pictures of a row of people being sea-sick over a ship's side. At the manoeuvres soldiers by the hundred bought halfpenny cards with little pictures of soldiers manoeuvring on them to send to friends. If you are artistic you can get one with the Sistine Madonna; if frivolous, one with the Sisters Barrison. High-toned or low, the whole nation plays with the picture post-card as one German. It is the exact summary of the German holiday.

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X.

POOR LITTLE HELIGOLAND.

HELIGOLAND is an absurd little triangle of red rock sticking up out of the North Sea. Its population is put down as something over 2000; and an active man can walk round it, cutting off a corner here and there, in twenty minutes. Its staple industry is letting lodgings to Germans, varied by fishing in the off season. Its staple export, up to the time it became part of the German empire, was postage stamps.

Why the Kaiser ever cast the eye of desire upon it, and exchanged for it the German claim upon vast territories in Eastern Africa, the Germans themselves do not profess to know. As a taxable entity Heligoland is securely contemptible. Its fisheries have fallen off; nothing grows on it but potatoes and a few sheep; there is said to be one horse on it, though he is not exhibited to strangers, and the cows are imported for the tourist season. Strategically it

seems equally insignificant. It lies opposite the mouths of the Elbe and Weser; but it has no harbour, hardly a roadstead, and nothing with even a remote resemblance to a dock or a wharf. It is the kind of island which the stronger Power can do. without, and which is no help to the weaker. To these elements of uselessness it adds the disadvantage that it is slowly, but steadily, falling away into the sea.

Why did the Kaiser desire it? Perhaps the explanation is to be found in the historical maps of Germany, as appointed to be used in schools. There you will see, each marked in a separate colour, the various territories added to to the original Mark of Brandenburg by succeeding sovereigns of Prussia. From Albert the Bear, down through the Great Elector and the Great Frederic, the tale of expansion goes on till it comes down

to Alsace and Lorraine. And then the list of enlargers of the empire closes with the still, small inscription

And there, I fancy, you have it.

He wanted something to play with, something of his very own to add to the empire, whereupon he might leave his indelible mark; and played

with it in the seven years of its Germanisation he assuredly has. The first word you meet when you step ashore in Heligoland is the familiar "Forbidden." It is forbidden to make a mess on the beach on pain of punishment by the police. Under the notice stands the largest German policeman my eyes ever saw, spiked helmet on head, and in his belt, not only the universal sword, but also a huge revolver. A little farther on you come to a flat stone let into the ground, with the inscription: "Wilhelm II., August 10, 1890." That marks the spot where the Kaiser stood when he took possession of the island. Even poor little Heligoland cannot escape the German passion for memorials.

Then you begin to pass through the streets of the queer little place. Heligoland is a toy place all over and all through. It looks like a toy island from the first moment the grey blotch bobs up over the steamer's bow; but when you pass through the narrow streets, with the wooden painted houses, the suggestion of a German toy is irresistible. There is no carriage traffic, and so the main streets are 10 feet wide and the side streets 6 feet. The many-coloured houses have just the pointed roofs and the regular square windows that we all remember on the lids of our boxes of bricks; they are mostly two-storeyed, yet so low that it looks as if one good kick would

The names are a

send all Heligoland down flat. queer jumble of English and German. The Empress of India Hotel stands side by side by the Deutscher Reichs Adler, and Kaiser Strasse is parallel with Victoria Strasse. But, of course, the names of the streets have been translated into German letters, though, to be sure, O'Brien Strasse still remains in its glory. And in the middle of the Kaiser Strasse stands the new post - office. The Kaiser's Government, of course, suppressed the stamps which were one of Heligoland's main sources of income, and assimilated the postage to the rest of the empire. But the old post-office was plainly not imposing enough for a department of the sacred Government. So they have built a new one of glazed bricks in the style of the Victoria Station subway—the most pretentious edifice on the island. And on it, in letters of gold, stands the inscription, "Built, under William II."

But the first-fruits of that beneficent rule consist in the fortifications. Nothing grows in Heligoland except potatoes did I say? What a magnificent crop of notice-boards, long in the straw, heavy in the ear, embowers the fortifications! With what sternness is the Heligolander forbidden to approach the fortifications, referred to section so-many-hundred-and-somany of the 'Strafgesetzbuch,' and threatened with