twined their way in and out between the big ships. The Imperial yacht Hohenzollern' showed up very conspicuous in its coat of white paint, among the dark-grey monsters. Close by her lay the armoured cruiser 'Von der Tann,' with steam up. Soon after we had passed her she slowly moved down the line towards the Baltic. 'Manoeuvres,' I suppose!

The distance from the Canal mouth to the Imperial Dockyards is about four miles as the crow flies. On our left, as we went up the harbour, we passed the huge shipbuilding yards of the Howaldts Works. Another half mile or so further brought us to the Imperial Wharf. The air reverberated with a hundred different noises and sounds. The electric steel-hammers from the dockyards mingled with the warning notes of the torpedo-boat sirens. There was whistling, shouting, cursing. It was, as at Wilhelmshaven-bustle, activity, life, all around. One felt surcharged with the electricity of one's surroundings and swept away by the exhilarating atmosphere.

The large battleships, all cleared for action, appeared less out of place here than those I had seen the day before in the Canal. The defying angles of their guns, their towering walls of steel plate, the giant bridges and solid gun-turrets, seemed to throw a challenge to all the world. Yet, did they? Their main occupation seemed to be playing hide-and-seek with each other in the Canal. The ships have every appearance of being most perfect fighting units. The sight of them warms the heart of any lover of sea-power. Yet, while the sister organisation, the German Army, on the two occasions when I have attended its manoeuvres, and also during my recent trip to the eastern front, where I saw it overcome almost insurmountable obstacles, could arouse my enthusiasm, these big over-armed monsters left me cold. The more I saw of the German fleet, and talked to its officers and its men, the more I became convinced that this war is not going to see a naval battle fought out to the bitter end. My trips have proved to me that, in the widest sense of the term, the Germans spoke the truth when they said, 'We are not going to take any chances with our fleet.'

Not the least interesting thing about Kiel is its name. It is one of the few places I know of that have been

appropriately christened. The name Kiel' appears as early as the tenth century, and is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word 'Kille,' which means a safe place for ships. As to Kiel itself I am not going to swamp you with statistics. If you want to know how many dockyards there are in Kiel, how many ships are building, etc., take a British Year Book giving information about Germany, multiply its figures by two, and you have a fairly accurate estimate. Though the whole bay is about eleven miles long, the 'Kiel' begins only about five miles from its head, where the two shores approach each other to within three-quarters of a mile. The Narrows are surrounded by forts of the very latest construction, armed with large-calibre guns (most of them, it is said, 15 inch), protected by armour-plates of the famous Gruson steel. The most important forts are Friedrichsort (which protects the Baltic entrance of the Canal), Fort Herwarth, and Fort Falkenstein on the western shore. On the eastern side there are Forts Stosch, Korügen, UnterJägersberg, Möltenort, and several others (see map).

The day after my arrival in Kiel, I was invited (my 'guest' had obtained the invitation for me) to see some of the German warships in action-in Kiel Bay. My naval friend and another officer called for me at my hotel in a huge grey car with Germany's coat-of-arms painted all over it. The car was a German Mercedes and certainly built for speed. An orderly was seated next to the driver and frequently blew a long horn of a peculiar but not unpleasant sound. Whenever the man sounded his 'Ta-ri-ta-ta,' man, woman, child and beast, within half a mile, ran for cover. Through the suburb of Gaarden we flew, then north through the People's Park, past the Imperial Wharf, and through Elterbeck and Wellingdorf. At the Howaldts Dock Yards we were ferried across the Schwentine, and then turned northwest again to reach the shore-road. Just north of the Naval Artillery depôt (ammunition magazines) we stopped, and our guide invited us to leave the car and follow him to a promontory for a view of the harbour.

It was indeed well worth while. The sight was superb. In front of us, to left, to right, wherever our eyes travelled, we saw nothing but warships, of all types and ages. On closer inspection I noticed, first, four

distinct lines of them, anchored near large black and white buoys. The naval officer explained to me the different anchorages. The four rows of buoys are designated respectively A, B, C, and D, the letters being followed by numbers, beginning with zero (nearest to Kiel) and running up to 17 (see map). One of the most interesting features of the map was the corrections made on it since the beginning of the war. The names of the ships were printed in fat black type, but I noticed at once a fair sprinkling of red lines and dates. These indicate the ships that have been lost, and the dates on which the losses occurred. In the map as reproduced here, the lost ships are underlined.

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Less than a third of a mile in front of us, at A 11, lay the Kaiser,' one of Germany's finest 25,000-ton battleships, capable of delivering a broadside of ten 12-inch guns. When with the fleet, the Kaiser lives on her. About a thousand feet in front of her, towards the mouth of the harbour, at A 12, the 'Kaiserin' was anchored. Through our glasses we could follow the lines north and south. A 10 was empty, while at A 9 the Kaiser's Yacht Hohenzollern' was riding. Next to her at A 8 lay the 'Friedrich der Grosse,' the flagship of the fleet. Although belonging to the Kaiser class, she was placed well back in harbour, separated from the other ships. A 7 was empty, and the British fleet knows why. Once it had been the safe slumbering place of the 'Blücher.' Buoy A 6 should have been occupied by the 'Deutschland,' but she was 'draussen '('outside'), we were told. 'Where? in the North Sea or the Baltic?' I could not resist asking. Our guide did not know. Probably she was gallivanting round the North Sea, looking for the British that never came, aching for a scrap-like her late neighbour at A 7. Still further down, at No. 1, was another ominous vacancy, viz. at the Mainz' buoy. The more one looked at those lines through one's glasses, the more vacancies one observed. Our guide knew the names of all the missing ships. What a host of memories were called up when he sadly pointed towards Buoy B 5, once the 'Emden' anchorage; to Buoy A 16, where the 'Scharnhorst' used to lie; to Buoy A 17, the former home of the 'Gneisenau.'

Besides these four rows, there are two others-an