The Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau, and two small cruisers began to double Cape Horn. They cleared the spur of the American world. I myself long ago went through the tempests and frosts which must have enveloped the German squadron in these windy seas. She reached the Atlantic, and turned towards the north. On the map of the world the Admiral’s pencil had traced the routes leading to the Antilles, to the Azores, to the United States, to Ireland, and the northern latitudes of Norway, en route for the tunnel of the German chenaux. Protected by the luck which had followed him from China and Tsing-Tao, he expected no disaster.
In the South Atlantic the British leopard had placed his paws on the Falkland Islands; he had been foresighted enough to store there immense reserves of coal. The Scharnhorst, the Gneisenau, and their companions, made for this valuable booty, which they counted on seizing and stripping; for the place is as lost on the ocean as a helpless vessel. The German sailors, as they approached, had all the pleasure of playing a legitimate bad turn on their enemies.
But the wrath of Britain had launched on the sea great cruisers armed with fouet. Their orders were to discover these malevolent beasts, to chase and to scourge them to death. From the Mediterranean and from the English coasts, their greyhounds started on the merciless hunt, and swept the ocean as with a rake. Every time they put into port, they filled their magazines, they listened eagerly to the news of the world, and sailed ever farther south. When they learned that their game had turned along the American coast, they prepared for the grand hunt, assembled, and anchored in the Falkland Islands, in order to coal by night and lose no instant.
How strange the fate of ships at sea! Twenty-four hours later, and the coaling would have been done!
In the dawn of the next day, the lookouts on the Falklands saw the columns of smoke from the enemy ships in the distance. They came on like a cyclone. Admiral von Spee on his bridge was already imagining the telegram which should announce to Berlin next night his extraordinary prowess. But from the islands which they thought were deserted, they suddenly saw emerge in the morning light the prows of the great cruisers with their powerful guns. He counted them. He recognized their strength. His signals ordered flight. But the English pack had sniffed blood, and until evening it ran and killed.
I have just read the respectful words which, like an epitaph, the London admiralty dedicates to their fallen enemies. Admiral von Spee has nobly ended a stainless career. Far away in the midst of the beauty of the Levantine, the officers of my cruiser at first rejoiced at the victory. Then they saluted him, for one does not need to know all the final details to respect an end so glorious as his.
The Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau were cruisers of our own class, enemies of our own design. Why did they not choose us, three ships with our six smokestacks apiece? The fight would have been glorious, and the glory to the French. Shall we never confront anything but a desert sea, or invisible submarines?
Mediterranean, 13 December.
Our mission is ended; we are going not to France but to Malta. The Cassandras were right, and this twelfth Christmas holiday I shall pass where.... Courage and patience! Our comrades in the trenches are suffering in the slime and mud. We are commencing to freeze on a sullen sea. Winter will be hard for all the sons of France.