THE VATERLAND.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1789, 14 February 1918, Page 4

THE VATERLAND.

PATE OF A LEVIATHAN. NOW AN AMERICAN TRANSPORT. Walled in, chained, helpless to control her own motive power, lies the most gigantic prisoner of war the world has ever known. She is the U.S.S. Leviathan, erstwhile the Vaterland, now being fitted out as an American transport at an Atlantic port, writes a correspondent of a New York paper in an interesting article on the great vessel’s new role.

About her eddies a strange composite stream. Men, beams, barbed wire—harsh barbs, an inch in length—shoes, shrapnel, and sugar; jam, typewriters, and bacon. And more men . . , and more men.

. . . . fed by a thousand roar ing motor trucks, they go inces santly.

At nightfall and in the dusk of early morning the iron throat of the big prisoner sends forth such a wail as wrings the soul. It dies away and rises again from its own echo like the mourning cry of a world bereaved. It shakes the walls which hem the black caverns of the docks. A TWELVE-MILE. WALK.

The officer of the day, wearily making the last inspection of the night, buttons his topcoat more closely, and wishes he could smoke. The sentries of that half-light period are conscious of a friendly thrill at the approaching footsteps, and are prompt to present arms and respond to the gruff queries concerning the details of their uneventful watch. The officer covers miles in his nightly rounds. For officers and men alike guard duty of this sort is, perhaps, the most trying to nerve and health of any task which may be allotted them.

The gleam of a match or a .sudden sound and a shrill whistle calls a detachment to prowl through the slime and mud between the green-coated piles beneath the docks, where a slip l on the mosscovered planks means sickening immersion and perhaps death in the tangling filth of the river deposits which the current sweeps aside.

A few of the man-made wonders of the world are of the type which All the eye and magnetise from every viewpoint. So this captive Goliath of ours looms over the docks and towers above the tallest building in the “square mile town” alongside. Every phase of sun or moon light casts her great shadow athwart one of her decks, packed with a million discarded frills and furbelows.

Tapestries, rare rugs, fragile china, and heavy crockery, glassware, carved panellings, pianos, silverware, are carelessly stacked together, and closely guarded — many hundred tons of finery. CARRY 10,000 MEN.

Her gangways, which once bore half the social world in purple and line linen, burdened with Poms and Pekinese, social triumphs and defeats, are all closed but one, which is guarded by uncompromising bluejackets. Her crew of obsequious or tyrannical stewards, her live gold-laced captains and officers, are replaced by a crew of the United States Navy, approximating half a hundred officers and more than a thousand men.

Within the spacious hallways, whose slight deck curve gives the only suggesion of a ship, are dismantled save for a few good mural paintings and small gold signs, which still point the way to the “elevators,” the “Ritz Carlton room,” and the “Winter Gai’den,” and indicate that there are certain places where smoking is prohibited. There were, and are no more, wine cellars stocked with vintages which would have startled a seasoned connoiseur, and which were promptly confiscated by the authorities. Officers and workmen hurry to and fro, the latter with big cans of grey paint with which to “touch up’ the work already done of. rendering the big ship invisible at sea.

There are still mirrors about the walls of the dainty reception rooms, which, like her cabins, are fitted with the white iron framework of two-tiered ’bunks for enlisted men. It is estimated that her fourteen decks will hold ten thousand men. - HUGE DINING ROOMS.

The first-class dining saloons are stripped of rugs and draperies, but the long tables and. rose-covered