IN THE PRUSSIAN NAVY 15

The expedition to Eastern Asia still stood out as a kind of famous deed, and then there was the war against Denmark (in which, however, the lack of a proper fleet was keenly felt when the support desired by Prince Friedrich Karl for the transportation of troops to Alsen broke down owing to the bad weather, the weak engines of our gunboats, and the superiority of the Danish fleet). We grew up on the British navy like a creeping plant. We preferred to get our supplies from England. If an engine ran smoothly and without a hitch, if a rope or a chain did not break, then it was certain not to be a home-made article, but a product of English workshops—a rope with the famous red strand of the British navy. In those ships which we had built ourselves things broke with uncomfortable readiness. When I came to Berlin in the winter of 1869 for the Artillery Test Commission, the great national question of Krupp v. Armstrong, which had just been decided in Krupp's favour, was still throbbing in people's minds. The navy had been for Armstrong. In those days we could not imagine that German guns could be equal to English.

When an Englishwoman saw our crews on board the Friedrich Karl at Gibraltar in 1873, s"ie sa*d in astonishment, " Don't they look just like sailors ?" For our men were superior to the British at that time, just as I believe they were at the beginning of the world-war. When I asked her how else they should look, she replied in a most decided tone, " But you are not a sea-going nation/'