THE ZEPPELIN TERROR.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVI, Issue 7753, 25 July 1916, Page 1

THE ZEPPELIN TERROR.

RESULTS OF 44 "AIR RAIDS.” A POOR RECORD. LONDON, June 1. Whatever may be the value of Zeppelins from a military and naval point of view, it cannot be said that as indiscriminate slaughtering machines they have shown any particular efficacy. Since the war began the Germans have launched no less than 44 of what they have prided themselves on as “successful” aerial attacks on Great Britain. Some of them have been made by Zeppelins alone, some have been Zeppelin-cum-aeroplane raids, and others have consisted of brief visits by ’planes of various types. All told, the raiders have, in these 44 visits, killed only 409 people —222 men, 114 women, and 73 children—and they have injured 1005. These are the official figures of the air raid casualties brought right up to date and presented to the House of Commons by the Home Secretary on Monday last. From an ‘ 1 indiscriminate slaughter” point of view the Germans’ warship raids on our coasts are much more to be feared than aerial attacks. Three times have Hun cruisers succeeded in getting within gun range of the East Coast, and their human “bag” lias consisted of 01 men, 40 women, and 40 children killed, and 611 persons injured. The Germans always claim that their aircraft have “bombed with good effect” places of military and naval importance, but strange to say the victims of many of the raids did not include a single man in either service, and casualties to soldiers and sailors form only a very small fraction of the total above mentioned. The gunners on the German ships had not much better luck in the matter of reducing the enemy’s man power, and the air and sea raids together have not, it seems, caused the deaths of more than a score of soldiers and sailors, whilst the Service men injured do not represent 5 per cent of the total.

As regards material damage there is at present no reliable data to go upon, but it lias been stated that the damage done in forty-eight hours by the Sinn Feincrs in Dublin, and by the authorities in the course of suppressing the revolt, will cost quite as much to make good as all the damage effected by aerial raids in England. As for the cruiser raids on East Coast towns the mischief wrought was ridiculously small considering the size and number of the shells discharged by the attacking vessels.

The Germans claim, of course, that their aerial raids —particularly the Zeppelin visitations—have entirely ruined our morale, and that the very cry of “Zeppelin.” sends us all scuttling to cellars, underground railways, and similar shelters. As a matter of honest fact, however, tile news that 1 a Zeppelin is knocking about ” will bring more people out into the streets than it will send into hiding. One. huge airship sailed over London at a tremendous height tile other day, but the only effect of its appearance was to cause knots of people to gather in the street, and discuss the possibility' of its being a hostile craft. The only way they could possibly make certain of the visitor’s nationality was, as one man remarked, to “wait and see if it drops bombs. ’ ’ And people waited for five or ten minutes, as the case might be, to allow the stranger to declare its mission. There was no “scuttling to cover like scared rabbits,” as the Huns declare we are in the habit of doing on the mere hum of a Zeppelin engine. People simply stood about discussing the possibilities of the airship being friend or foe,' speculating whether it was within the range of this or that anti-aircraft battery, and guessing at the length of the Zeppelin and its height above the city. The visitor was, however, merely one of the new British airships making a trip over the metropolis, partly in order to enable certain observations to be made which will be of considerable value to our anti-aircraft gunners when next they are called upon to try their hand at bringing down hostile craft. But we had had no intimation that such an airship would pay London a visit, and if the “morale” of our citizens had been effected in the manner the Germans claim (and perhaps fondly believe), the apparition ought to have produced at least some symptoms of “funk.” But it did not. The only approach to fear was to be heard in a woman’s voice, which said, “Oh, I do hope it isn’t a Zeppelin. I’ve left my two children at home, and if it starts dropping bombs they’ll be frightened out of their wits.” And just at that moment a lad ran up with a bundle of newspapers under his arm, yelling, “Winnali! winnnli!” and, sad to say, perhaps, at least 50 per cent of the Zeppelin gazers forthwith turned their attention to a tiling entirely mundane, namely, the stop-press result of the first race at Newmarket.