12 
Land & Water 
June 27, 191 8 
The moral imbecile lies, forges, swindles, and robs without 
any compunction, without any consideration for his victims, 
and, what is specially characteristic of liim, without any 
shame when his misdeeds are discovered and brought home 
to him. So far from feeling shame, he is apt to glory in them 
if they are successful, as that typical German and idol of 
the Gennans— Bismarck — glorified in his falsification of the 
Ems telegram, and as the Kaiser glories in having "hacked 
his way" through Belgium. But though the moral imbecile 
does not recognise the inculcations of morality as binding 
on himself, or as to be observed by himself to his own in- 
convenience, he is extremely sensitive to their infraction, 
and, indeed, to their enforcement also by othef people, if that 
infraction or enforcement is at all inconvenient to himself. 
The moral imbecile in private hfe will steal and swindle and 
forge without a scruple ; but not only is he quick to resent 
and to prosecute depredations on himself, but also when he 
himself is prosecuted for his misdeeds, he looks upon the 
punishment as grossly unjust persecution. 
The Kaiser's attitude is strikingly similar. His devasta- 
tion of Belgium, his >nurder of Nurse Cavell and Captain 
Fryatt, and of multitudes of other men and women, and even 
of children, liis bombardment of open towns, his sinking of the 
LusHania and of neutral ships, and all the inpumerable 
crimes committed in his name and by his orders are in his 
eyes quite right, and pfroper, and justifiable, and in conformity 
with moral law as he understands it ; but the reprisal bom- 
bardment of German towns is a scandalous and abominable 
infraction of the liws of war. Other well-recognised traits 
of the instinctive criminal are the sentimentality that alter- 
nates with cruelty, colossal egotism, naive and clamorous 
vanity, and a craving for notoriety, wliich displays itself in 
a passion for the limelight and for histrionic display. 
Moreover, the instinctive criminal is very often intensely 
religious. He pays with scrupulous punctuality his tithes 
of mint and cummin and anise. When about to commit 
a murder, he wdl go to mass und pray for a blessing on his 
enterprise ; and when he has conducted a successful burglary, 
he will make a thank-oi'fering to the God who has assisted 
him and held him scatheless. All these traits of character 
are enumerated by Mr. Havelock Ellis and other crimino- 
logists, and though they exaggerate in many things, in these 
I can corroborate tljcm from my own experience of mora} 
imbeciles. 
All these traits are notoriously and conspicuously present 
in the character of the Kaiser, and my provisional diagnosis 
is that, whether he is or is not mad, as to which the evidence 
is quite inconclusive, there is no doubt whatever that his 
mental and moral make-up is that of the instinctive criminal 
or moral imbecile. 
Flying Sailors: By Herman Whitaker 
T 
HE dickens ! " said the American commander 
as I stepped off the train; "who would have 
expected to see you down here ? " You see we 
had crossed on the same transport from New 
York to Liverpool fivp months ago, and '' down 
here" was a United States Dirigible Station on the south 
coast of France. ■ , 
While we were motoring out to the station 1 took stock 
of his sartorial aspect, which had changed somewhat since we 
parted. A sailor on horse-back has from time immemorial 
been something of a joke. A sailor on skates — roller or ice — 
wide trousers flapping like raven wings in rhytlim with liis 
stroke, is hardly less funny. In fact it is hard to fit him in 
to any background but that of the sea. His clothes and 
nautical roll clash with all other schemes. But in the brown 
service uniform, the commander looked natty. But for his 
blue and gold shoulder straps, it were hard to tell him from 
an officer of the line. 
Like the "Heavier than Airs" I have already written of 
in Lj\nd akd Water, the war had dumped this lot of sailors 
in queer quarters. Beyond the dead flat mile of the flying 
field a river swept on to wash the skirts of a quaint, peaked 
French town. Here and there low stone farmsteads splashed 
the dull green of the prospect with blobs of white. An 
impressionist painter would have used half a tube on each. 
As in all South France land.scapes, fat-bellied windmills 
waved grey wooden arms in the distance. From the dead 
centre of all of which the great canvas hangar, that housed the 
dirigibles, raised its hundred feet of height and ran like an 
overgrown haystack three hundred yards along the field 
When we arrived the men were at dinner in one of the long 
low huts that now form their home in this foreign land, and 
one glance at the table confirmed an impression I had gained 
while cruising with the American destroyer fleet in English 
waters — taking it by and large, the American officer does not 
" eat " nearly as well as his men. Outside, the day was 
cold and cheerless. A damp wind blew over the bleak country- 
side. One could scarcely imagine a duUer place, but the 
men had been made happy this morning by the receipt of 
baseball and boxing sets, a football, box of quoits, and were 
now looking forward to a piano and Victrola that were 
said to be en route. 
"When they arrive we'll be able to dance and sing in the 
evenings," one lad said with cheery optimism. " Then 
we'll feel all right." 
"Sure ! " another added. "And after they put us on the 
American Y.M.C.A. amusement circuit, we'll be happy as 
a lark." And they will — that is, as happy as it is possible 
for them to be away from Dakota or Iowa, Kansas, Alabama, 
California, or other States they happen to hail from. ^ 
Of tlie dozen officers I presently met at lunch, ten had 
trained together at the dirigible school at Akron, Ohio, in 
the United States. Most of them had come out of civilian 
Ufe in the last six months. I believe the Commander and 
his chief officer were the only blue-water navv men. 
But what the others lacked in previous sen--ice, they made 
up in enthusiasm They had plunged head over heels in 
their work ; were so permeated that it escaped from every 
pore. Their conversation bristled with technical terms ; 
was (lark with flying lore. 
"Bondage," "angles of inclination," "ascensional forces," 
"stabilisers" and "elevators," "fins," and other full-mouthed 
phrases that quite confounded my layman's ignorance, 
dropped casually from their mouths. I wished to learn, 
however — and did ; among other things, that a dirigible 
is operated on practically the same principles as a submarine ; 
which might be expected, for the mediums they navigate 
differ only in density. Both are fitted with narrow vertical 
and lateral planes, the "fins" and "equalisers" wliich are 
really lateral rudders. Raised, they catch the wind and 
send the ship up. Depressed, they force her down. The 
ship swings, of course, like any sea vessel in the direction 
the vertical rudder happens to turn. 
I learned, also, that dirigibles are safer to operate than 
sea-planes, which fall if the motors fail. But a dirigible can 
float for hours o^ days while its mechanics are making engine 
adjustments or minor repairs. Also they can remain poised 
above a certain spot to make observations or deliver attack. 
Greatest advantage of all — they can stay out for thirty or 
forty hours at a time and cruise seven or eight hundred 
miles. Indeed, the Commander was quite willing to fly his 
ship home to the United States at the end of the war. Because 
of these manifest advantages, j^our "Lighter than Airs" are 
inchned to look down on their brethren, the "Heaviers," as 
members of a primitive craft which represents the stone age 
in flying. Those present seemed to be in doubt, however, 
as to their position in relation to the submarine till the 
Commander summed up a heated argument by saying : " Those 
submarine chaps have to know a lot more than we." 
"Sondage" and "angles of inchnation," those mysterious 
terms, explained themselves when the chief officer, who was 
showing me over the station, sent up some toy balloons to 
determine wind velocity. If they rise only a thousand feet 
while travelling the same distance horizontally, the wind is 
stronger, of course, than if they had risen twice the height. 
Worked by a scale through triangulation, the "angle of 
inclination" which gives the wind velocity is thus easily 
determined. 
"Come on!" The Commander's call from the door of his 
office cut off the officer's explanation. "We are going to 
bring her out." 
"Her," was the dirigible, now due to depart on patrol. 
The crew of a hundred and fifty required to handle her were 
already at their places in the hangar. With its long rows of 
latticed steel piers rising in a graceful arch overhead, its vast 
interior spaces softly illumined by golden light that suffused 
through the canvas above, the hangar looked like a great 
cathedral, and in its centre, suspended like Mahomet's coffin 
between floor and roof, the great ship floated fight as thistle- 
down under the arch. 
Your tnie sailor is always neat as a good housewife, and 
the ship's crew were giving the last loving touches to her 
