Page:The Zeppelin Destroyer.djvu/126

 the naval witnesses of their arrival were 'pulling the long bow.'

The Invisible Hand indeed stretched far and wide in the pre-war days. From Wick to Walmer, from Cork to Cromer, and from Donegal to Dover, the British public were assured that Zeppelins could never cross the North Sea. They were only very delicate gas-bags—some called them egg-shells—which could perhaps take up passengers in fair weather and, given continued fair weather, deposit them somewhere in safety.

The Invisible Hand wrote screeds of deliberate lies and utterly bamboozled England, just as the Crowned Criminal of Germany carried on his secret and insidious policy of the Great Betrayal.

Curiously enough the very organs of the Press which in 1913, when strange airships were reported over Yorkshire and the North-East coast, received the news with incredulity and amusement, were the very organs which now cried the loudest that something must be done to destroy Zeppelins.

I was chatting with Teddy one afternoon in my room, and had pointed out that fact, whereupon he blew a cloud of cigarette smoke from his lips, and said:

'You're quite right, my dear Claude. The armchair sceptics of 1913 were the people who have since told us that Zeppelins could kill only an occasional chicken—that Zeppelins could not reach London—that Zeppelins, if they did get to London, would never return—that Zeppelins were useless in bad weather—that Zeppelins could not survive a fall of snow—and so on.'