to estimate the military value of these
exploits. Merely to inflict anguish and death upon a great number of
civilians, and those largely women and children, is obviously of no
military service. But if such suffering is inflicted in the course
of an attack which promises the destruction or even the crippling of
works of military character like arsenals, munition plants, or naval
stores, it must be accepted as an incident of legitimate warfare.
The limited information obtainable in wartime seems to indicate that
the German raids had no legitimate objective in view but were
undertaken for the mere purpose of frightfulness.

The methods of defence employed in Great Britain, where all attacks
must come from the sea, were mainly naval. What might be called the
outer, or flying, defences consisted of fast armed fighting
seaplanes and dirigibles. Stationed on the coast and ready on the
receipt of a wireless warning from scouts, either aerial or naval,
that an enemy air flotilla was approaching the coast, they could at
once fly forth and give it battle. A thorough defence of the British
territory demanded that the enemy should be driven back before
reaching the land. Once over British territory the projectiles
discharged whether by friend or foe did equal harm to the people on
the ground below. Accordingly every endeavour was made to meet and
beat the raiders before they had passed the barrier of sea. Beside
the flying defences there were the floating defences. Anti-aircraft
guns were mounted on different types of ships stationed far out
from the shore and ever on the watch. But these latter were of
comparatively little avail, for flying over the Channel or the North
Sea the invaders naturally flew at a great height. They had no
targets there to seek, steered by their compasses, and were entirely
indifferent to the prospect beneath them. Moreover anti-aircraft
guns, hard to train effectively from an immovable mount, were
particularly untrustworthy when fired from the deck of a rolling and
tossing ship in the turbulent Channel.

Third in the list of defences of the British coast, or of any other
coast which may at any time be threatened with an aerial raid, are
defensive stations equipped not only with anti-aircraft guns and
searchlights but with batteries of strange new scientific
instruments like the "listening towers," equipped with huge
microphones to magnify the sound of the motors of approaching
aircraft so that they wo