ZEPPELIN RAIDS.

Press, Volume LII, Issue 15750, 17 November 1916, Page 11

ZEPPELIN RAIDS.

NO MILITARY DAMAGE IN ENGLAND. AIRSHIPS CANNOT DETERMINE WHERE THEY ARE. (jnoii A comusPQXTEJJT.I LONDON, Octobcr 4. An American newspaper correspondent once had an opportunity of interviewing the commanding officer of a. Zeppelin which had been brought down in Britain. Thig American had been witness to the kind of damage Zeppelins did, their destruction of private property and of non-combatant lives, including those of women and children. So he asked the Zeppelin commander, a line, upstanding German, undoubtedly brave, how he could do it. "How," said the correspondent, "do you find it possible to drop these bombs which kill women and children? How can you do it?" "We don't- do it," said the German airman. "We drop bombs on military works and public buildings." "How do you know you do, up there « couple of mileo on a dark night?" "Ah," said the German with some j mystery, "we have our ways of knowing." Have they? Bi-itish airmen who have llown over London at night for the purpose of investigating the effect of the lighting regulations, to ascertain if the system of diminishing and extinguishing jof lights was useful, have found that prominent places cannot be distinguished at night at eight thousand feet, whiph is lower than the Zeppelins come these days. But after each and every raid the German communique gives details of damage done, declaring that bombs •were dropped with great success on munition works at such-and-such places, iv lie re great fires were -seen as the Zeppelins flew away. They even have mentioned certain buildings which have been struck, which, to my own personal knowledge, have never been touched. It is an important question, _ this bombing of villages, towns, and cities. Here, in England, it is held to be nothing more or less than ruthless murider, and at the end of the war, if the Allies win in the manner they hope for, Germany will pay dearly for these Zeppelin raids. It is important internationally, too, and to America. The time 16 coming when America, with all other nations, will sit in judgment on the doings of this Great "War. The truth will be told. The impartial verdict some day will be given—is Zeppelin warfare militarily useful or is it mere fright-fulness and murder, intended, at the cost of non-combatant lives, to'justify itself by creating general panic ? The German people eet great store by these Zeppelin raids. To a neutral observer it would seem they have been mislead. For reasons of its own the German Government from the beginning has made extravagant claims as to the amount of damage done. Now, perhaps, control has passed out, of the hands of the Government which, having declared the raids of great value, cannot resist a demand from the people for a continuation of them. Again, it is believed in London that the German Government carries on Zeppelin raids in order to divert the attention of its people from unfortunate military developments in France. There may be something in that theory. Another is that the claims of the German communiques are set forth in order to draw from the British denials which might give some information as to where the Zeppelins actually had been. Thus far the British have not been tempted to such indiscretions. '

The original question—"do the Zeppelins know where they are, and can a Zepp. crew launch huge incendiary and high explosive bombs on given targets? It is not the part of a neutral to take sides with regard to the propriety of Teutonic or Allied methods in this war, but Zeppelinism has become a workl question now, and if the truth about it comes his way tho neutral should expose it. All London well knows the damage done in this metropolis, which the Germans call a fortress, but which became an armed city only after Zeppelinism was begun. I had heard of a considerable loss of life in a certain great industrial town of some hundreds of thousands of inhabitants in that part of England known as the Midlands, and determined to go there and see for myself what Zeppelins could do with a place like that, so filled with great factories and plants all engaged in making munitions of war, to find if, under most-favour-able conditions, bombs could be dropped with accuracy on important works. I brought back what seems to me to be the best proof that the Zeppelins are utterly unable to tell what they are doing. Over this great city, with literally square miles of munition works, the Zeppelins hovered with stopped engines. For how long no one knows, but certainlv many minutes, maybe half an hour, they drifted undetected, and with the finest possible opportunity for observation. But is valuable observation possible from the heights at which they float? Tho city knew that they were there, and was darkened and ! silent. All street traffic had stopped, the people had gone within doors, obeying the orders posted throughout the place not to congregate on the street, not to shout, no£ 'to laugh. A distant railway train evidently gave the Zeppelin commander the first real hint as to his whereabouts. Then from the black sky directly over the town was heard the sudden roar of engines, started then and there and not approaching from afar. Then came the thunderous boom of an exploding bomb and then another and many others, as the airship's crew released their missiles in quick succcssion while their craft flew across the city and off into the distance, tarrying not at all, but making all possible haste. There probably has been no other instance when conditions were so favourable to a Zeppelin for accomplishing real military damage. Let us see what real military damage this one actually accomplished. Between twenty and thirty people were killed by the bombs. About twenty houses were destroyed. Butonly one bomb foil in the areas of war works, despite their vastness. Theone which reached them fell within a works and set alight a pile of railway ties. It did absolutely no other harm. ' there, and beyond this there wa s no military damage, unless the killing, of certain workmen employed in munitions factories could be so considered.

This, be it remembered, is not a military report, but the statement of a neutral who was given every opportunity for investigation. "Was there panic? There undoubtedly was. " As the bombs fell in a very thickly populated and pathetically poor section, there were shouts from men, shrieks from women and cries from children —a vast excitement in that particular area. But panic snch as this is not general or lasting. Elsewhere in this particular town and in other places where the Zeppelins went tho people were not touched by panic. In Ijondon, now well accustomed to Zeppelin raids, the visitors arouse keen interest, and people by the million stay up late at night when they are expected. watching and waiting for their appearance, and fervently "hoping a hope, which lately has more than once been gratified, of seeing one brought down. I talked with a man about the loss of life in the city which 1 visited. twenty or thirty killed," said he.

"But- what is that? In France we loso that many in two minutes sometimes.'' So it seems to be with every raidThe loss of life, of course, has been deplorable, but all the killing by Zeppelin s has not helped Germany in the slightest degree, except perhaps through keeping up the spirits of the German people. And this advantage to Germany has Ueen, I am sure, more than outbalanced by the hatred aroused in England where" each Zeppelin raid only more firmly convinces the people that Germany must be shown no mercy. These raids will affect the final settlements unfavourably to Germany, undoubtedly. It is-curious that it so often happens that the destruction of property by Zeppelins is in the poorer districts. This is not merely claimed by British officialdom. It is the fact; 1, personally, have verified it. Possibly it is because the Zeppelins necessarily follow rivers and railways. I went to this Midland town unheralded to see for myself what bad happened. 1 took enough by w"a\' of credentials to get through the cordon of sentries which everywhere guarded the ruins of houses. A\ ith a guide "who knew his way about I motored f or nearly three hours from one place to another. There was not a suggestion of official control over my enquiries, talked with the people in the streets, several of whom had bandaged arms or heads, and they told me what had happened. Except for one or two places where bombs had been dropped without damage being done, as in . a cemetery, I visited all the points which, had been struck. I knew precisely how many dead there were according to the official figures. During the tour I checked the list until I had reached that number. Then I went to tnc city morgue and asked how many bodies had been brought there. The number tallied exactly with the official figures, aJid further investigation showed that all of the dead had been taken to the morgue, for all were poor people, and not of the class whose bodies would be taken to private undertaking establishments. . . So there was no "window dressing, for my visit-, and I learned the whol© truth al>out this raid. A horrible lot of facts I gathered. I followed the trail of the Zeppelins, from beginning to end. It took me through a district that at best would be pathetic enough in its squalor and poverty, it> slatternly women, its bedraggled children rolling and playing on its cobble pavements and hard sidewalks, without its present atmosphere of death and destruction. rows of houses were here, one precisely like its neighbour on either side, or even all its .comrades across the street. All were of bricks and mortar, but fiimsily built with thin roofs and floors —fine food for a smashing two-hundred pound bomb dropping from ten thousand feet. The weight alone, without the explosion, dropped from such a. height, would have demolished any of these dwellings. Such houses as one sees from railway windows when the train passes through the poorest section of a great city were these, or such as one looks down npon wlien going through an American coalmining town. There were miles of them " sheltering workmen and their families. A woman, surrounded by children, who wa s moving what was left of her household goods out or a gaping place which had left only two walls and no roof, told me that it had brought the landlord about 4s a week in rent. ,11 It is miraculous that the bombs which crushed many of these houses did not start a conflagration. A fire gaining any sort of headway inevitably would have swept away row after row of the inflammable structures. "We came first to a house that had been hit full on the roof with an explosive bomb. That house simply existed no more, while those a-djoining had missing walls, so that the passerby saw the interiors, as one looks into rooms upon the staee. All up and down the street windows had been shattered by the force of the great explosion, yet on the wall of one of tho adjoining houses the fragilo mantle of a gas lamp was undamaged. A vacant lot across the street was littered with straw from cheap mattresses blown straight across the street. Two women, one of sixty and other of eighty years, had lived in this house. Tho explosion ' carried them clear through to the cellar, wheTe they survived for a time. Rescuers called to them and got answers. But when things were cleared away they both were dead. Down the hill and around the corner was another great gap in a similar row of buildings. It was as obtrusive as missing front teeth in a man's jaw. Here I learned a terrible story. By prearrangement certain neighbours had agreed to take refuge in the cellar of this house if a Zepp. raid should occur. "VVhen tlie warning whistles were sounded they went there, nine of them huddling into the small basement. Then came the bomb. It struck squarely atop the house, and took its straight downward course. There was nothing to stop it. The fragment of the roof which still remains showed it to consist of thin slate shingles, held by flimsy beams barely strong enough to keep them in place. Underneath there were lath and plastering. The floors below were made of thin boards. The bomb obviously went all the way through, and the nine anxious people in the cellar, men, women, and children, all were killed.

Not many yards away there had been a similar episode. Here a fireman who had been employed in a munition factory was killed —which may or may not constitute military damage. Still further along had been a small house, also one of a long row. It had been obliterated neatly with little damage done to the adjoining dwellings. Here a young railway fireman, his wife and a baby, of fourteen months, had been killed. At one point I visited there was a very narrow bit of ground, running the length of a short street, which had been utilised for the smallest of dwellings? There were three rooms in each of these houses, one directly over another, and they were certainly no more than fifteen feet square. These had. rented for 4s a week. That gives an "idea of their general class. A bomb made a direct hit and four of the houses'were demolished at one blow. In one of them seven people lost their lives, a workman, his wife, and five children. So it was throughout the journey. Smashed houses here and there, where men, women and children had been killed. We passed one or two points where people had been killed or injured in the streets. A small chapel on our route was wrecked, and through, the damaged front could be seen a multicoloured inscription on the back wall, over which had.been the altar; "I give unto you that ye love one another. I have, loved you." The* rest- was concealed by wreckage. All this killing happened on a certain night. Two days later the German official communique said that a section of German naval airships'lavishly bombarded industrial and railway installations of military importance" in Central England. The cold truth is that commanders of Zeppelins do not know what they do. There can be no doubt that they would rather destroy munition factories, fortifications. arsenals, and military people than to demolish private dwellings and kill non-combatant men, women, and children. But under the most fa?> ourable circumstances, such as had maintained during the raid on the cit-v which I visited, the Zeppelin commander inflicted no military damage, and he killed many non-combatants. I have evidence, too. which cannot be detailed, that Zeppelin commanders do not even know where they are, not as a matter of hundreds of yards, but of many miles. They cannot* always be certain, even, -if they are over land or water, as has more than once been demonstrated when they have dropped bombs into the sea.