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Another great scene of which I was an eyewitness was the King’s Coronation Review of the British fleet at Spithead. It was a marvelous pageant of the grim and silent power of the British navy as the royal yacht passed down the long avenues of battleships and cruisers, in perfect line, enormous above the water line, terrible in the potentiality of their great guns. Every navy in the world had sent a battleship to salute the King-Admiral of the British navy. The Stars and Stripes, the Rising Sun of Japan, the long coils of the Chinese Dragon, the tricolor of France, the imperial colors of Germany, were among the flags, which included those of little nations, with a few destroyers and light cruisers as their naval strength.

All the ships were “dressed” and “manned,” with sailors standing on the yard arms and along the decks, and as the King’s yacht passed each ship, the royal salute was fired, and the crew cheered lustily in the echo of the guns. All but one ship, which was the Von der Thann of Germany. No sound of cheering came from that battleship, but the German crew maintained absolute silence. Few noticed it at the time, but I remarked it with uneasy foreboding.