September 21, 1916 
LAND & WATER 
IS 
beam as a water-tossed ball bobs on a fountain jet. 
That was all that appeared to the naked eye, and 
it was not until I focussed my opera-glass upon 
the mysterious object that I saw that it was a lone 
Zeppelin — almost head-on to where I stood — surrounded 
by a perfect swarm of twinkling shrapnel bursts. 
Suddenly, the little golden ball seemed to melt upwards 
and was gone. The searchlight " groped " as blindly 
and vainly for it with its beam as I did with my glass. 
The distant and muftled sound of bombs, e.xploding in 
quick blended salvos, was heard a couple of minutes 
later, and that marked the end of the abortive raid." 
"Hooked!" 
P.S. — By the moon it was just a year from the time of 
the first great Zeppelin raid on London to the record- 
breaking attempt of early September, iqi6. By an interest- 
ing coincidence it wasmy fortune to view both raids from 
the same vantage point, and my opportunity for com- 
paring the Zeppelin as master (as exemplified on the 
first occasion) and the Zeppelin mastered (as exemplified 
, on the latter occasion) could not conceivably have been 
more favourable. 
I have always thought of those arrogant, merciless 
low-flying airships of the first raid as sharks in their 
element, sharks nosing indolently around a helpless 
prey that was powerless to escape them. A year ago 
the raiders unquestionably knew to a nicety the weak- 
ness of London's embryo air defences, and governed 
their action accordingly. But the hunted thing which 
zigzagged in erratic flight across the London heavens in 
this latest raid, relentlessly pursued by ordered search- 
lights beams and artillery fire, far from suggesting the 
coolly purposeful " man-eater " in its element, called 
up rather the picture of a fugitive leviathan that had 
- been left by the receding tide in some land-locked lagoon 
and was being cornered b}' fishermen who were so sure 
of their game that they did not even have to try to 
hasten the harpooning. 
There was no indiscriminate slashing about of the 
lights this time as in the raids of last year, but only a 
methodical searching by a score or so of them of what 
were doubtless definitely allotted areas of the overcast 
heavens. Flashes of guns and shrapnel were visible 
to the south-east before the Zeppelin itsQ,'f appeared ; 
also the blended rumble of what were prfioably hastily 
scuttled bombs. 
The airship was flying very high — two or three times 
as high, it seemed to me, as were tho.se of the first raid — 
when a couple of searchlights waylaid it at the edge of a 
cloud ; but even at an altitude which was hardly less 
than 15,000 feet it still appeared huge, certainly larger 
than any I have ever seen before. The ribs were less 
pronounced than those of last year's raiders, and the 
nose appeared to be much sharper. The gondolas 
appeared to be almost entirely enclosed in the body of the 
ship itself. As for its comparative size, the length of 
my extended binoculars, held at arm's end, just about 
blotted it out. 
The firing, when it began, was as orrdered and methodi- 
cal as the searchlight work had been. It seemed to come 
in one great salvo from the guns of a carefully deter- 
mined area, to which the order had doubtless gone at the 
same instant. Even before the firing commenced the 
airship had started emitting clouds of steam or gas in an 
endeavour to conceal itself, and to this must have been 
due the fact that a comparatively small number of shell- 
bursts — considering the number of guns in action— were 
visible. The trailing white cloud was mottled with the 
bright flashes inside it, however, and from the fact that 
these were above, below and at both ends of the fugitive 
gas-bag, there was little doubt that the latter was re- 
ceiving its full share of the spiteful missiles directed at it. 
Few of the shots fell far short, or went wide to any length, 
as had those directed at last year's raiders. The problem 
of ranging and hitting the Zeppelin had apparently been 
solved ; it was now a question of what effect the hits 
were going to have. 
Partly aided by its own swelling clouds of gas, partly 
by the lowering fringes of the shifting cumuli, the raider 
disappeared from sight four or \\\e minutes after the 
firine ceased, but not before T wac oV.l« iO-j;r.lTr t,^ rlic<'<^rn 
that there had already been some reduction in its altitude. 
Twice or thrice swift shadows cutting the shafts of 
wheehng searchlights had given sure hint of the aerial 
ambush preparing, and I was somewhat surprised that 
so much as eight or ten minutes elapsed before a quick 
red-yellow flash of light in the north-eastern sky told that 
the coup-dc-gracc had finally been given. 
For six or eight seconds this light spread — evidently 
inside the outer envelope — until the whole body of the 
Zeppelin was outlined in smouldering fire. Then there 
seemed to be a great explosion — though I heard no sound 
of it — ^a spreading geyser of flame shot skywards, and the 
frame of the airship up-ended and began to fall, throwing 
a light strong enough to cast shadows in the rosy glow 
that played over London. The sheet of flame seemed to 
have acted somewhat as a parachute, for the descent of 
the blazing mass took from two to three times as much 
time as a dead weight would have taken to fall 10,000 
feet. When it reached the ground a great fan-shaped 
red glow plaj'ed for a few seconds, and then died out so 
completely that only the faintest blur of luminosity 
marked the spot on the north-eastern horizon where it 
had fallen. 
When I arrived on the scene shortly after daybreak 
the thing which struck me as most remarkable was the 
astonishingly small amount of wreckage ; hardly more, 
indeed, than one would find among the ruins of a burnecl 
wooden bungalow. I had expected to find a great 
dragon-like frame of aluminium writhing across many 
hundreds of feet of field, "where all there was in fact were 
some compact little engines, the fragments of a big pro- 
peller, some battered masses of metal which were once 
the gondolas, a machine gun or two, some aluminium 
and copper tubing, the whole inextricably entangled in 
miles and miles of wire. 
* 
Such was my experience of the " receding " Zeppelin. 
Pondering on how the first one was a veritable " Bolt of 
Wrath " that nearly swept me from my feet with the 
wind stirred up in its passage, how others were mere 
will-o'-the-wisps melting into the mists of the horizon, 
and how the last was reduced to an insignificant heap of 
charred wreckage in a country field, the thought comes 
that perhaps this may be taken to symbolise the dwindling 
of the Zeppelin menace to England ; nay, more, as 
prophetic of the passing of the Germanic menace to 
Civilisation. 
The diary of Samuel Pepys, junior, has for over three 
years been a standing treat in our contemporary Truth. 
These witty observations which have caught so "well the 
spirit of the great original, have since the war began gained 
an historical value ; for this reason we commend very warmly 
this volume [A Diary of the Great War, by Samuel Pepys, 
jun., Illustrated by M. Watson-Williams. John Lane, 5s. net). 
Great events have crowded so quickly on one another that 
already we find it difficult to arrange our recollections rightly. 
In this diary, flavoured with Attic salt, we are carried back 
to hours and controversies which seem even to-day almost 
to belong to a previous life. Into whatever page "one may 
choose to dip. there is something to arrest attention, to 
encourage reading and to awaken mirth. 
A useful war map has just been published by Messrs. 
George Philip and Son, of 32, Fleet Street. It shows the 
British Battle Front in France and Belgium (5 miles to the 
iiKh), and includes a complete Reference Index. 
The third edition of John Bellows' amous French-English 
Dictionary (5s.) is now published by Messrs. Longmans, 
Green and Co. It is over forty years since the late Mr. 
Bellows first produced his masterpiece ; its popularity 
has steadily increased. This new edition has been revised 
and enlarged by his son, Mr. William Bellows. 
A textual translation of the note addressed by the French 
Government to the Governments of Neutral Powers on the 
conduct of the German authorities towards the population 
of the French departments in enemy occupation has recently 
been published by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, entitled The 
Deportation of Women and Girls from Lille. (6d. riet.) The 
aleportations form the chief subject of the report, although 
extracts from other documents, relating to German breaches 
of international law since 1914, are included. The terseness 
of this authentic evidence on Ciennan barbarities is eloquent, 
and the publication of this translation, unspoiled by any 
n/^YYlT-MflMi* »,» ^ r- 1,- 
