The German naval officer who received the Allied party on one of the British merchantmen was found in a state of considerable excitement. He had been fired at from the darkness the night before, he said, and missed by a hair. Interpreting this as a warning against wearing his naval uniform ashore, he had dressed in civil attire that morning, brought his uniform along in a parcel, and changed into it on board. "You'd pity any one but a Hun for having to do a thing like that," was the dry comment of one of the British members of the party when this tale of woe was translated to him. An instance of the unquenchable optimism of the German industrialist regarding the eagerly awaited future when the seas and the markets of the world are again open to him was furnished in the course of a visit to the great Blohm and Voss yards, which occupy about the same position on the Elbe as do those of John Brown or Fairfields on the Clyde, or Harland and Wolff at Belfast. Several of the embargo ships were undergoing repairs here, and in going over one of these it was pointed out by Commodore Bevan that it ought to be ready to put to sea some days inside the limit set by the Germans for the completion of reconditioning. "It is quite true the ship will be in a state to make the voyage to the Tyne by the time you say," replied Herr M----, the Director who was showing the party round, "but it will take a number of days longer to put it in the same state it was when placed under embargo. It would be a short-sighted policy on our part to send a badly repaired ship out of our yards at the present time, for it would be certain to react seriously in the matter of future orders. You must bear in mind, sir, that we have a world-wide reputation for thoroughness to maintain." He appeared far from reassured when he was told that the condition he sent the British ships home in would have no effect whatever upon his future business with the rest of the world; moreover, he must have found that the longer he pondered that plain statement the less comfort there was to be extracted from it. It is astonishing how few Germans appear to realize that there are other things besides workmanship and quality--to say nothing of long credits, state subsidies and pushful salesmen--that will profoundly affect the future of German trade.