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