To watch this line of sand-hills run,
Along the never silent Strait,
To Calais glittering in the sun;
To look towards Ardres’ golden field
Across the wide aerial plain,
Which glows as if the Middle Age
Were gorgeous upon earth again.”
The Kaiser wanted to get to Calais for two reasons; one was to encourage the people in Berlin, and the second object was to frighten people here, in England, and to attack the British warships with submarines and destroyers, working from the harbour of Calais.
But a very disagreeable surprise awaited the Germans when they threw themselves towards the coast. This surprise was a number of British and French warships, which shelled them from the sea!
Among the British ships were three very strange-looking craft called monitors. You know well what a monitor means at school, though in some schools they are called prefects. The word exactly means a person who advises, and to whose words attention must be paid.