CHURCHILL, Winston S.

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Autograph letter signed, discussing the British defeat in the Battle of Coronel. As First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill gives his views on the first British naval disaster of the war and comments on Britain's naval and military prospects.The recipient, Walter Long (1854-1924), was a Conservative MP and senior party figure; he later served as Secretary of State for the Colonies (1916-19) and First Lord of the Admiralty (1919-21).Admiral Cradock engaged German forces under Admiral von Spee off South America, despite the inferiority of his own force. In the ensuring Battle of Coronel on 1 November 1914, his flagship was sunk and he and 1,500 British sailors killed. "The defeat at Coronel was widely blamed by the Tory press on an overly interventionist Churchill" (Roberts, p. 195). In Churchill's view, it was Cradock who made the foolish decision to engage and he was wholly responsible.He writes, "The fight off Coronel was a sore disappointment. Eight separate squadrons - none of them ideal - but all superior for defensive purposes to the enemy had laboriously been prepared & dispersed about the vast Pacific. The Admiral ought never to have divided his force, & had declared he would not do so. But we think he hoped to injure them mortally with his first ships & so devoted himself in an action which could have had but one result". He then outlines the failures of the attack, adding, "I hope in a few weeks to be able to publish a full account".He then turns to the wider war. "We

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