COASTAL COMMAND, 1934-6

a fine spectacle., full of movement; perhaps It was a little unfair
to compare it mentally with our more sedate first-class cricket
matches at home.

General Zander, who commanded the German Air Coastal
Command, heard that I was in Berlin and invited me to spend the
day with him at his headquarters at Kiel. He sent his communica-
tion Junkers down to Berlin to pick me up, and I had a most
interesting day looking round one or two of his air stations, which
did not seem to have many aircraft. Zander had been a naval
officer and was only just getting used to being called a General.
He spoke English well and had a lively sense of humour. He told
nie that he was in Zeebrugge during the British attack on
April 23rd, 1918, and was able to give me a vivid description of
what happened from his point of view. He claimed that the canal
and locks were only blocked for a short time and that within
twenty-four hours they had passed a submarine through to sea.
I saw the German naval war memorial to the fallen, which took
the form of a high tower shaped like the prow of a Viking ship. A
lift took one to the top from which a fine view of Kiel bay could be
obtained. Down below was a museum with various relics and
pictures, also a large model of the Battle of Jutland as seen from
the German angle. I was amused to see their optimistic inter-
pretation of the battle, and I remarked on the fact to Zander,
who seemed surprised that I knew something about it, but I left
him guessing.

From what little I could see of the dockyard there did not
appear to be an abnormal amount of ship construction going on,
a*id I came away from Kiel with the impression that no great
expansion was being made in the German Navy or its Coastal
Command.

At the conclusion of the Olympic Games, my son and I flew
to Frankfurt and took a bus on to Wiesbaden. This picturesque
sleepy old town was very different from noisy Berlin with its
Waring loud-speaker system, from which there was no escape;
even at the Yacht Club on the Wahnsee outside Berlin one of
these abominations boomed forth some fresh announcement from
the branches of a tree every now and then.

At Wiesbaden we stayed at a comfortable quiet hotel, and
listened to a good orchestral concert at the Kursaal afterwards.
There seemed fewer swastikas about in this peaceful town than
elsewhere.

Next morning we took the Rhine steamer down the river to