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 CHAPTER X

THE STORY OF DETROIT

History of the Great Munition City—Clock-Like Mechanism of A. P. L.—How the War Plants were Protected—Guarding the Neck of the Great Lakes Bottle.

It often has been said that the shipping of the Great Lakes, all of which passes through the Detroit River, is greater in annual tonnage than that which goes through the Suez Canal or the Panama Canal. A continual procession of ore ships and carriers of other freight passes by the water front of Detroit, going and coming on the clear, blue, rapid flood of the river which may be called the "neck of the bottle" of the Great Lakes.

Obviously, such a situation, collecting the riches of an empire, is one offering its own purely geographical menace. An unwatched enemy could sit on Detroit River front and destroy untold billions in property in the course of a month. But no such enemy did any such thing in this war.

Speaking of Detroit itself, without reference to its geographical situation, it is to be said that it had as many munition contracts as any city in the United States—Detroit contracts for war material and munitions ran over $400,000,000. These great war plants attracted the attention of men hostile to this country. No one can tell how much harm was wished against such enterprises by aliens who only awaited their opportunity. The point is that this twenty miles of water front of Detroit, these miles of railroad tracks for switching facilities, these many great buildings where manufacturing went on, were kept free from any destructive enemy activity. That is a great story of itself, and far greater than it would have been had it to record some great disaster—interesting and thrilling, but none the less a disaster. Detroit had no disasters. Instead, it had the A. P. L.

Detroit division began operations in the Spring of 1917,