September 21, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
13 
holidays in the front Une with eight chums ; we were 
four days without food or drink, buried in the ruined 
trenches. We were up to our chests in mud and water and 
had to be dug out by pioneers . . . You can im- 
agine, my dear brother, how thin I am after those terrible 
marches in Serbia and the miserable conditions in which 
we are now living in the trenches." 
Thousands of letters bear witness to this state of mind. 
" God grant that the war finish soon," writes an inhabitant 
of Cassel, " otherwise there will be disorder again as in 
1848." " Sad things will soon be seen in Germany," 
writes another. " Will the war continue until all the 
young people have been killed ? Everybody here is 
very sick at the duration of the war." 
The taking of Verdun was intended to set a term to this 
chorus of doubt and recrimination. One of the most 
striking phenomena of the war has been the extraordi- 
nary ductility of German public opinion. Like a well- 
trained orchestra, the public has not failed to follow 
closely the conductor's baton. Spontaneously, starting 
with similar hopes and similar illusions, the people have 
accepted the opinions of their leaders with a readiness 
almost amounting to blindness. A few days before the 
attack orders were issued to the troops by the Crown 
Prince, stating amongst other things, that " the trencli 
warfare has lasted long enough and the campaign must 
now be brought to an end by a great offensive ; I there- 
fore order the fortress of Verdun to be attacked." At 
this waving of the magic wand the whole of Germany 
took ujD the refrain and the thousand \oices of the Press 
proclaimed to the world that Verdun was' going to be 
taken and that peace was imminent. 
The offensive began on February 21st, and on that 
same day a soldier wrote to his mother : " The artillery 
has now been firing for eight hours with the biggest 
guns and with howitzers of 48, j8, and 30 centimetres. 
We are beginning a struggle the like of which the world 
has never seen. Our officers have told us that our 
l'"atherland and our dear families expect great things of 
us." " If this is successful," says another letter, " peace 
will soon come, for the enemy will realise that he cannot 
get the better t)f us." In many instances, however, 
scepticism was stronger than the hre of enthusiasm, and, 
as an examination of M. Madelin's instances will show, 
as much at the front as at home. As the battle was 
prolonged so scepticism gained ground, sometimes be- 
coming transformed into discouragement and even des- 
pair. Very soon this feeling spread to the civilians, and a 
new chorus of disenchantment was heard in the land. 
" You advance no longer," wrote on March 6th, a 
citizen of Strassdor. " The French and the British 
are evidently defending themselves to their last gasp." 
This is also the opinion of a citizen of Ittlingen who grows 
sarcastic : " You would evidently be on the high road 
to Paris by now if the French were not in the way ! " 
The realisation of the difficulties encountered began to 
make the public more sensitive to losses, and we sec in 
numberless instances of opinion that " It is high time to 
put an end to this terrible slaughter." The economic 
pinch became again prominent and soldiers complained 
.often of being fed on jam. " We are making war on 
jam." Wives write to persuade their husbands to 
desert ; others preach revolution. '' Of those who 
started the war, none dies ! " 
Behef in the taking of Verdun declines and a shortage 
of men becomes noticeable. A letter from Wiebelsbach 
says " Young men of 18 have had to draw lots for service 
. . . things will go on until there are no men left at 
all." From Wiesbaden : " Young men of 18 are already 
incorporated ; those of 17 have already had to register." 
From Ki. Ringe (Westphalia) : " The lists are being 
revised and new men being called up !" From Stammhani 
(Bavaria) : " You ask if there arc any young men left 
here, unfortunately the 18-year-olds were called up on 
April 4th, no one is left except the very young or old ones 
like me." From Hamburg : " All class iijiG is now 
going to the front ; last Saturday more than 4,000 men 
went ; class 1917 are going to-morrow (April 20th) ; 
they ought to be given toys to play with instead of hre- 
arms ; even my cousin from Charlottenburg who is 
literally only a shadow of a man, has had to go. . . ." 
Everywhere the impression grows that Verdun cannot 
be taken with these sort of reserves, and more than one 
citizen begins to deal out the ad^■ice which the young 
woman above-mentioned gave to her husband. '" Lay 
down your arms." Lt. A. of the 172nd regiment at 
Offenburg, sums up the situation as follows : " The mass 
of the public is getting more and more indifferent towards 
the war and is much more concerned with economic 
troubles." 
Here we may end this study. It sliows but one side of 
the Verdun question, but it is a characteristic side. 
Viewed in this light the battle appears as a short halt on 
the downward path towards public demoralisation, a 
brief Hash of rosy illusion between two stages of doubt 
and discouragement. How far victory could have 
stopped the growing tide of discontent we cannot tell ; 
Init renewed enthusiasm will not replace the armies' 
losses and many victories must be gained to wipe out 
their memory. Should these victories fail it will be 
difficult for the Government to give back to the people 
that conlidence which is surely slipping away. 
ii 
Sharks of the Air" 
By Lewis R. Freeman 
MY fust, and incidentally my nearest, glimpse 
of a raiding Zeppelin was from a yacht on the 
Norfolk Broads a little over a year ago. We 
had sailed and poled along a river and canal 
during the day, and at evening had moored against 
the bank at a little village but a mile or two from the 
North Sea. The morning papers contained an official 
bulletin telling of an air raid on the " Eastern Counties," 
and later in the day a farmer told us that a place to 
the south-east had been bombed. A second raid in 
that vicinity seemed, therefore, anything but likely. 
The afternoon closed in one of those characteristic 
butterfly chases of sunshine and showers so familiar to 
the August voyageur on the " Broads." 
It was a good two hours afterwards that a strange new 
sound became audible, first distantly, in the puffs 
of the quickening night breeze, soon more imminent and 
with steady insistence. It was apparently the booming 
explosions of powerful gas engines, and presently blending 
with this, could be distinguished a buzzing clackity-clack 
that suggested whirring propellers. 
" Another aeroplane," suggested one. " A fleet of 
aeroplanes," hazarded another ; " A dirigible thrashing- 
machine," opined a third ; and, judging by the now 
almost overpowering rush of sound, the latter was the 
nearest to the truth. 
The whole universe seemed to have resolved itself 
into one mighty roar, and I distinctly recall that the 
mainsail halyard by which I steadied myself vibrated to 
the beat of the pulsating grind from above. For a 
moment— sensing rather than seeing — I was aware of 
a great black bulk blotting out the stars above the river, 
and then, stabbing the darkness like a flaming sword, the 
yellow flash of a searchlight leapt forth from the dusky 
void, and ran in swift zigzags back and forth across the 
marshes and canals beneath. Now a herd of cows could 
be seen staggering dazedly to their feet, now the startled 
bridge players on the deck of the house-boat moored 
above were revealed, and now our own eyes blinked 
blindly in the yellow glare before the questing shaft 
darted on down the river to spot-light an eel-flsher's 
shanty on the dyke and the gaunt frame of a towering 
windmill beyond. 
Now it found the sharp right-angling bend of the river, 
quivered there for a second or two and then flashed out, 
leaving a blanker blackness behind. At almost the same 
instant the " Thing of Terror "—a hurtling mass of 
roaring engines and clattering propellers — shot by over- 
head, followed by a confused wake of conflicting air 
currents. It passed straight down above the middle 
of the river at a height of not over 300 feet and beneath 
the dimly guessed bulk of it bright chinks and squares 
of light, broken by the shadows of moving men, plotted 
the lines of two under-slung cars. A Zeppelin had 
passed literally within a stone's throw. 
The lights of the car leapt sharply upward almost 
