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Rh of the Peace of Geneva, and in some cases even while the ink of the signatories was wet upon the paper, the great fleet of German merchant ships which had been interned in foreign ports during the war cast loose its moorings and set sail for the Fatherland. Among the first of these ships to start out from her pier and head for the open sea was the great Hamburg-American liner Vaterland, and as she and the Kaiser Wilhelm II, of the North German Lloyd, followed at intervals by other ships of these two companies, steamed down the North River, and out through the Narrows, New York wished them Godspeed on their homeward voyage with the flying of flags, the dipping of ensigns by the shipping, and the prolonged roar of a thousand steam whistles and sirens.

Meanwhile in Germany all public traffic over the railways was suspended and the