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On my return I shall call and inspect the sites and close the bargain." "And the Antwerp forts?" The other pursed his lips. "Pooh! Was it not the glorious firm of Krupp who fitted the guns there? Do you think the men who undertook that task were idle? I tell you that our plans of the Antwerp fortifications are more carefully worked out in detail than the plans held by the Belgians themselves.
Noting the wonder upon our faces, the officer was moved to speak further in a tone of sincere admiration, touching on the capabilities of the crowning achievement of the Krupp works: "Pretty strong medicine, eh? Well, wait until I have shown you American gentlemen what remains of the fort; then you will better understand.
Thoroughly equipped, her captain and crew familiarized with the operation of their new craft after a number of trial trips in English waters, she awaited only the call of duty that would send her forth for daring exploits against the Hohenzollern navy -a German submarine born of steel out of the great Krupp works and put together in the yards at Wilhelmshaven turned against her own sister ships under the direction of a doughty Yankee crew!
He had been clever: had penetrated even the model-office, peered at detailed draughtsman's-plans, developed from the original specifications, as well as at orders for Krupp plates, frames, etc.; had listened in the yard to the talk of four naval men acting as a Board of Inspection; was able to give details of the machining of enormous processed plates to sizes determined by templates, the length of pan-headed rivets, the specific gravity of an average cubic foot, the scarfing of edges, the accumulation of prepared material.
But the men who served the Krupp were naturally unable to do this; and, seeing that the gun must be moved, I gave this order: "Inspan the gun, gallop it three thousand paces back; then blaze away again as fiercely as you can!" Under a hail of bullets the horses were attached to the gun.
The reason, of course, is that these names are as unmistakably "made" as a Krupp gun or a Sheffield razor. Sincere, intense life has passed into them, life lived as the men who bore those names either chose, or were forced, to live it; individual experience, stern or gentle, in combination with an individual gift of expression. All names that are really "made" are made in the same way.
Two one-hundred-ton Armstrongs, each having an effectual range of 12 miles, and two Krupp 15.7-inch guns, which throw shot weighing nearly 2000 pounds over ten miles. Krupp claims a range of 15 miles; but this is doubtful. She also was encased in 21-1/2 inches of compound steel and iron armor, capable of resisting the projectiles of any cannon known except, perhaps, those of her own Armstrongs.
The upper battery mounts modern 10-inch and 12-inch Krupp guns behind a six-foot stone parapet, in front of which are twenty feet of earthwork and a belting of railroad iron. This battery is considered the most formidable of Havana's defenses except Morro Castle. It is masked and has not been absolutely located by the American warships.
During the night we built these schanzes, and before the sun rose the following morning, the guns were placed in position. By daybreak the English had crept up to within a short distance of our lines. It was the Krupp and the Maxim-Nordenfeldt that gave our answer.
At each crisis, as at the time of the sinking of the Arabic, the Ancona, the Sussex and other ships, the German censorship prevented the American correspondents from sending the news as they gathered it in Germany and substituted "news" which the Krupp interests and the Imperial Foreign Office desired the American people to believe.
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