AERIAL NAVIGATION.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 14002, 10 September 1909, Page 3

AERIAL NAVIGATION.

A special correspondent of; the London '• Daily Chronicle," wrote : as follows on July '2Bth last.. •".' ''

'•Aviation has become a. kind • of fetish- with the- German ; people.' " It appeals to the popular imagination ill'a much more powerful way than ever did the creation of an invincible sea' fleet. This fact was borne in .upon- me when at midnight, a few weeks back, I found myself one of a vast crowd near the lake shore aljFricdrichshafen waiting to see the Zeppelin airship start on her journey to Metz.-' It was a' cloudy night, rain had fallen daring the day, and!„did fall, afterwords.' '..- Yet thousands of spectators waited in ti\o open air for hours, having conio long distances, chiefly,.on foot. In that crowd were to he seen '■ peasants, who would have to face on the morrow a ' long day's.toil in the fields, clergymen, merchants, every class and profession. were represented there. There was a slight sprinkling of other nationalities, but it was essentially a German crowd. Germany is divided by a fierce controversy as to the respective merits' of the rigid, ropreseiiied by Zeppelin, the semi-rigid of the Gross 'design, and the non-rigid of which the Pnrseval\is the embodiment. . Indeed, 1 briefly put, the Kaiser's kiu'gdom ■ may be A classed as

" Zeppelin" and .."iibn Zeppelin." Draw a lino frpin.east to west across the Empire at Frankfort and you iiaye the/ frontier boundary of. the two niaiu Contending parties. In' North. Germany.; while everyone recognises Ms self sacrifice and the splendid services which Count ZeppeUu has» rendered to his country at so much, financial cost to himself, they are cautious in concluding that his huge dirigible is the ideal for the German aerial battleship of the future. In South Germany, on the other hand, they are Zeppelinites to a iriari, showing* a blind faith both in their hero and his costructions. The Ksfiser and the Aerial _League remain neutral in' the conflict of opinion. Lately, after the Zeppelin airship collision with, a tree, when she failed to reaoh Berlirij the Kaiserj. whose faith in her builder seems to have been somewhat shaken, ordered a trial cruise jot a Gross and a Parseval, iu order to once more compare and contrast, their respective'merits..•. But he could come to no decision, arid with uis military advisers<is preserving an open inind on the question. Here is wh.:re tho Aerial League plays a usefuUit übn-cdkmittal pa^. best of whatever type it be," it says, arid so from public platform _and_m the columns of the newspapers devoted to -the cause it the doctrine of experiment. ' Investigate,; and again,.investigate!" is its watchword. .;-■;' '.-■■■■'