Albert Street, Kirkwall.
St. Magnus Cathedral from the Earl's Palace.
Kirkwall during the war was an examination base, and hundreds of craft of all nationalities passed through the harbour to be searched for contraband of war. Later, after the Armistice, it became the headquarters of our own and the American Mine Clearance Service, and the advent of four or five thousand American sailors contributed further to the prosperity and enlivenment of the town. Baseball, for example, and the "jazz," had not hitherto penetrated so far north as Orkney, and dancing soon became almost as great an obsession amongst the fair maidens of Kirkwall as it was further south.
To-day Kirkwall is again outwardly the same quiet town it was prior to 1914, but the infusion of new ideas and modes of life, which was inevitable from contact with so many of our own and American people, has produced many changes of mental and social outlook, and in no town will the years 1914-1919 be remembered for their historical significance more than in the capital of the Orkney Islands.
