We had only a fair number of American steamships adapted for the purpose, but lying in our ports were interned German and Austrian vessels aggregating many hundreds of thousands of tons. From 1914 until we entered the war commuters on North River ferry-boats seemed never weary of gazing at the steamships lying in the great North German Lloyd and Hamburg-American line piers in Hoboken. There was a small forest of masts and funnels appearing above the pier sheds, while many a graceful stern protruded out beyond the pier lines into the river. Among them was the great _Vaterland_, the largest vessel in the world, and the outward and visible expression of that peaceful maritime rivalry between Great Britain and the German Empire, which in the transatlantic lanes as in the waters of all the seven seas had interested followers of shipping for so many years. There was, so far as passenger traffic was concerned, the rivalry for the blue ribbon of the sea--the swiftest ocean carrier, a fight that was waged between Great Britain and Germany from the placid eighties to the nineties, when the Germans brought out the _Deutschland_, and later the _Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse_, the _Kaiser Wilhelm II_--all champions--whose laurels were to be snatched away by the _Mauretania_ and the _Lusitania_--the two speed queens--when war ended competition of the sort. But the contest in speed had, to an extent, been superseded by the rivalry of size, a struggle begun by the White Star Line when the great _Oceanic_ slipped past quarantine in the early 1900's, and carried on by that line, by the Atlantic Transport Line, and by the German companies with unceasing vigor. Great carrying capacity and fair speed were the desiderata, and the studious Germans were quick to see that it was a far more profitable battle to wage, since speed meant merely advertising, with a more or less slight preponderance in the flow of passenger patronage to the line which owned the latest crack greyhound, whereas size meant ability to carry greater cargoes, and thus enhanced earning capacity.