out of kindness."

The remark of that simple, but intelligent old woman as to the
restraint imposed by the Kaiser upon the Zeppelins constituted the
universal belief of all Germany until the British doggedly built up
an air service under the stress of necessity, which has brilliantly
checked the aerial carnival of frightfulness. People in Great
Britain seem to have no conception of the great part the Zeppelins
were to play in the war, according to German imagination. That
simple old peasant lady expressed the views that had been uttered
to me by intelligent members of the Reichstag--bankers, merchants,
men and women of all degrees. The first destruction of
Zeppelins--that by Lieutenant Warneford, and the bringing down of
LZ77 at Revigny, did not produce much disappointment. The war was
going well in other directions. But the further destruction of
Zeppelins has had almost as much to do with the desire for peace,
in the popular mind, as the discomfort and illness caused by food
shortage and the perpetual hammerings by the French and British
Armies in the West.

It should be realised that the Zeppelin has been a fetish of the
Germans for the last ten years. The Kaiser started the worship by
publicly kissing Count Zeppelin, and fervently exclaiming that he
was the greatest man of the century. Thousands of pictures have
been imagined of Zeppelins dropping bombs on Buckingham Palace, the
Bank of England, and the Grand Fleet. For a long time, owing to
the hiding of the facts in England of the Zeppelin raids, even high
German officials believed that immense damage had been done. The
French acted more wisely. They allowed full descriptions of the
aeroplane and Zeppelin raids in France to be published, and the
result was discouraging to the Germans. I remember studying the
British Zeppelin communiques with Germans. At that time the London
Authorities were constantly referring to these raids taking place
in the "Eastern counties," when the returned Germans knew exactly
where they had been. The result was great encouragement. Nothing
did more to depress the Germans than the humorous and true accounts
of the Zeppelin raids which were eventually allowed to appear in
the English newspapers.

The Germans have now facts as to the actual damage done in England.
They know that the British public receive the Zeppelins with
excellent aircraft and gun-fire. They know that anti-aircraft
preparations are likely to increas