It appears that even the officers going about with the Allied naval sub-commissions were only allowed to wear their designating marks for the occasion, and that, unless a special permit from the Workmen's and Soldiers' Council was shown, these had to be removed as soon as they went ashore. The constant "self-pity" which the officers kept showing in the matter of their humiliating predicament was the one thing needed to extinguish the sparks of sympathy which would keep flaring up in one's breast unless one stopped to think how thoroughly deserved--how poetically just--it all was. With one or two exceptions, all the best of Germany's capital ships were known to have been surrendered, and this applied to light cruisers and destroyers as well. The U-boat situation was somewhat obscure, but it was supposed--incorrectly, as transpired later--that a fairly clean sweep of the best of the under-water craft had also been made. The most interesting ships which the Allied Commission expected to see in German waters were the battleship _Baden_, sister of the surrendered _Bayern_, and the battle-cruiser _Mackensen_, sister of the surrendered _Hindenburg_. The _Regensburg_ and _Königsberg_, which had been left to the Germans to "get about in," were also considered worthy of study at close range as examples of the latest type of German light cruiser. The _Mackensen_, still far from completed, was in a yard on the Elbe at Hamburg. The others were inspected at Wilhelmshaven. I think I am speaking conservatively when I say that all of the Allied officers who saw them from the inside were distinctly disappointed in even these most modern examples of German naval construction. After the extremely good fight that practically every one of them--from the _Emden_ and _Königsberg_ and the ships of Von Spee's squadron at the Falklands to the battle-cruisers of Von Hipper at Jutland--had put up when it was once drawn into action, it was only natural to expect that some radical departures in construction, armament, and gunnery control would be revealed on closer acquaintance. This did not prove to be the case, though it is only fair to say that, in the matter of gunnery control, there was little opportunity to pass judgment, owing to the fact that, in every instance, the Germans--as they had a perfect right to do--had removed all the instruments and gear calculated to give any indication of the character of the installation.