Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 214, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 September 1916 — East Boston Has an Attractive Bit of Germany [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

East Boston Has an Attractive Bit of Germany

BOSTON. — There’s a little bit of Germany over in East Boston, where seven big German liners and one Austrian ship are tied up to the old wharf. These ships are valued at $12,000,000. When they were first interned their

crews numbered tnore than 2,000, but these have dwindled to less than 500. The men have drifted away. Some of them have been admitted as emigrants. Since the liners have been berthed in East Boston the officers and crew prepared for a long stay and have worked hard to make their sojourn In Boston as pleasant as possible under the circumstances. There in their miniature village they have surrounded themselves with many comforts and many things to remind them of their

old homes. They have built runways and. bridges and gang planks, strung electric light wires about the ships and the dock and one may walk from one ship to another q£_juake a tour of inspection in the captain’s launch. They hav.e exemplified intensive farming in a manner which the New Englander might well copy. From a mudhole, an old wharf, the soil of which is about as poor as the sands of Cape Cod, they have wrung as fine a lot of garden truck as some of the farmers in Lexington raise under glass or on their highly fertilized acres. Officers and men—most of whom have followed the seas all their lives—have shown that they know how to get from the earth many of the necessities of life. Aboard the liners they raise chickens, keep hens and ducks. On the wharf they have planted a garden from which the crews of the Jiners pluck fresh vegetables for the officers’ table. Here and there in the garden the men of the crews have built latticework summer houses and screened them in to keep out the flies and the mosquitoes. There are tables and chairs about, and a number of empty beer kegs piled up in one corner. Herr Skipper must have his beer, you know.