While its fate was being determined in the capitals of Europe, the German garrison at Tsingtao played out the last days of peace in the early summer of 1914. Aboard his flagship, Scharnhorst, Spee hosted the officers of the visiting flagship of the Royal Navy’s China Station, HMS Minotaur. Ignoring the political tensions in Europe, the Germans went out of their way to be gracious hosts to Admiral Sir Thomas Jerram and his staff. The officers exchanged lavish dinners, and the crews competed in sports. Bands played as Minotaur departed, and officers exchanged pledges of eternal friendship.

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Spee took his squadron to sea on June 20, leaving only Emden and a few auxiliary vessels in Tsingtao. The squadron was in the western Pacific on July 27 when word came from Berlin that war was likely. “Strained relations between Dual Alliance and Triple Entente,” the naval staff tersely advised. “Nürnberg has been ordered to Tsingtao [from Honolulu]. Everything else is left to you.” Since Tsingtao would be highly vulnerable in case of war, Spee ordered Nürnberg to join him at Pagan in the Marianas. He sent a similar order to Emden.

In effect, the naval staff was washing its hands of Spee. According to the German operational plan, the East Asia Squadron would begin commerce raiding in the event of war with Great Britain. In theory, such a campaign would oblige the British to weaken their forces in the Atlantic to protect their empire and its trade routes. However, commerce raiding required a complicated infrastructure of bases or supply ships, particularly for coal-fired warships. Although the German navy had established coal depots at seve­ral South Seas locations, the situation forced Spee to evacuate his only real base, Tsingtao. Now he had no way of docking his ships or making any major repairs.

Although he might play hide-and-seek in the islands of the southern Pacific, those waters would not yield a great harvest of enemy merchantmen. In Winston Churchill’s colorful postwar analogy, Spee’s fleet was “a cut flower in a vase; fair to see, yet bound to die.”

Spee saw his situation very much as Churchill did, but he hoped to accomplish much in the time remaining to him.

Meanwhile, on July 31, Emden had left Tsingtao to rendezvous with Spee. Germany declared war on Russia on August 2, and Müller so informed his crew as Emden, pointing east, rounded the tip of the Korean Peninsula.

“The war will not be an easy one,” Müller told his assembled crew. “For years our enemies have been preparing.” He evoked the image of a peaceful, prosperous Germany, insisting that “in peaceful rivalry, by industry and work…by honesty and thoroughness, Germany has won itself a position of honor” that lesser nations now sought to destroy. Yet Germany’s enemies would fail. “We will prove ourselves worthy of our ancestors…and resist to the end, even though the entire world rise against us.”

Two days later, in heavy seas, Müller’s lookout spotted a black steamer with two yellow funnels that immediately turned away from the Germans. Müller hoisted signal flags for “Stop at once—do not use wireless,” but the stranger made a run for Japanese territorial waters and radioed frantic requests for help. Müller fired a warning shot across his quarry’s bow, but the ship did not halt until after he had fired several more warning shots, each closer than the last.

Emden had taken its first prize in the war at sea, and Müller was impressed with his catch. His victim was Russian, a relatively modern liner, Ryazan, carrying some eighty passengers from Nagasaki to Vladivostok. (Müller’s executive officer, Hellmuth von Mucke, would later recall that there were many fearful women aboard, “Most of them…fat Russian Jewesses.”) The prize was capable of seventeen knots, and Müller thought that it had potential as an auxiliary cruiser. Only Tsingtao had facilities where it could be converted for war, and thus Müller faced the first of many difficult decisions. Should he continue to the rendezvous with Spee, or accompany his prize to Tsingtao and risk attack by British units at nearby Weihaiwei? Müller chose to return to his base.

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