The German fleet was in an excellent condi tion. Most of the ships were modern and well designed. The service was organized in a spirit of democracy, the officers being taken for the most part from the middle class. German science had been employed freely in develop ing efficient naval mechanism, and the aptness of the Germans for seafaring life had made it pos.sible to supply the navy with admirable sail ors. The conunander-m-chief, under the kaiser, was Admiral von Ingenohl, a man of recognized ability. At the head of the NavY Department of the government was Admiral von Tirpitz, a resolute man to whose devotion and energy the development of the German navy was chiefly due. His espousal of the cause of ruthless submarine warfare showed how little he valued humane feeling in war, but such a trait ought not to blind us to his merits an an organizer and administrator.
The actual presence of the British Home Fleet in the North Sea when war began made it necessary for the Germans to give up their long-cherished project of a quick raid in force on the coasts of Great Britain. It also forced them to keep themselves much in their own harbors. They hoped that the opportunity would come to sally out and crush their oppo nents when divided. For this purpose the Kiel Canal was well adapted. Its mouth was pro tected by mine fields and the well-fortified island rock of Heligoland. It formed a safe passage-way for the greatest ships into the Bal tic Sea and permitted them to sally forth at will for any sudden attack that fortune might enable them to make. It was Germany's boast in 1914 ffiat her navy would adopt a stay-inside policy until by single enterprises of fast cruis ers and submarines, and by mines, she had re duced the opposing navy to a state of numerical equality and then her High .Seas Fleet would go out and defeat its enemy in battle. It was an amateurish boast; for no trained naval man would have predicted that the losses would have been preponderatingly on the British side in the preliminary stage of picking off ships.
Fighting in Distant Seas.— The period of actual fighting was ushered in with a series of minor attacks, which seemed larger in the day of their occurrence than now. On 2 August a German cruiser bombarded the Russian port of Libau. On 5 August a British destroyer en countered the German mine-layer Koenigin Luise and sank her in six minutes, but the next day the light cruiser Amphion was sunk by one of the mines the Koenigin Luise had laid. In cidents like these, however, signified little in the general course of the war at sea. But a more important affair took place in the Mediterranean. When war began two German ships, the Goe ben, a battle cruiser with a speed of 28 knots, and the Breslau, a light cruiser of equal speed, were off the coast of Algiers. They fired a few shots at the shore defenses and turned to escape through the Straits of Gibraltar but were headed off by British warships which chased them eastward. They outsailed their
pursuers and on the morning of 5 August ap peared at Messina, where the officers made their wills and deposited their valuables with the German consul, and then the vessels sailed away, their bands playing (Heil dir Siegerlcranz.) The Goeben and Breslau now turned toward Constantinople, where they ar nved in a few days, eluding a British squadron sent to intercept them. These vessels played an insportant part in the train of events which brought Turkey into the war on the side of Germany. When Turkey openly made war on 1 November these two ships were taken into the Turkish navy, and renamed; they did much to keep the Russian fleet from dominating the Black Sea.
In the southern Pacific Ocean other work awaited the navies of the Entente.. Here Ger many held several island colonies, with a total area of about 100,000 square miles. To take this territory was especially desired by the in habitants of Australia and New Zealand. Fit ting .out expeditions under the care of British and French warships they seized one posses sion after another, in general without serious fighting. On August German Samoa was taken, on 11 September New Pomerania sur rendered, on 134-eptember the Solomon Islands were taken over, and a few days later German New Guinea capitulated. Farther north the Japanese were carrying on the work of con quest at Shantung, completing the task on 10 November with some aid from the British navy.
More striking were the careers of the Ger man cruisers Emden and Koenigsberg, which, stationed at Tsing-tau before the war, set out at once on careers as commerce destroyers. The Koenigsberg destroyed the Pegasus. in Zanzibar Roads, on the east coast of Africa and then took refup in the Rufigi River, hoping to escape the British cruisers sent against her. Her hiding place was discovered and after an eight months' blockade she was destroyed by monitors on 11 July 1915. The Karlsruhe, an other raider, had a brief career of commerce destruction. Her fate was long in doubt but it has been agreed that she was wrecked in the West Indies. Two converted cruisers, Prinz Eitel Friedrich and Kronprinz Wilhelm„ came to New port News, Va., in the spring of 1915, after in flicting much damage on Allied commerce. The Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse was sunk by the British cruiser Highilyer near the Cape Verde Islands. In December 1916, two German raiders, the Mowe and the Seeadler, got out to sea and did much damage to commerce. The first re turned in a few weeks, but the second con tinued in the southern Atlantic and Pacific waters. She was finally wrecked at the island of Mophea, near Tahiti, in the south Pacific. Her crew escaped in a sloop to the Easter Islands, Chilean territory, and were interned until the end of the war.