and organisation, the maintenance of works discipline and output, the maintenance of a high standard of workmanship, the education and training of apprentices and the conditions of entry into the industries concerned, the prevention of unemployment, the decasualisation of labour, the encouragement of research and experiment, and the improving of the public status of the industry. Further, the Councils would be able to give public utterance to the views and needs of the industry in its relation to the whole national life. They would carry a weight which could not be disregarded, on questions of education, factory legislation, State aid of or State interference with industry, transport regulations, and all matters affecting the physical, economic, intellectual or moral welfare of those engaged in industrial activities. It might even be advisable-within limits and with proper safeguards for general public interests-to empower the National Councils to apply for Board of Trade Orders giving legal sanction to some of their decisions.

It would, of course, be useless to expect that any such organisation could be created on a wide scale before we have to face the immediate problems of a return to peace conditions. But, if the spirit which underlies these conceptions can be introduced into our discussion of those problems, the task of solving them will have lost more than half its difficulties and all its more pressing dangers. It is the acceptance of the principle of cooperation and the adoption of a new attitude towards the whole question of industry which will be of most importance in dealing with the constructive problems of the future. But the provision of some form of machinery for cooperation, whether on the lines suggested above or on others which may be evolved in the course of discussion between the parties, will be necessary not only for carrying the new ideas into practice, but as an embodiment and symbol of them, which will render them readily and generally understood.

The present moment affords a unique opportunity for a reconsideration of our attitude towards Industry and an attempt to place our industrial system upon a new and better footing. The war has acted as a challenge and a solvent to our inherited ideas and traditions. It has accustomed us to extraordinary exertions and the

contemplation of great changes. The problems to which it has given rise have focussed attention upon industrial questions. At the same time the sense of national unity and of our corporate responsibility to the community and to the future has been quickened and deepened.

The difficulties of framing a practical programme are great. But the reward is more than commensurate. The increase in efficiency of production which could be obtained by the substitution of active cooperation between the two great parties to industry for their present aloofness or latent hostility would be prodigious. Nor would this be the only or even the chief benefit. It is the purely industrial advantages which have been brought forward most prominently in this article, for it is the industrial situation which forms the subject of the Memorandum upon which it is based. But the change in general attitude would outweigh even the material benefits. It would go far to make an end of that habit of sectional thought and policy by which the unity of the nation has been broken in the past. It would raise the whole status of Labour and give to the worker a new interest in his job and a new pride in his position. It would inform Industry itself with a new consciousness of its place in the national life, displaying itself in the search for excellence as well as for quantity of output, and in a broader and more humane conception of working conditions; it would break down the barrier between a man's occupation and his moral and intellectual life, which has done so much to impoverish and enfeeble the modern world. It would remove the most formidable obstacle which lies in the path of social progress. If this seems utopian, if the difficulties seem insuperable, let us remind ourselves of what we have accomplished in the war. The army of to-day, the weekly output of war material, would have appeared utopian and impossible in August 1914. Is it too much to ask that we should apply the same energy, determination, and initiative which have secured our national safety to the task of building up our national future?

C. ERNEST FAYLE.

Art. 2.—A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY IN GERMANY.—II.

(6) WILHELMSHAVEN.

WE walked back from the Casino to the Coal Harbour. Although it was after midnight, the place was bristling with activity. Everything was prodigiously lighted up, and from the Imperial shipbuilding yard close by came the sounds of hammering, mixed with a confused din of voices, steam-engines and the murmurings of the sea. The air was alive, charged with electricity. You felt that here you were at the heart of things, listening to the pulse-beat of a stupendous machine, at the seat of history in the making.

It is perhaps not generally known that the territory of Wilhelmshaven is part of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg. In 1853, when Prussia laid the foundations of what is now the German Navy, she bought about four square miles from the Grand Duke. The construction of the harbour works was not begun until 1855, and was completed in 1869. Seven years after that, in 1876, the last German ship was launched from a foreign yard. Henceforth Germany was going to be her own builder.

Many improvements and additions have been made since those early days. Wilhelmshaven now contains five distinct harbours and basins, connected with each other by a system of locks and canals. The 'Building harbour, surrounded by the Imperial Dockyards, measures about 1300 by 1100 feet. It contains seven dry-docks and four slips (not, as I have seen quoted in last year's British reference books, four dry-docks and two slips). The dry-docks vary in length from 380 to 620 feet, i.e. long enough for the largest battleships. The recently completed Ausrüstungshafen' borders on the Imperial Dockyards. It is well over 3000 feet in length and over 600 feet wide. As the name indicates, here the ships are fitted out. When my friend and I walked round this place I found it the most interesting part of all. This harbour is surrounded by warehouses, in which everything that is needed on a ship is stored up in large quantities. I passed through building after building filled with clothes, foodstuffs, machinery, spare guns, rifles, Davis' torpedoes costing 500l. apiece, compasses,

fieldglasses, etc. There were also buildings containing spare parts, several of each kind, for every ship of the North Sea division. They were arranged in compartments, each of them labelled with the name of the ship to which it belonged. There was a thoroughness, a system about it, which was nothing short of marvellous.

The three entrances to Wilhelmshaven, with their large locks, are protected by long massive moles. Entrance No. 3, the northern and most recent one, consists of two large locks, which in case of necessity can serve as dry-docks. The whole place is one vast complex of dry-docks, machine shops, boiler factories, iron foundries, etc. The yard is surrounded on the land-side by a huge stone wall, with entrances only through fourteen strong iron gates. On the water-side it is protected by earthen ramparts 18 to 20 feet high, strengthened at regular intervals by gun embrasures, armed with heavy calibre ordnance. Finally the whole is surrounded by a ring of outer forts of modern construction (see map). A railroad line seems to touch almost every point, every dock, every warehouse. Everywhere I saw huge cranes, most of them of sufficient power to lift a battleship's turret, or one of the new 15-inch guns, or a pinnace, as easily as if it were a bale of cotton. North-west of the parade grounds are two enormous Zeppelin sheds, each with room for two Zeppelins. One of the buildings is of a movable type. Its framework is built entirely of steel and iron, and is supported by four large trucks, moving on a circular railroad, which enables the airship to start in any direction. Electric motors, attached to the trucks, supply the motive power.

The location of the Ammunition Magazines greatly surprised me. Though they were placed well back from every other building, they were surrounded by conspicuous landmarks. In the first place, the peculiar shape of the Fitting-Out Harbour makes it easy to locate it. The magazines are immediately north of this basin. The barracks are on the south side. Immediately west are the Zeppelin sheds; and hardly an eighth of a mile north stands the Naval Observatory. But most surprising of all is the arrangement of the railroad tracks. They go as far as the magazines, and there make a loop through the very centre of the buildings.

What a place to bomb! It seems surprising that no air attacks have been made on Wilhelmshaven. Any one, after having studied the map of the station for half an hour, could hardly miss those arsenals. But I was told that the Krupp anti-aircraft guns, placed at all important points along the coast, are so formidable that an air attack is a practical impossibility.

In the fitting-out harbour we saw several battleships of the Kaiser class, and a number of protected cruisers. The 'Prinz Albrecht,' Bismarck,' and 'Seydlitz' I noticed amongst them. The yards include six floating docks, two of them of 40,000 tons. The only reason, I was told, why Germany has hitherto taken three years to build its large ships, is because the costs have been distributed over that period, while in England they are distributed over only two. My doctor friend assured me, and I am inclined to believe him, that Germany can to-day complete the largest battleships within two years.

.

My walk round Wilhelmshaven did not make me feel that I was attending the last convulsions of an empire. Work, Will and Efficiency seemed to be in the very air, staring, shouting at you, at every turn. Though the Army is mobilised up to the last Landsturm' man, and though boys of fourteen and fifteen are already being drilled, Germany has not taken a single workman away from her ship-building yards. I have seen and copied the authentic figures, stating the number of men employed at the various Government and private yards. They total over 33,000 at the three Government yards at Wilhelmshaven, Kiel and Danzig, and over 57,000 at the different private yards in Kiel, Hamburg, Danzig and Bremen. That is over 90,000 men; and the yards are running twenty-four hours a day. Grand-Admiral Von Koester's favourite advice to his subordinates is: Remember, the day has twenty-four hours, and if you find that that is not enough, well then take part of the night as well.'

(7) WILHELMSHAVEN TO CUXHAVEN.

By the time I returned on board the little steamer, a few more documents had been added to an already voluminous parcel of red, green, blue, yellow and white