son, Sub-Lieutenant Wolf Von Tirpitz, studied at Oxford, and is on the most friendly terms with many English gentlemen of importance. He was on board the Mainz, which was sunk off Helgoland in August, 1916. In full uniform he swam for twenty minutes, before being picked up by one of the boats of the cruiser Liverpool. He was a lucky prisoner of war. The German battleships and cruisers which represent the toil of Von Tirpitz for more than half a century, lay hidden away in the shelter of the Kiel Canal during the war to be ingloriously surrendered at its end. His name will remain linked with that of the Lusitania. The German High Sea Fleet, at the beginning of the war, consisted of forty-one battleships, seven battle cruisers, nine armored cruisers, forty-nine light cruisers, one hundred and forty-five destroyers, eighty torpedo boats, and thirty-eight submarines. Under the direction of Von Tirpitz the navy had become democratic and had drawn to it many able men of the middle class. Its training was highly specialized and the officers were enthusiasts in their profession. The navy of Austria-Hungary had also expanded in recent years under the inspiration of Admiral Montecuculi. At the outbreak of the war the fleet comprised sixteen battleships, two armored and twelve light cruisers, eighteen destroyers, eighty-five torpedo boats and eleven submarines. The Allies were much more powerful. The French navy had in the matter of invention given the lead to the world, but its size had not kept pace with its quality. At the beginning of the war France had thirty-one battleships, twenty-four armored cruisers, eight light cruisers, eighty-seven destroyers, one hundred and fifty-three torpedo boats and seventy-six submarines. Russia, after the war with Japan, had begun the creation of a powerful battle fleet, which had not been completed when war was declared. At that time she had on the Baltic four dreadnoughts, ten armored cruisers, eighty destroyers and twenty-four submarines, and a fleet of about half the strength in the Black Sea. [Illustration: A BATTLE OF FOUR ELEMENTS British monitors shelling the German land batteries near Nieuport. German submarines were actively engaged in trying to torpedo these monitors and the British monoplane was useful for giving the range to the ships and reporting the accuracy of the shells.]