Page:The Zeppelin Destroyer.djvu/127

 'Do you recollect how one section of the Press violently attacked another because the latter had dared to warn the country against the danger of attacks from the air?' I asked. 'The purblind optimists waxed hilarious, and called it the "Scareship Campaign."'

Teddy laughed, as he stretched himself in his chair.

'Yes,' he said. 'I recollect quite well, though I had not yet taken my "ticket," how the "trust-our-dear-German-brother" propagandists were terribly angry because some newspaper or other had demanded a large provision for dirigibles in the coming Estimates. They accused the paper of "staging the performance" for the sake of a new journalistic scoop. One paper, a copy of which I still have,' Teddy went on, 'expressed greatest amusement at the statements of witnesses who had seen and heard Zeppelins on the North-East coast. I was only reading it the other day. One person heard "the whirr of engines"; another "a faint throbbing noise." To one, the airship appeared as "a cigar-shaped vessel," to another as "a small luminous cloud." These variations—they are not contradictions—were sufficient, in the opinion of that particular paper, to discredit the whole business. The writer of the article calmly stated that what was alleged to be a Zeppelin "turns out to have been merely a farmer working at night in a field on the hilltop, taking manure about in a creaky wheelbarrow, with a light swung on the top of a broomstick attached to it."'

'I know, Teddy,' I exclaimed. 'Our dear old