outgunned, the British cruisers cruis-ers continued to fire until they sank. Only one, a small bont, got away. But their conqueror's days were numbered. num-bered. Von Spee now began his long race toward Kiel. Only two routes were possible, one by Cape Horn and the other by the Cape of Good Hope. Of they are fighting for the Fatherland. We of tbe Seeadler salute you and aolemnly swear that we, too, will endeavor en-deavor to live and die aa gloriously aa yon. We, too, are hunted on the sea, even aa you were. So perhaps it will not be long ere we Join yon down there In Davy Jones' locker. If we do, our one hope la that we will be able to fight our laat fight as gallantly gallant-ly aa did you." I then led the sailors In a prayer that we repeated aloud, and while the chorused Invocation traveled southward south-ward on the winds that blew toward the Antarctic, four men came forward bearing the great Iron cross. "A decoration for tbe grave of heroes!" At this signal from me tbe massive emblem slid Into the water wltb scarcely a splasb and flashed swiftly down, down, three thousand fathoms, to carry our message to Admiral Count Von Spee and his men. .TO BE CONTINUED.) |