Page:War's dark frame (IA warsdarkframe00camp).pdf/55

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ZEPPELINS AND DEMOCRACY
35


of fact, in proportion to the energy and ammunition expended, together with the loss of Zeppelins and their crews, the results have been nearly negligible. It is, all the more on that account, ironical that the innocent should have been the chief sufferers.

"If they go after a factory," an officer said to me," they get a workingman's house a mile or so away. If they go for a barracks they get a farm. It's small comfort for the old men and the women and children done in that no real damage has been accomplished."

No one seems to know what the Zeppelins were after the night they dropped bombs in one of the great inns of law. A house of some peaceful barristers here, the shattering of some ancient carvings and glass in a chaper there, and about the lawns a few gaping holes—that was the extent of the damage. Zeppelin raids have all the casual inconsistency of a tempest.

London, when I was in the city, had learned about as thoroughly as Paris to take care of this menace. With the decline of the moon a little nervousness was apparent, but for the most part people faced the prospect calmly. During one week after the departure of the moon had made the heavens safer for aircraft we had three of these visits in a row. At tea on the afternoon of