Mulheim is easily found, because it is close to the River Ruhr.  We had to halt a long time outside the station of Essen, so great was the pressure of traffic.  The cordon surrounding the entrance to the city is some distance away, and having passed that safely I had no fear of being again interrogated.

I told the hotel manager that I was a travelling newspaper correspondent, and should like to see as many as possible, of the wonders of his town.  After praise of his hostelry, which, as the sub-manager said, was too good for the Essenites, I set out on my travels to see the sights of the city, foremost among them being the regulation statue of William I.

It was easy to find Krupps, for I had only to turn my steps towards the lurid panorama in the sky.  As I came nearer, not only my sense of sight but my sense of hearing told me that Germany’s great arsenal was throbbing with unwonted life.  The crash and din of mighty steam hammers and giant anvils, the flame and flash of roaring blast furnaces, the rumbling of great railway trucks trundling raw and finished products in and out, chimneys of dizzy height belching forth monster coils of Cimmerian smoke, seem to transport one from the prosaic valley of the Ruhr into the deafening realm of Vulcan and Thor.  The impression of Krupps by night is ineffaceable.  The very air exudes iron and energy.  You can almost imagine yourself in the midst of a thunderous artillery duel.  You are at any rate in no doubt that the myriad of hands at work behind those carefully guarded walls are even more vital factors in the war than the men in the firing line.  The blaze and roar fill one with the overpowering sense of the Kaiser’s limitless resources for war-making.  For you must roll Sheffield and Newcastle-on-Tyne and Barrow-in-Furness into one clanging whole to visualise Essen-on-the-Ruhr.

In some way Essen is unlike any other town I have visited.  It has its own internal network of railways, running to and from the various branches of Krupps, and as the trains pass across the streets they naturally block the traffic for some minutes.  They are almost continuous and the pedestrians’ progress is slow, but it is exciting, for it is here that one realises what it means to be at war with Germany.  If the resolution of the German people were as rigid as the steel in the great cranes and rolling mills, the Allied task would be impossible.

The brief noon-tide rush of the workpeople resembles our six o’clock rush in America towards Brooklyn Bridge.  I can say no more than that.  There is nothing like it in London.  The home-going crowd round the Bank of England does not compare with the Essen crowd, because the crowd at Essen is for a few minutes more concentrated.  Old and young, men and women, refugees and prisoners of several nationalities (I saw no British), Poles and Russians predominating, grimy, worn, and weary, they pour out in a solid mass, and cover the tramcars like bees in swarming time.