March 28.
Two very belated stories rote 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 stand up under punishment. The ham meting 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 onl to fight hi 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 mander 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, seafaring race when it comes to warfare
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.