The Star. Delivered every evening by 6 o'clock in Hawera, Manain, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Opunake, Otakeho, Manutahi. Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, and Waverley. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1914. AIRSHIPS AND THE AVAR.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue LXVIII, 10 December 1914, Page 4

The Star. Delivered every evening by 6 o'clock in Hawera, Manain, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Opunake, Otakeho, Manutahi. Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, and Waverley. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1914. AIRSHIPS AND THE AVAR.

Much has been said about the use to which airships are likely to be applied by the Germans should they actually make a definite attempt to invade England. To do this they -must of course first reach the coast of France in effective force, and at present this appears to be a distinctly unlikely event. It is true that there has been much talk and much writing about an airship invasion independently of the German' naval and military forces, but it has been based chiefly on wild-eyed statements ascribed to the Kaiser. It would appear, in fact, that there is little if any real ground for serious apprehension in the matter; at least not for apprehension on the scale of a general public scare. A writer in the London Daily Mail says, fojr instance, that those who have studied the problem of the-airship in Germany are of opinion that owing to the impossibility of making a 'correct aim from a great height with shells or other projectiles dropped from airships, massed rifle fire from ten. to twenty thousand expert riflemen who have practised night and day firing at these big balloons is one of the best means of dealing with them. Then the man in the aeroplane can manoeuvre almost as rapidly as a swallow, while the cumbersome Zeppelin, always the creature of the winds, is slow to turn and slow to rise. A skilled aeroplanist such as Grahame-White could with a companion make a successful fight against any Zeppelin if he were provided with proper rifle and light machine gun or bombs for dropping. As to bombdropping, much nonsense has been written. Unless the Zeppelin can come low down' to its object it cannot accurately drop bombs or other explosives. If it comes lown down it can easily be destroyed by massed rifle fire. In the destruction of th© Dusseldorf airship shed by Lieutenant Marix the inhabitants of the town noticed that he was flying very low, and indeed he is stated to have descended within five hundred feet of his objective. Not one of the bombs dropped from German aeroplanes that visited Paris hit its mark, with the exception of one which fell on Notre Dame Cathedral. The writer declares, too, that in variable weather especially it would be most difficult to steer Zeppelins to Great Britain with any chance of returning safely to their base; and while showing that the Fz-ench have not been put out in the least on account of aerial bombs, he expresses a conviction that the English are not at all likely to be panic-stricken, as German writers suggest and anticipate when they discuss the airship invasion of Britain. He admits, however, that there is this difference between an airship and an aeroplane—each airship can drop exexplosives weighing probably up to ten tons, calculated to do immense damage if they should fall on houses or in a street,, whereas the small hand bombs of the aeroplane have been proved generally to have very little effect. On the whole, the writer thinks that the British public, always slow to move, who were behind almost the whole civilised world in the use of the motorcar, aeroplane, and airship,' have no reason for undue alarm, but they should weigh well the Zeppelin problem and apply their sound, practical common sense to dealing with the danger. Some foolish German newspapers have suggested the transport of a landing force by airships; but this, he says, is sheer- nonsense. The real purpose of the Germans, who with their usual lack of knowledge of the character of other nations think they can frighten the British, is to terrorise the population and to damage life and property. This apparently is putting at its worst what may happen should German airships venture into England; but it is apparent that if they did so the adventure would be fraught with greater risks to them than to England. England as a country would not be effectively prejudiced, while Germany would almost certainly lose men and material without any compensating gain. This has, however, generally been Germany's experience throughout her campaign against Britain and her Allies.