nging whole to
visualise Essen-on-the-Ruhr.

In some way Essen is unlike any other town I have visited. It has
its own internal network of railways, running to and from the
various branches of Krupps, and as the trains pass across the
streets they naturally block the traffic for some minutes. They
are almost continuous and the pedestrians' progress is slow, but it
is exciting, for it is here that one realises what it means to be
at war with Germany. If the resolution of the German people were
as rigid as the steel in the great cranes and rolling mills, the
Allied task would be impossible.

The brief noon-tide rush of the workpeople resembles our six
o'clock rush in America towards Brooklyn Bridge. I can say no more
than that. There is nothing like it in London. The home-going
crowd round the Bank of England does not compare with the Essen
crowd, because the crowd at Essen is for a few minutes more
concentrated. Old and young, men and women, refugees and prisoners
of several nationalities (I saw no British), Poles and Russians
predominating, grimy, worn, and weary, they pour out in a solid
mass, and cover the tramcars like bees in swarming time. The
pedestrians gradually break up into little companies, most of them
going to Kronenberg and other model colonies founded by Frau
Krupp--"Bertha," as she is affectionately called throughout
Germany. The highest honour the Germans can bestow upon her is to
name their 16-inch howitzer "Fat Bertha." Frau Bertha Krupp, it
may be well to recall, was the heiress to the great Krupp fortune,
and on her marriage in 1906 to Herr von Bohlen und Halbach, a
diplomatist, he changed his name to Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach.

Though a private corporation with 12,500,000 pounds share capital
owned by the "Cannon Queen" and her family, it is to all intents
and purposes a Government Department just as Woolwich Arsenal is an
adjunct of the British War Office. In the past, as the elaborate
centenary (1910) memorial proudly recites, fifty-two Governments
throughout the world have bought Krupp guns, armour, shells, and
warships, with Germany by far the biggest customer.

Out of the stupendous profits of war machines the Krupps have built
workpeople's houses that, as regards material comfort, would not be
easy to excel. These houses are provided with ingenious
coal-saving stoves, that might well be copied elsewhere, for though
Essen is in the coal centre of Germany, they are just as