The German Government, supported almost entirely by the Press of that country, actually suggested that, since Captain Restronguet had committed an act of piracy against the German Fleet while he had refrained from so doing on his visit to Portsmouth and Cherbourg, Great Britain and France were secretly aware of the identity of this modern buccaneer, and that they had encouraged him to make an unlawful act of hostility towards a friendly Power.
Three army corps were hastily ordered to Hanover and Schleswig-Holstein, the German High Sea Fleet was ordered to assemble at a rendezvous off Heligoland, and every available battleship, cruiser, destroyer and submarine in the Baltic was sent through the Great Belt and around the Skaw to augment the naval armament already in the North Sea.
The British Government met the situation with promptitude, firmness, and calmness. The First and Second Home Fleets settled at the Nore; the Third Home Fleet, which happened to be cruising off the Orkneys, was ordered to the Firth of Forth. Troops were quickly entrained at Aldershot and Salisbury Plain for the defence of the East Coast, while the Territorial Army and the National Reserve were called up for garrison duty. At the same time a statement was made to the German Ambassador in London in which His Majesty’s Government totally repudiated the suggestions that Captain Restronguet held any authority, either direct or indirect, from the Crown.
To this the German Press retorted by pronouncing the declaration to be a diplomatic lie, and unanimously urged the Imperial Government to recall its ambassador. All privately owned airships in the Fatherland were taken possession of by the authorities, and ordered to the newly-formed Government aerodrome at Munster, a Westphalian town sufficiently far from the sea to be out of the reach of the guns of hostile warships, yet within a few hours’ flying distance from the East Coast of England.
The struggle, if it came off, would be a desperate one. Both fleets were almost numerically equal, the British having a slight margin of superiority, but in aircraft the Germans held a decided advantage. In the science of warfare there was little to choose between the two, so that as far as Great Britain was concerned the issue depended upon whether the British tars still retained their bull-dog tenacity that characterized their forefathers in the days of the old wooden walls.