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agricultural organizations for erecting drying plants; also, that the Imperial Government has decreed that potatoes up to a maximum of 30 per cent. may be used by the bakers in making bread-a measure which will undoubtedly make the grain supply suffice till the 1915 crop is harvested. It is further recommended that more vegetables be preserved, whether directly in cold storage or by canning or pickling. Moreover, the industrial use of fats suitable for human food (as in making soaps, lubricating oils, &c.) must be stopped, and people must eat less meat, less butter, and more vegetables. Grain must not be converted into starch. People must burn coke rather than coal, for the coking process yields the valuable by-product of sulphate of ammonia, one of the most valuable of fertilizers, and greatly needed by German farmers now owing to the stoppage of imports of nitrate of soda from Chile.

In considering how the German people may keep up their production of food, the authors find that various factors will work against such a result. In the first place, there is a shortage of labor, nearly all the able-bodied young and middleaged men in the farming districts being in the war. There is also a scarcity of horses, some 500,000 head having already been requisitioned for army use, and the imports of about 140,000 head (chiefly from Russia) have almost wholly ceased. The people must therefore resort more extensively to the use of motor plows, and the State Governments must give financial assistance to insure this wherever necessary; and such plows on hand must be kept more steadily in use through company ownership or rental. It may be remarked here, again, that the Prussian Government is also assisting agricultural organizations to buy motor plows. The supply of fertilizers has also been cut down by the war. Nitrate has just been mentioned. The authors recommend that the Government solve this problem by having many of the existing electrical plants turn partly to recovering nitrogen from the atmosphere. This, they say, could be done without

reducing the present production of electricity for ordinary purposes, since only 19 per cent. of the effective capacity of the 2,000,000 horse power producible by the electrical plants of Germany is actually used. The supply of phosphoric fertilizers is also endangered through the stoppage of imports of phosphate rock (nearly 1,000,000 tons a year) as well as the material from which to make sulphuric acid; also, through the reduction. in the production of the iron furnaces of the country, from the slag of which over 2,000,000 tons of so-called Thomas phosphate flour was produced, will involve a big reduction in the make of that valuable fertilizer. Thus, there is a lack of horses, of fertilizers, and of the guiding hand of man. This last, however, can be partly supplied by utilizing for farm work such of the prisoners of war as come from the farm. As Germany now holds considerably more than 600,000 prisoners, it can draw many farm laborers from among them. Prisoners are already used in large numbers in recovering moorland for agricultural purposes.

This latter remark suggests one of the recommendations of the authors for increasing agricultural production—the increased recovery of moorlands. They show that Germany has at least 52,000 square miles (more than 33,000,000 acres) of moors convertible into good arable land, which, with proper fertilizing, can be made at once richly productive; they yield particularly large crops of grain and potatoes. Moreover, the State Governments must undertake the division of large landed estates among small proprietors wherever possible-and this is more possible just now than ever, owing to the fact that many large owners have been killed in battle. The reason for such a division is that the small holder gets more out of the acre than the large proprietor.

As Germany makes a large surplus of sugar, the authors advise that the area planted in beets be reduced and the land thus liberated be planted in grain, potatoes, and turnips; as a matter of fact, it is reported that the Government is now considering the question of reducing

the beetroot acreage by one-fourth. The authors also recommend that sugar be used to some extent in feeding stock, sweeting low-grade hay and roots with it to make them more palatable and nutritious. It is also regarded as profitable to leave 20 per cent. of suger in the beets, so as to secure a more valuable feed product in the remnants. Still another agricultural change is to increase the crops of beans, peas, and lentilsvegetables which contain when dried as much nutrition as meat. Germany will need to increase its home production of these crops to replace the 300,000 tons of them hitherto imported.

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Such are the principal points covered by these experts. Their conclusion is that, if their recommendations be carried out fully, and various economies practiced-they could not be touched on in the limits of this article-Germany can manage to feed its people. But they insist, in their earnest, concluding words, that this can only be done by carrying out thoroughly all the methods of producing and saving food products advised by them. It is a serious problem, indeed, but one which, all Germany is convinced, can and will be solved.

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[From The London Times, Jan. 16, 1915.]

HE earliest description of a practical under-water boat is given by William Bourne in his book entitled "Inventions or Devices," published in 1578. Instructions for boat are building such a given in detail, and it has been conjectured that Cornelius van Drebbel, a Dutch physician, used this information for the construction of the vessel with which in the early part of the seventeenth century he carried out some experiments on the Thames. It is doubtful, however, whether van Drebbel's boat was ever entirely submerged, and the voyage with which he was credited, from Westminster to Greenwich, is supposed to have been made in an awash condition, with the head of the inventor above the surface. More than one writer at the time referred to van Drebbel's boat and en

deavored to explain the apparatus by which his rowers were enabled to breathe under water.

Van Drebbel died in 1634, and no illustration of his boat has been discovered. Nineteen years later the vessel illustrated here was constructed at Rotterdam from the designs of a Frenchman named de Son. This is supposed to be the earliest illustration of any submarine, and the inscription under the drawing, which was printed at Amsterdam in the Calverstraat, (in the Three Crabs,) is in old Dutch, of which the following is a translation

The inventor of this ship will undertake to destroy in a single day a hundred vessels, and such destruction could not be prevented by fire, storm, bad weather, or the force of the waves, saving only that the Almighty should otherwise will it.

Vain would it be for ships lying in

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The figures on the drawing refer to the following explanations:

1. The beam wherewith power shall be given to the ship.

2. The rudder of the ship, somewhat aft.

3. The keel plate.

4. The two ends of the ship, iron plated.

5. Iron bolts and screws.

6. How deep the ship goes into the water when awash.

7. The pivots on which the paddle-wheel turns.

8. Air holes.

9. Gallery along which men can move.

The inset is a drawing of the paddle-wheels which fill the centre portion of the boat and which work upon the pivot marked 7.

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harbor to be regarded as safe, for the inventor could reach anywhere unless prevented by betrayal. None but he could control the craft. Therefore it may truly be called the lightning of the sea.

Its power shall be proven by a trip to the East Indies in six weeks or to France and back in a day, for as fast as a bird flieth can one travel in this boat.

This boat was 72 feet in length, and her greatest height was 12 feet, while the greatest breadth was 8 feet, tapering off to points at the end. Capt. Murray Sueter in his book on submarines gives these and other particulars of the vessel. At either end the boat had a cabin, the air in which remained good for about three hours, and in the middle of the boat was a large paddlewheel rotated by clockwork mechanism, which, it was claimed,

would run for eight hours when once wound up. The iron tips at the ends of the vessel were intended for ramming, and the inventor was confident he could sink the biggest English ship afloat by crushing in her hull under water. The boat was duly launched, but on trial of the machinery being made the paddlewheel, though it revolved in air, would not move in the water, the machinery being not powerful enough. This, says Capt. Sueter, was apparently the only reason for de Son's failure, for his principles were distinctly sound, and he was certainly the first inventor of the mechanically propelled semi-submarine boat. After her failure de Son exhibited her for a trifle to any casual passer-by.

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THE TORPEDO.

By Katherine Drayton Mayrant Simons, Jr.

EATH, our mother, gave us her three gray gifts from the sea-
(Cherish your birthright, Brothers!)-speed, cunning, and certainty.
And mailed Mars, he blest us-but his blessing was most to me!

For the swift gun sometimes falters, sparing the foe afar,

And the hid mine wastes destruction on the drag's decoying spar, But I am the wrath of the Furies' path-of the war god's avatar!

Mine is the brain of thinking steel man made to match his own,

To guard and guide the death disks packed in the war head's hammered cone To drive the cask of the thin air flask as the gyroscope has shown.

My brother, the gun, shrieks o'er the sea his curse from the covered deck,
My brother, the mine, lies sullen-dumb, agape for the dreadnought's wreck,

I glide on the breath of my mother, Death, and my goal is my only check!

More strong than the strength of armored ships is the firing pin's frail spark,
More sure than the helm of the mighty fleet are my rudders to their mark,
The faint foam fades from the bright screw blades—and I strike from the under dark!

Death, our mother, gave us her three gray gifts from the sea

(Cherish your birthright, Brothers!)-speed, cunning, and certainty. And mailed Mars, he blest us-but his blessing was most to me!

T

A New Hymn of Germany's Gospel of Hatred

[From Public Opinion, London, Feb. 5, 1915.]

HE amazing outburst of hatred against England in Germany is responsible for a new form of greeting which has displaced the conventional formulas of salutation and farewell: "God punish England!” (“Gott strafe England!") is the form of address, to which the reply is: May God punish her!" ("Gott mög'es strafen!")

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"This extraordinary formula," says The Mail," which is now being used all over Germany, is celebrated in a set of verses by Herr Hochstetter in a recent number of the well-known German weekly, Lustige Blätter. In its way this poem is as remarkable as Herr Ernst Lissauer's famous Hymn of Hate.'”

Among the prayers at Bruges Cathedral on the Kaiser's birthday was this German chant of hate, "God Punish England!"

A HYMN OF HATE.
Translated by

G. VALENTINE WILLIAMS.

This is the German greeting
When men their fellows meet,
The merchants in the market-place,
The beggars in the street.

A pledge of bitter enmity,
Thus runs the wingèd word:
"God punish England, brother!-
Yea! Punish her, O Lord!"

With raucous voice, brass-throated,
Our German shells shall bear
This curse that is our greeting
To the "cousin" in his lair.
This be our German battle cry,
The motto on our sword:
"God punish England, brother!--
Yea! Punish her, O Lord!"

By shell from sea, by bomb from air,
Our greeting shall be sped,
Making each English homestead

A mansion of the dead.

And even Grey will tremble

As falls each iron word:

"God punish England, brother!— Yea! Punish her, O Lord!"

This is the German greeting
When men their fellows meet,
The merchants in the market-place,
The beggars in the street.
A pledge of bitter enmity,
Thus runs the winged word:

God punish England, brother!-
Yea! Punish her, O Lord!"

"What German Lutheran pastors think of the gospel of hate that is at present being preached throughout the Fatherland may be judged from an article on the subject written for the Vossische Zeitung of Berlin, by Dr. Julius Schiller of Nürnberg, who describes himself as a royal Protestant pastor," says The Morning Post.

"Before the war, the pastor writes, it was considered immoral to hate; now, however, Germans know that they not only may, but they must hate. Herr Lissauer's Hymn of Hate' against England is, he declares, a faithful expression of the feelings cherished in the depths of the German soul.

"All protests against this hate,' the pastor writes, fall on deaf ears; we strike down all hands that would avert it. We cannot do otherwise; we must hate the brood of liars. Our hate was provoked, and the German can hate more thoroughly than any one else. A feeling that this is the case is penetrating into England, but the fear of the German hate is as yet hidden. There is a grain of truth in Lord Curzon's statement that the phlegmatic temperament of his countrymen is incapable of hating as the Germans hate.

"We Germans do, as a matter of fact, hate differently than the sons of Albion. We Germans hate honorably, for our hatred is based on right and justice. England, on the other hand, hates mendaciously, being impelled by envy, illwill, and jealousy. It was high time that we tore the mask from England's face,

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