the penalties of the Act dealing with the betrayal of military secrets! "Strafgesetzbuch" means, literally, punishment-law-book-that is to say, criminal law. Criminal law is a necessity of all civilised States and yet there is something about the conception of the "punishment-law-book" quite German. You picture the German buying the work in a bookshop, and reading it up to find what things it is naughty to do and how hard he will be smacked for each naughtiness respectively. The Heligolander would seem to be beset by few temptations; but with the Germans came the new crime of betraying military secrets. Before, there were no military secrets to betray.

Now, in the ample space devoted to official notices, you may read directions how the Heligolander is to avoid this crime. He must not sketch or photograph forts or guns; he must not take notes of their bearings; he must keep off the grass near them, and in general he must not look at them too often or too long. And he must remind all strangers politely-no naughty rudeness!—that they must do likewise.

You may some of you remember the First Recruit. He was the first baby born after the cession of the island, and when his time comes he will have to serve in the army or navy. little wretch's pinched face now-in almost every shop

You may see the poor he is twelve years old window in Heligoland.

He has been photographed in a busby and sabre, with a toy horse at his feet, from which I infer that the idea is to make a hussar of him. Possibly Heligoland's only horse has been imported to familiarise him betimes with the fact that such a quadruped exists. Now, shortly after the First Recruit was born the Kaiser and Kaiserin visited the island in state; and of the scandalous behaviour of the First Recruit on this occasion I speak on the testimony of an eyewitness. When the Kaiserin landed there met her six maidens of Heligoland bearing a bouquet of flowers. Behind them was the First Recruit in the arms of his mother; the Kaiserin approached him and made to pat his cheek. The First Recruit made one wild clutch at the bouquet and tore the middle out of it. Next came the Kaiser, and, undeterred, made also to pat his cheek. once more raised an impious hand and smote his sovereign across the face, and then turned right round and showed his back and hid his face and refused to be comforted. From this it may be inferred that the First Recruit is of the old Heligoland party, which objects to German rule the new Heligoland party not being yet in existence.

Then the First Recruit

The Heligolanders are a square built race, akin in dress and looks to our East Coast fishermen, with faces seared brick-red by the salt wind. They say

little, but they do not like the change. They do not like the police, they do not like the regulations. They do not like the guts of their island torn out to make fortifications which they must not walk over. They do not like a lump of their island to fall into the sea when the heavy guns are fired: there is not much of the island, and all there is they want. They do not like the prospect of sending their sons away for three years to serve a sovereign whose quarrels are not theirs; and especially they do not like the broad space of cliff papered with instructions what they are to do and what they are not to do. One, I noticed, had reference to an electric launch. Somebody appeared to have said that it was not safe, and its German owner complained to the magistrate, who issued a notice, saying that if anybody did that again he would be punished under rule so-many-thousand-and-so-many. course it was wrong of the boatman to libel the electric launch, but it was probably sincerely done, and very human. Only the iron heel is down on Heligoland, and human nature must be squeezed out.

Of

The magistrate issues his notice from some town in Schleswig-Holstein. Heligoland stands all by itself in the sea; its people have their own little

history and traditions and ways, their own GermanDanish-Dutch-English speech. But they are part of the German empire now, and in the German empire there is only room for the one pattern. Poor little Heligoland, melting away into the German Ocean!

257

XI.

AT THE KAISER MANŒŒUVRES.

THE gentlemen of the press assembled in the railway station of Frankfurt at half-past five every morning; there they met the officer of the great general staff appointed to give them information concerning the

manœuvres.

To each he distributed an account of the forces engaged, a summary of the preceding day's operations, a map showing the position of the troops, and a sketch of the idea governing the operations of the day. Each journalist had his pass, enabling him to wander as he liked over the whole ground: when he had got his information from the Herr Major he could act upon it as he deemed best. The arrangement gave him plenty of discretion. The country covered by the manoeuvres was fifty miles by twenty-five, the force engaged four Army Corps -two Prussian, two Bavarian-of three divisions apiece, with three independent Cavalry divisions.

R