Page:The Zeppelin Destroyer.djvu/34

 either struck down, or blown up by the petrol-tank. We'll have to exercise far more caution in the future,' declared Teddy.

Caution! Why, Teddy had risked his life in the air a hundred times in the past four months, flying by day and also by night, and experimenting with that apparatus of ours by which we hoped to defy the Zeppelin.

Those were no days for personal caution. The long dark shadow of the Zeppelin had been over London. Women and babes in arms had been blown to pieces in East Anglia, on the north-east coast, and every one knew, from the threats of the Huns, that worse was intended to follow.

Our searchlights and aerial guns had been proved of little use. London, the greatest capital of the civilized history, the hub of the whole world, seemed to lie at the mercy of the bespectacled night-pirate who came and went as he pleased.

As is usual, the public were 'saying things'—but were not acting. Both Teddy and I had foreseen this long ago, for both of us had realized to the full the deadly nature of the Zeppelin menace. It was all very well for a Cabinet Minister to assure us on March 17, 1915, that 'Any hostile aircraft, airships, or aeroplanes which reached our coast during the coming year would be promptly attacked in superior force by a swarm of very formidable hornets.'

Events had shown that the British authorities at that time did not allow sufficiently for the great height at which Zeppelins could travel, or for the fact that, while the airship could operate successfully