Meanwhile the Third Corps, in the Centre, had been severely pressed, holding as it did an extended front crossing the Lys, with several weak points, while adequate reserves could not be provided. High praise was given to the skill of its commander and the courage, tenacity, endurance and unparalleled cheerfulness of the men; and special mention was made of the frequent repulse of attacks (Oct. 22-24), a German attack on Le Gheir (29th) and its recapture by the Middlesex Regiment, with the aid of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders; of trenches temporarily lost; of a counter-attack by the Somerset Light Infantry, and of much fighting by the Cavalry Corps. In the Third Corps the East Lancashire, Hampshire, and Somersetshire Light Infantry Regiments were specially commended, and the Indian troops were said to have displayed much initiative and resource.
It transpired on December 16 that Sir Henry Rawlinson's troops, the Seventh Infantry and Third Cavalry Divisions, which were landed in Belgium about October 6, to support the British forces at Antwerp, had been compelled to retreat, fighting almost continuously, by Thielt and Roulers to Ypres, and there to keep several German Corps at bay till Sir John French's Army had come up from the Aisne. When they were released, the infantry had only 44 officers left out of 400, and only 2,336 men out of 12,000.
Episodes in Sir John French's movement were revealed soon after it, inter alia the entry of the Indian troops into battle, the gallantry of the London Scottish (Territorials), of the Loyal North Lancashires, and other regiments. But attention at home was directed mainly to the struggle of the Belgians on the Yser, assisted by a British squadron, including the river monitors Severn, Mersey, and Humber, taken over at the beginning of the war from Brazil; their light draught and howitzer batteries enabled them to render effective aid. They left Dover on October 17, began to bombard the German forces at daybreak on the 19th, and landed detachments with machine guns; and the bombardment continued, with slight intermissions, for over a fortnight, H.M.S. Attentive, Wildfire, Brilliant, Rinaldo, the destroyer Falcon, the battleship Venerable, and other vessels (some almost obsolete), taking part, and inflicting heavy losses on the German troops. The Germans strove to protect themselves by removing the Wielingen and Wandelaar lightships, and by placing mines along the coast.
German methods of warfare had meanwhile been illustrated by the attempt to sink the French steamer Amiral Ganteaume, crowded with refugees from Calais, in the English Channel (Oct. 26), and indirectly by the terrible wreck of the British hospital ship Rohilla off Whitby (Oct. 30), caused mainly by her keeping close inshore to avoid mines in an easterly gale, though she was believed to have struck one before stranding. On November 2 the Admiralty issued a warning that the Germans, through the agency of some merchant vessel under a neutral flag, had scattered mines indiscriminately on the route between America and Liverpool via the north of Ireland; the White Star liner Olympic had escaped them only by pure good luck; and, in view of the German practice, the whole of the North Sea must now be declared a military area; after November 5 any ship passing a line drawn from the north point of the Hebrides through the Faroes to Iceland must do so at its peril. Within the North Sea arrangements were made to prescribe safe routes for vessels trading with neutral countries, but even a slight deviation would be dangerous.
It was afterwards stated that the Olympic's escape was caused by her response to a call on October 27 from one of the newest British battleships, which had struck a mine off Ireland while on patrol duty, and whose crew she had been able to save, though not the ship. The Olympic was detained for some days in Lough Swilly, no one being allowed to land, and was then taken to Belfast. Particulars reached the American papers by mail and were published there with photographs and in neutral papers also, and rumours of the disaster had circulated in England for some time. But the Admiralty gave the story no official confirmation, and the name of the ship in question remained in the Navy List.
Apart from this, however, the naval war was sensibly drawing nearer to Great Britain. On October 27 the Admiralty closed all but one of the approaches to the Thames, and ordered vessels in a specified area of the estuary to anchor during the night and show no lights; H.M.S. Hermes was torpedoed in the Downs, only two miles off Deal, on October 31; and on the morning of November 3 a German squadron fired on H.M.S. Halcyon off Yarmouth, wounding one man, but were driven off by the approach of other British ships, and pursued by light cruisers, which failed to engage them. In retiring the Germans threw out mines promiscuously and the British submarine D 5 and two steam drifters were sunk. Rumour connected this advance with a German attempt at a raid.
But Germany had prepared also to attack in other quarters. The Porte entered the war on October 30, doubtless under German influence, by bombarding various Russian towns on the Black Sea; and on November 1 the Foreign Office issued a statement of the British position. At the beginning of the war Great Britain had assured the Porte that, if Turkey remained neutral, her independence and integrity would be respected during the war and in the terms of peace; ever since, the British Government had shown great patience and forbearance; but German officers had been sent in considerable numbers to Constantinople, the Goeben and Breslau had entered the Dardanelles, the Turks had attacked undefended towns, and had prepared to invade Egypt and excite a Holy War in Syria, and probably in India: and telegraphic communication had been interrupted without notice on October 30 with the British Embassy at Constantinople. The British Government, therefore, must take such action as was necessary to protect British interests, British territory, and Egypt. This statement was followed by the news that a British and French squadron had bombarded the Dardanelles, and that H.M.S. Minerva had driven a Turkish force out of Akabah, thus checking a possible invasion of Egypt by sea, by a British declaration of war with Turkey, and by the annexation of Cyprus by Order in Council (Nov. 5)—a step which got rid of the anomalous tenure devised in 1878, which had been one of the objections most strongly felt by British Liberals to Lord Beaconsfield's acquisition of the island.
At home, meanwhile, the campaign against alien enemies had culminated in an attack in the Globe on Prince Louis of Battenberg, the First Sea Lord, who had been popularly (but absurdly) reported for some time to be confined in the Tower on a charge of treason. On October 30 a letter from him was published tendering his resignation on the ground that his birth and parentage in some respects impaired his usefulness; and Mr. Churchill, in accepting his resignation, cordially testified to his great services, notably to his having taken the first step securing the concentration of the Fleet at the outbreak of the war. The attack, it need scarcely be said, was baseless; the Battenberg Princes had every reason to detest the Prussian Court, and Prince Louis had been an Englishman from boyhood, and had strenuously exerted himself to gain naval knowledge and apply it for the advancement of the British Navy. But he was regarded in some quarters as too compliant to the First Lord's demands, and he had not been forgiven for his disavowal of his alleged speech (p. [35]). Lord Fisher of Kilverstone, however, proved an entirely satisfactory successor.
The new First Sea Lord was soon confronted with the task of avenging a grave British naval defeat. On November 6 it was announced that on Sunday, November 1, five German warships, the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, Leipzig, Dresden, and Nürnberg, had concentrated off Santa Maria Island, near Coronel, Chile, and engaged a British squadron under Rear-Admiral Cradock, consisting of the cruisers Good Hope and Monmouth, the light cruiser Glasgow, and the armed merchant cruiser Otranto, and that the Good Hope and Monmouth had been sunk and the Glasgow seriously damaged. The details remained obscure for some time, even to the Admiralty; but it was eventually learnt that the British ships had been met near sunset by the German squadron, that the Admiral had determined to engage notwithstanding his inferiority in speed and gun-power, and had warned off the battleship Canopus, which was coming up from the Straits of Magellan, as her speed was insufficient to cope with the Germans, and had ordered the Otranto to keep out of danger; that the Germans forced the British ships into a position where the setting sun interfered with their aim, that the British guns were outranged and that the Monmouth was sunk, and the Good Hope blown up while making for the shore, the Glasgow escaping. The loss of men was heavy; so was the blow to British prestige.