At that date 60 per cent. of Germany’s shipping was in the hands of ten lines, working together with a solidarity that amounted practically to a shipping union. These ten were the Hamburg-America Line, the North German Lloyd, the Hamburg South-American Line, the Hansa Line, the German Australian Line, the Kosmos Line, the Roland Line, the German East Africa Line, the Woermann Line and the Hamburg-Bremen-Africa Line. A month before the outbreak of war this huge organisation comprised 3,194,000 gross tons, to say nothing of the German Levant Line of 155,000 tons. Well organised, reaching to every part of the world, subsidised by the German Government to the extent of £107,950 a year, this association was extremely successful in obtaining an enormous amount of the world’s carrying trade and in furthering Germany’s political aspirations. It was able to put up the severest competition and to draw away from the United Kingdom a good deal of carrying trade, and in their fight with the British companies of steamships the Germans were helped not merely by subsidies, but by attractive through-rates over their railway system. It was their unity and energy in organisation, their ability to cut rates, and their attention to the smallest details which gave them their vast success. It is important to emphasise one great distinction. The British Isles depend for their supplies and overseas trade on the tramp steamer. Of the British tonnage before the war 60 per cent. represented tramp tonnage and only 40 per cent. liners, and it was essential for the nation to have a large amount of “loose” tonnage able to trade at short notice to any part of the world, taking out, for instance, cheap coal and coming back with cargoes of grain, cotton, wool, rice and so on. This policy was the exact opposite of Germany, which built up its Mercantile Marine on liner trades, and especially in the Atlantic, their interest in tramp steamers being quite small. Now of those ten German lines just mentioned the Hamburg-America and the North German Lloyd, owning on the eve of war 1,093,000 and 716,000 gross tons respectively, were at once the creative forces and the mainstays of German shipping. Therefore if we consider their history we have before us practically the whole evolution of the German Mercantile Marine.