Early in November a fleet of five German cruisers, under Admiral von Spee, encountered a British squadron composed of the cruisers Good Hope, Monmouth and Glasgow, in command of Rear-Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock, off the coast of Chile, in the Southern Pacific. Despite a raging gale, a long-range battle ensued, resulting in the defeat of the British and the loss of the flagship Good Hope, with the admiral and all her crew, and of the cruiser Monmouth. The Glasgow escaped in a damaged condition. The loss of life was about 1,000, officers and men.
Up to November 15, the struggle in the coast region of Belgium continued with terrific intensity and appalling loss of life on both sides. The Germans occupied Dixmude November 11, only to lose it on November 13, after a fierce attack by reinforced British troops.
DAILY COST OF WAR
The daily cost of the present war to the nations engaged in the struggle is estimated at not less than $54,000,000 a day—a sum which fairly staggers the imagination. This enormous cost of the armies in the field gives a decided advantage to the nation best supplied with the "sinews of war" and may contribute to a shortening of hostilities. War is indeed a terrible drain upon the resources of a nation and only a few there are that can stand many months of war expenditures like those of August-October, 1914, amounting in the grand aggregate to nearly five billions of dollars ($5,000,000,000).
TURKEY ENTERS THE WAR
On October 29 an act which was regarded in Russia as equivalent to a declaration of war by Turkey was committed at Theodosia, the Crimean port, when that town was bombarded without notice by the cruiser Breslau, flying the Turkish flag, but commanded by a German officer and manned by a German crew. The Breslau was a former German ship, and was said to have been purchased by the Turkish government, with the German battleship Goeben, when they sought refuge in the Dardanelles at the beginning of the war, from the French and British fleets in the Mediterranean.
FOURTH MONTH OF THE WAR
The month of November, the fourth month of the war, was marked by the heaviest losses to all the nations concerned, but made little change in the general situation.
Along the Aisne the battle begun early in September continued intermittently. Both sides literally dug themselves in and along the battle line in many places, the hostile trenches were separated by only a few yards. At the end of the month the burrowing had been succeeded by tunneling, and both sides prepared for a winter of spasmodic action. It was a military deadlock, but a deadlock full of danger for the side that first developed a weak point in its far-flung front.
With the utmost fairness and impartiality it can be said that at the beginning of December both the allied armies and the German forces facing them from the Belgian coast east and south to the borders of Alsace-Lorraine were exhausted by the strenuous efforts of the campaign. By December 5, the 130th day of the war, after a seven-weeks' struggle by the Germans for the possession of the French and Belgian coast, there was a general cessation of offensive operations by both sides and the indications were that this condition was due to pure physical weariness of leaders and men. The world had never before witnessed such strenuous military operations as those of the preceding three months and the temporary exhaustion of the armies therefore was not surprising.