Up about 7.45. Not much to do all day. Walked to headquarters in the morning with the report. Heard that the Goeben and Breslau1 have been in a scrap and put out. Wrote to Ernie.
Goeben and Breslau: there is a long story behind this brief reference: these German battle-cruisers had been on station in the Aegean in 1912 during the two Balkan Wars, and were still in the Mediterranean in August 1914. The Royal Navy failed to intercept them on the outbreak of WW1; Turkey gave them asylum, but had not yet declared war, so the two vessels were transferred to the Turkish Navy to avoid having to intern them (Goeben became the Yavuz Sultan Semil, and Breslau the Midilli.) This was quite a cause célèbre in August 1914, though it is not mentioned then in ALL’s diary. Now, in January 1918, the Turkish effort in Palestine (where Charlie Linfoot was) was failing, but the British Aegean Squadron had only coastal gunboats, destroyers and two pre-Dreadnought battleships, and in the temporary absence of the two old battleships the Turkish Navy brought these two battle-cruisers out to attack the small ships at what became the Battle of Imbros (20 January). The Turks badly damaged the gunboats etc, but both Yavuz Sultan Semil and Midilli struck mines; Midilli sank and Yavuz S S was disabled, and beached in the Dardanelles, effectively finishing off Turkey’s navy. Although the two ships had had Turkish names since August 1914, they were evidently still known in Britain by their original German names. ↩