ee also arrived; whereupon Sturdee's much stronger
squadron sprang out of Port Stanley and began a chase which could only
have one ending. Von Spee turned to fight, with his two armoured
cruisers against the two over-powering battle cruisers of the British,
so that his three light cruisers might "star away" at their utmost
speed, on three divergent courses, in an effort to escape. Vain hope!
Sturdee's battle cruisers sank the _Scharnhorst_ and _Gneisenau_, while
his other cruisers sank two of the three German cruisers. All the
Germans went down with colours flying and fighting to the very last.
Only the little _Dresden_ escaped; to be sunk three months later by two
British cruisers at Robinson Crusoe's island of Juan Fernandez, four
hundred miles off the coast of Chili.

From this time forward not a single enemy warship sailed the outer
seas. The Austrians were blockaded in the Adriatic, the Germans in the
North Sea, and the Turks at the east end of the Mediterranean. Now and
then a German merchantman would be armed in the German colonies or in
some friendly neutral harbour and prey on British trade routes for a
time. But very few of these escaped being sunk after a very short
career; and those that did get home never came out again. So 1914
closed with such a British command over the surface of the sea as even
Nelson had never imagined. The worst of the horrible submarine war was
still to come. But that is a different story.

The joint expedition of French and British against the Turks and
Germans in the Dardanelles filled 1915 with many a deed of more or less
wasted daring. Victory would have meant so much: joining hands with
Russia in the Black Sea, getting the Russian wheat crop from Odessa,
driving the Turks from Constantinople, and cutting right through the
Berlin-to-Bagdad line. But, once the Allied Governments had given the
enemy time to hold the Dardanelles in full force, the only right way to
reach Constantinople was the back way round by land through Greece and
Turkey, combined with attacks on the Dardanelles. This, however,
needed a vastly larger army than the Governments could spare. So,
despite the objections of Fisher, their naval adviser, they sent fleets
and armies to wear themselves out against the Dardanelles, till
Kitchener, their military adviser, got leave to take off all that were
left.

[Illustration: A PARTING SHOT FROM THE TURKS AT GALLIPOLI.]

The politicians had blundered bad