is running almost full blast, all the
work being done by women, and the finished product is a tribute to
the skill of those in charge.

It is impossible to buy a real tennis hall in the German Empire
to-day. A most hopeless makeshift ball has been put on the market,
but after a few minutes' play it no longer keeps its shape or
resiliency.

Germany has been very successful in the substitution of a sort of
enamelled-iron for aluminium, brass, and copper. Some of the
Rhenish-Westphalian iron industries have made enormous war profits,
supplying iron chandeliers, stove doors, pots and pans, and other
articles formerly made of brass to take the place of those
commandeered for the purpose of supplying the Army with much-needed
metals.

For copper used in electrical and other industries she claims to
have devised substitutes before the war, and her experts now assert
that a two-years' supply of copper and brass has been gathered from
the kitchens and roofs of Germany. The copper quest has assumed
such proportions that the roof of the historic, world-renowned
Rathaus at Bremen has been stripped. Nearly half the church bells
of Austria have found their way to the great Skoda Works.

Of course Germans never boast of the priceless ornaments they have
stolen from Belgium and Northern France. They joyfully claim that
every pound of copper made available at home diminishes the amount
which they must import from abroad, and pay for with their
cherished gold.

The authorities delight in telling the neutral visitors that they
have found adequate substitutes for nickel, chromium, and vanadium
for the hardening of steel. If that is really so, why does the
_Deutschland's_ cargo consist mainly of these three commodities?

CHAPTER XIV

THE GAGGING OF LIEBKNECHT

Although Bismarck gave the Germans a Constitution and a Parliament
after the Franco-Prussian War as a sop for their sacrifices in that
campaign, he never intended the Reichstag to be a Parliament in the
sense in which the institution is understood in Great Britain.

What Bismarck gave the Germans was a debating society and a
safety-valve. They needed a place to air their theories and
ventilate their grievances. But the Chancellor of Iron was very
careful, in drawing up the plans for the "debating society," to see
that it conferred little more real power on the nation's
"representatives" than is enjoyed by the stump-speakers near Marble
Arch in London on Sun