THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume XCII, Issue 75, 26 September 1916, Page 6

THE WAR

I The Germans have now: made thirtyfive Zeppelin raids on England. They have dropped an enormous number of bombs, and have done surprisingly little damage of military importance. No public estimate lias b§en made of the total non-military damage done, but it is probably inconsiderable in comparison with the wealth! of time, money, work, and scientific research which has been expended upon the instruments used. The greatest achievement of the German aeronauts is ..the slaughter and maiming of a great number of women and children. They are far 'more numerous than the' male victims. The German object, of course, in theory, is to drop bombs on military factories, dockyards, fortresses, and other such places. But, as Mi". Bnchan has expressed it in a neat phrase, "the Zeppelin is not a weapon of precision." It has to fly so high, to escape being swashed by gunfire, that bombs eannqj^be launched ac- . curately at a mark; and the crew have to depend solely upon their hick. The German official habit is to report each raid as a great success, crowned with the destruction of all sorts of military objects ; and the British War- Office rejoins that the German report is, as usual, a fabrication. But while the German War Office and the Zeppelin crews probably know quite well that the raids have accomplished very little in the way of military damage, they cannot stop the raids. They cannot stop, them even though they know that the slaughter of civilians, of women and children, is only steeling the heart of England and further corroding the tarnished reputation of Germany. The war party has tailgKt the German public that England is the enemy-in-chief, and that she will be subjugated by the submarine and the airship. The Germans are habitually docile to authority; the continuous teaching has succeeded too well; and now, as far as England is concerned, the Germans have a greatly exaggerated opinion ■of two quite subsidiary aims. The official teaching intended to foster the bitter elenlents in the patriotism of Germany has _come home to roost. Yon Bethmann-Hollweg, who fears that the submarine as a weapon is now more dangerous to Germany than to England, is threatened with deposition by the "ruthless" party. The Zeppelin raid must be used again and again, though it has been proved a failure, simply because the. German official lies have convinced the public that it .is a success.

Germany has now. lost four Zeppelins over England. The first,. Lls, took part in a raid on sth March, and was brought down off the mouth of the Thames,, and lier crew was captured. The second succumbed on. the raid of 2nd September. It was damaged by gunfire, and was actually brought down by a young aviator, who bombed it and set it on fire; and the blazing wreck fell in the outskirts of London. The -next raid was that of last week; and in it two airships succumbed out of the twelve or fifteen engaged. One of them was apparently set on fire by artillery; and it fell, with all its crew, ■in a blaze that meant its annihilation. The other descended for some unexplained reason in the country. The episode was comic in ' its way, for the officers, qua-rrelllng about the cause of the disaster, found, their way to a farmhouse and surrendered to the owner and a village constable, who for a few minutes were probably the most scared men in the Kingdom. Tho Zeppelin was thus obtained, as the reports say, "intact," The presumption is that if there are really important secrets about the structure of the German airships, they vrill bo revealed. Instruments could be easily enough destroyed; but' the essentials of structure, which of coarse disappear in the fierce blaze of a burning airship, cannot, be so simply got rid of. The amazing thing is .that the Gernla-ns did not set fire to their huge charge as soon as they realised that escape was impossible. The dejection and fear of lynching which they are said to have displayed when they surrendered is easily enough understood. They probably had a good notion of tlhe .nature of reports the world would read next day about their work.

Among the hitherto debatable questions which the capture of the airship will clear up is the use of the "balionets." A Zeppelin's body consists outwardly of a continuous envelope of waterproof fabric stretched over a light framework of aluminium alloy, much stiffer and stronger than pure aluminium.. The framework is made up of a number of structures something like hoge bicycle wheels, with the rims connected by girders so that there are large cylindrical compartments between them. In each compartment is a spherical balloon, filled with hydrogen; and these balloons alone arc responsible for the buoyancy of the whole. The space between 'the balloons and the outer'envelope is presumably full of air, but whether it is ventilated has not been made clear. In each balloon is a. loose partition, Separating off the "ballonef's* and this ballonet is filled with. air. The ordinary use of the -ballonet in dirigibles is simply to keep the balloon as a whole fully distended. Hydrogen leaks more or less through any fabric; but within limits the balloon can be kept full by blowing air into tho' ballonet. In the Zeppelins, undue leakage of hydrogen is made good by releasing gas into the balloons from cylinders in which the hydrogen is stored at very high pressure. Where the mystery of the balionets comes in is tlie extent to which they are used in manipulating the Zeppelin. If it is learned that they are used in raising or reducing tho buoyancy of one end or other of the Zeppelin, or increasing or decreasing the buoyancy as a whole by compressing the hydrogen or allowing it to expand, and if the method of operating them for those purposes is discovered, the Germans will have- made a valuable contribution to the military knowledge of the British authorities. They are biißiiy experimenting with dirigibles for scouting purposes ; and a good German sample is a much cheaper and quicker road to success than-the process of laboratoi-y work on full scale apparatus.

Minister of War, M. Shuvaieff, and the French Minister of Munitions, M. Albert Thomas. M. Shuvaieff emphasises the point, which has already been explained in these columns, that the communication between Germany and Turkey is so valuable that Germany must make almost any sacrifice to preserve it. The menace to the Balkan "corridor" is so great that the Germanics are unable to resist the invasion of Transylvania, which M. Shuvaieff, with an eye to the satisfaction of Rumania's historical aspirations, says will be permanent. The complete failure of the enemy to stop the invasion, the absence^ up to the present even of any serious attempt to do sp, is proof enough of his contention The Rumanian invasion really marks the first big hole in the enemy's defences. It was there, of course, before Rumania entered the 'ivar. The fact that the invasion proves is that when the hole became a- gateway the -enemy could not close it. 3VI. Thomas's statement deals with the Allies' output of munitions. He announces the intention of France to make a great- increase in the production during the winter.' M. Pierre Dupuy, in a supplementary statement, says that the British production is now drawin" level with the French, and that a constant increase in tho effectiveness of the Allies' heavy artillery is now guaranteed. The coming winter- may be expected to check the enormous vigour- of the present offensives. It will give the enemy time to recuperate; to bring forward whatever reserves he still" has, and, in particular/ to pile up stocks of ammunition and gins. But in that race for a majority of strength, the Allies, after the enormous amount of organisation already done and still in progress, ought by next spring to be in a position that will be beyond doubt.