Two very belated stories referring to the scuttling of the German _pocket-battleship Admiral Graf Spee, and the German claim to have sunk the Ark Royal, Britain's newest aircraft carrier, have each a peculiar significance of their own, and the only cause for regret is that both of them were not published earlier. That is particularly true of the allegations concerning the Ark Royal, though the falsity of the story was admitted by the Germans when in December they stated that a vessel of the Ark Royal type was proceeding to Montevideo. That was then the only way to get out of the muddle caused by the original lie and the necessity for admitting it to be such. The story of what happened in the Admiral Graf Spee while in the harbour at Montevideo is not only interesting but most important, as indicating the moral of the German navy, and the apparent inability of the men to stand up under punishment. The hammering which the three lighter armed British vessels inflicted upon the Admiral Graf Spee, and the damage done to that vessel, left the crew without any stomach for more fighting, and, when the captain desired to take his ship out to fight his country's enemy, all but sixty of the crew refused to obey orders,—in other words there was a mutiny, and Captain Langsdorf was without sufficient strength in numbers to impose his will upon his crew. During four hours of the afternoon of December 16 the crew was mustered no fewer than eight times without effect. They broke ranks and shouted in a disorderly manner. They did not want to take up the fight again, told the captain so in just so many words, and he perforce had to bow to their will. The story is not without its parallel in German naval history for it will be remembered that when the German naval command at the end of the last war sought to order the fleet out for one last fling at the British navy the men refused to obey orders and returned to port. They realized from previous actions what awaited them had they met the British fleet, just as surely as the men in the Admiral Graf Spee did after their encounter in the southern Atlantic.
In comparison the behaviour of the men on board the Rawalpindi stands out as honouring British naval tradition. Despite the fact that he was heavily outgunned by the German vessels he encountered the commander of the armed merchant vessel did not hesitate to engage the enemy, even though he knew that the loss of his ship and the lives of many under him would be inevitable. The enemy was near, and neither the captain nor his crew had any other desire than to follow the British tradition of dealing with the enemy wherever he could be met. This latter marks the conduct of men with centuries of sea history behind them; the former is clear proof that the Germans were not, and still are not, a seafaring race when it comes to warfare. The conduct of the German crew, however, still does not explain the decision to scuttle the ship. There was no real necessity for doing so, for she could have been interned until the end of the war, when if Germany had proved successful she would return to her home port, while if she had fallen to the victorious Allies, her performances clearly show that she would have been of no more value than the scrap iron to which she would undoubtedly have been reduced. It was the uncertainty of victory, and the positive fear of defeat that led to Herr Hitler's decision to scuttle the German vessel, and Captain Lansdorf will go down in history as a man betrayed alike by his crew and his leader. The story of the end of this vessel in which the Germans had such great pride is only redeemed by the behaviour of Captain Langsdorf who preferred death in honour than to continue his existence in the ignominy which had been forced upon him. British traditions are so different as the ex-plaits of Sir Richard Grenville against the overwhelming might of the Spanish fleet and the discipline with which the men in the Birkenhead met their deaths as that vessel sank so clearly demonstrate.
The story of the German air attack on the Ark Royal shows that a German machine did launch a 1,000 lb. bomb at the aircraft carrier, missing her bows by about fifteen feet, and doing no more damage than the breaking of a few pieces of crockery, a torn helm, and slightly twisted bows. She was also attacked with torpedoes which she managed to evade, while the U-boat which attacked her was sunk by destroyers and some of her crew rescued. After that she was sent out in search of the Admiral Graf Spee, played a great part in the interception of three valuable German merchant ships and reconnoitred five million square miles of ocean from the torrid zone of the equator to the frigid climate of the extreme north. Obviously the damage which was done to her was of no great importance for otherwise she could not have kept the seas for nearly three months before going home for refit, Thus the story of the American naval attache that he had lunched on the Ark Royal, after the German allegations that she had been sunk, has been proved to be true, and the German propaganda machine proved to be the fabricator of untruths which it is now well recognized to be. It is a noteworthy fact that for some weeks now the Germans have refrained from claiming the destruction of British war vessels. Some claims were made to that effect during the latest raid on Scapa Flow, but those were easily proved to be untrue. The fact is that Dr. Goebbels has sunk so many units of the British navy in his mind already that he runs the risk of contradicting himself if he claims many more. Either that or he will have to resurrect some of those he has already claimed to have been sunk, for the specific purpose of claiming their destruction again. And so the merry game goes on, in an endeavour to delude the German masses with dreams of victory. It may be still some time before the scheme becomes threadbare, but it will ultimately do so, and, when the bitter day of disillusionment comes, the reaction in Germany may confidently be expected to be tremendous. A moral which can only be maintained by fictitious stories of successes is no moral at all, but merely a fool's paradise.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.