To Kiel in the 'Hercules'

mission and that of the other sub-commissions was well defined by one of its members wh

eturn to the Allies of all of their merchant ships interned in German harbours, was constructive. The Shipping Board began to "pay dividends" (in the form of steamers dispatched for home ports) almost from the day of the arrival of the Hercules in Wilhelmshaven, and these continued steadily until the last

r tonnage was practically negligible. Besides these embargoed ships, the Allied Commission had been directed to demand and arrange for the return of the thirty-one-twenty-one British, eight Belgian, one American, and one Brazilian-Allied ships which had been cond

s were considered seaworthy, and if unseaworthy, from what cause. It was also requested that information should be given as to which of these ships were fitted for mine-seeking or mine-sweeping, as it was planned to leave these temporarily in German hands in order to facilitate the efforts she was supposed to be making to clear the way for navigation. It was direc

ened up, and the equipment made ready for inspection by the Sub-Commission for Shipping. Following this inspection, immediate facilities for d

, to do what he could to expedite matters from that time on in the case of the embargoed ships, but protested that, as the ships condemned in the Prize Courts had, according to German law, ceased to be Allied vessels, he had no authority to deliver them. On being told that the Allied Commission had been appointed to deal with

ies without having been reconditioned in a manner to put them in the same condition in which they were at the beginning of the war will leave prematurely under protest. Germany declines any further obligations with regard to these ships." Writing after the first extension of the armistice and referring to that fact, he intimates that "the period for fulfilling the provisions of Article XXX" (the repair of ships) "is also prolonged until January 17, 1919. Accordingly Germany is not obliged to hand over the interned ships before the 17th January. In

st, then an intimation that the wish of the Allies should be carried out in spite of the fact there was no obligation to do so, an

ur approval that the German embargo steamer, Marie (ex Dave Hill), now lying in Batavia, in recognition of her signal services during the war, both from the military point of view and se

unning the British blockade of East Africa, delivering a cargo of arms and munitions to Von Letow, and then making her escape to the Dutch Indies. As this cargo was the one thing which enabled the East African camp

nspections of German ships and air stations. "The word of my Commission is given here and now," he said, "in the presence of many witnesses, for the security of any German subject who may, in the course of the execution of the armistice, land in Great Britain. It is not customary to give written assurances regarding the honourable observation of the law of

to an expression of suspicion or distrust. It is merely in the interests of the men themselves, as we experienced in the case of the personnel of the submarines taken to English ports that the men were obviously under great apprehension that something might happen to them on coming into English parts. The guarantee is merely wanted as

ere subsequently given

to the Safety of Members of the Allied

rl

ber 6

gn Of

17

the whole extent of German territory. All representatives and functionaries of the Administration of the State, the Federal States and Municipalitie

nment of

ed) E

as

rity of German Crews

. Her

ber 6

aval Armisti

03

those concerned our assurance that the security of the crews sent over in merchant vessels, restored under

d to the Admiralty in London and to the

E. Browning,

. A. Grasset,

dmiral Er

ns were handed to the German Commission regarding the car

o be inspected by officers of approximately equivalent rank and conducted through

nts are to be ad

uring the inspection, with the exception of those n

e to be uncovered, and all exp

on parties were ins

, and sufficiently manned for the passage to the Tyne, in the case of Bri

and dry docking of unseaworthy ships ar

ient deck and engine stores

ding Log Book and Register, confi

s are landed from the vessels whi

at all seaworthy ships in these ports should proceed to Kiel for inspection. After completing the inspection of the five ships in Wilhelmshaven (two of which were found to have machinery defects which made it impossible to deliver them without extensive repairs), the Shipp

ely in the hands of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council, and Naval Officers have no authority or influence whatever. One of the chief supports of the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council is the light cruiser Augsburg. There are also some torpedo-boats, mine-sweeping vessels and other small craft there which should be disarmed; but officers at Wilhelmshaven have no power to see to it, nor can they give an

impossible for the Allied Shipping Board to carry out their work he proved quite wrong. Contemptuous as they were of their ex-officers, the men, far from displaying any desire to interfere with the work of the Commission, proved themselves no less willing than their mates in Wilhelmshaven

ELBE,

STATION A

ning-room, they saw little of the other guests. They were not allowed to linger in the foyer or any of the public rooms on the ground floor, and as soon as they had reached their rooms an a

even on one of the days which was meatless) was both abundant and wholesome-"well up to the average in a first-class English hotel," as one of the members put it. There was an ample and varied wine list to order from, including-besides many Rhine and Hungarian brands-several French and Italian brandies and liqueurs. There was some discussion over the cigars, the only point upon which the Commission were unanimous being that they were not tobacco

rd service they had been engaged in, were in practically as good shape as when first seized. The second-grade steamers and sailing vessels had merely been laid up and left to go to rack and ruin. Stripped of everything in the way of metal or gear that was likely to prove of use elsewhere, unpainted, uncared-for a

bility that the Germans, stung to the quick by the blocking of Zeebrugge and Ostend, were preparing a reply, most likely against the entrance to the Tyne. One has only to look at the chart to understand that the latter is a readily "blockable" estuary-to any adequately equipped force able to reach the proper point. Needless to say, such a contingency was not unprovided against, and it would have been a near-miracle if even the

s in the form of blocks instead of being poured, so th

nfriendly. The only occasion on which anything unpleasant occurred was when a navvy, splashed by the mud from one of the leading cars, petulantly slammed his shovel through the glass of the next in line. The nerves and tempers of the three French shipping commissioners were the only things beside the glass which suffered seriously as a consequence of th

his little incident. "It was all the fault of the chauffeur," he said. "The man used to drive for Admiral X

He had been fired at from the darkness the night before, he said, and missed by a hair. Interpreting this as a warning against wearing h

e that," was the dry comment of one of the British members

to the great Blohm and Voss yards, which occupy about the same position on the Elbe as do those of John Brown or Fairfields on the Clyde, or Harland and Wolff at Belfast. Several of the embargo ships were under

umber of days longer to put it in the same state it was when placed under embargo. It would be a short-sighted policy on our part to send a badly repaired ship out of our yards at the

moreover, he must have found that the longer he pondered that plain statement the less comfort there was to be extracted from it. It is astonishing how few Germans appear to realize

the Elbe, offered an incomparable opportunity to see at first hand the staggering blow which the war had dealt to German shipping and-through shipping-to German foreign trade. Although the fact that I had been attached for the moment to the sub-co

f the world, but especially those of the Far East and Australia. I had seen it on the black-hulled, buff-funnelled freighters that were carrying Dutch goods from Ternate to Batavia, Chinese goods from Tientsin to Foochow, Japanese goods from Kobe to Nagasaki, British goods between Sandakan and Singapore. The "Crossed Keys" house-flag was known throughout the East as the symbol of that notorious German trade policy of heavy rate-cutting until competition had been killed and then a forcing up of tariffs to just under a fig

line; it was Germany itself-Germany beginning to rivet down the edges of its "places in the sun." It was Herr Heiniken, the president of this great instrument of "Deutschland Ueber Alles," who, in Hongkong in 1911, exclaimed to a diplomat with whom he was discussing the Kaiser's Agadir bluff: "War! that, sir, is the one thing I want to avoid. What do we want to spend money and men on war when-within te

. And that day at Bremerhaven we saw one of the results. There, sluddered down into the slime from which he rose, his tentacles all either severed or drawn in, was the remains of the "N.D.L." octopus. Miles and miles of what were once black-and-buff freighters and liners were lying so deep in harbour silt that it would have taken a dredger to get them out of

ent Bremen. The ships were only the tombstones. Deep in the mud beneath their keels was sunk the crumpled framework of a plan which was a long way farther on the way to consummation than most of Americans and Britons will ever realize-Germany's scheme to attain world domination by trade. Germany will, in time undoubtedly have another merchant marine, and she may even begin striving before long toward world domination by any means, fair or foul, that

epression, for no man who loves the sea can remain unmoved at the sight of neglected ships. To this mood the cheery chatter of a young Americ

igns along the front, "but the one word that is written over the whole darn layout is 'Ichabod.' 'N.D.L.' is t