f danger in
aerial warfare from an excitable and intelligent public would be a
clamour for local airships and aeroplanes to defend local interests.
This, with such resources as they possessed, might lead to a fatal
division and distribution of the national forces. Particularly they
feared that they might be forced into a premature action to defend
New York. They realised with prophetic insight that this would be the
particular advantage the Germans would seek. So they took great pains
to direct the popular mind towards defensive artillery, and to divert it
from any thought of aerial battle. Their real preparations they masked
beneath ostensible ones. There was at Washington a large reserve of
naval guns, and these were distributed rapidly, conspicuously, and with
much press attention, among the Eastern cities. They were mounted for
the most part upon hills and prominent crests around the threatened
centres of population. They were mounted upon rough adaptations of the
Doan swivel, which at that time gave the maximum vertical range to a
heavy gun. Much of this artillery was still unmounted, and nearly all of
it was unprotected when the German air-fleet reached New York. And down
in the crowded streets, when that occurred, the readers of the New
York papers were regaling themselves with wonderful and wonderfully
illustrated accounts of such matters as:--

THE SECRET OF THE THUNDERBOLT

AGED SCIENTIST PERFECTS ELECTRIC GUN

TO ELECTROCUTE AIRSHIP CREWS BY UPWARD LIGHTNING

WASHINGTON ORDERS FIVE HUNDRED

WAR SECRETARY LODGE DELIGHTED

SAYS THEY WILL SUIT THE GERMANS DOWN TO THE GROUND

PRESIDENT PUBLICLY APPLAUDS THIS MERRY QUIP

3

The German fleet reached New York in advance of the news of the American
naval disaster. It reached New York in the late afternoon and was first
seen by watchers at Ocean Grove and Long Branch coming swiftly out of
the southward sea and going away to the northwest. The flagship passed
almost vertically over the Sandy Hook observation station, rising
rapidly as it did so, and in a few minutes all New York was vibrating to
the Staten Island guns.

Several of these guns, and especially that at Giffords and the one on
Beacon Hill above Matawan, were remarkably well handled. The former, at
a distance of five miles, and with an elevation of six thousand feet,
sent a shell to burst so close to the Vaterland that a pane of the
Prince's forward window was smashed by a fragment. This sudden