THE TRAFALGAR OF THE WAR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXX, Issue 59, 26 October 1914, Page 4

THE TRAFALGAR OF THE WAR.

“Personally 1 believe that this matter of the Goebon was the real Trafalgar of the war,” writes Mr F T Jane, the well-known naval authority “Big battles we may have. If so they will make headlines beside which the story of the runaway Goebeu will appear a trivial side issue. The war will be long and strenuous, as generally supposed, but the star of the German navy set what time the Goeben turned and lied for the safety of the Dardanelles. The Goeben could easily have fought with the certainty of taking a British battle cruiser to the bottom with her. The moral effect of its ‘blue funk’ action on the German navy is likely to be serious, for the Goeben was the show ship of the fleet. Everything in it was for war. In it, for at least eighteen months, was demonstrated the difference between the ‘inefficient British Navy’ and the ‘businesslike efficiency of the German fleet.’ It was the stock subject. It was so realistic that all of us who saw the Goeben thoroughly believed it. As for the German navy, it swallowed both ideas whole. And the Goeben did what, had it been a British warship, tire captain would have been shot for doing. The crack ship of the German navy funked the British cruisers. The moral effect of this is bound to he absolutely illimitable. The Chino-Japanese war was settled when the TehC-Yucn ran away from Captain Togo, of the Naniwa, at Asan. The Yalu was merely a sequel. And so the flight of the Goebon has settled the result of future battles.”