AËRIAL
Within the last few years an entirely new and according to German ideas most important factor has entered and disturbed the relative military power of European nations. This is the aërial weapon.
Since the days of Otto Lilienthal and his glider it has been the policy of Germany to keep track of all inventions likely to be embodied and made use of in the War Machine. It is a far cry from Lilienthal's glider to the last word in aërial construction such as the mysterious Zeppelin-Parseval sky monster that, carrying a complement of twenty-five men and twelve tons of explosives, sailed across the North Sea, circled over London, and returned to Germany. Lilienthal's glider kept aloft four minutes, but this new dreadnaught of Germany's dying navy was aloft ninety-six hours, maintaining a speed of thirty-eight miles an hour, this even in the face of a storm pressure of almost eighty meters. Such feats as these are significant. They are at the same time the outcome and the cause for the development of this part of the War Machine.
It is my purpose here to tell you how far Germany has advanced and progressed in this struggle for mastery of the sky. I shall disclose facts about her system that have never appeared in print--that have never been heard in conversation. They are known only to the General Staff at Berlin, not even in the cabinets of Europe.
Germany without doubt has the most up-to-date aërial fleet in the world. The Budget of the Reichstag of 1908-1909 allows and provides for the building and maintenance of twelve dirigibles of Zeppelin type. As far as the knowledge of the rest of the world is concerned this is all the sky navy that Germany possesses. It is a fact, though, that she has three times the number which she officially acknowledges.
The dirigible balloon centers in Germany are five and they are situated at vitally strategic points. There are two on the French border, one on the Russian border, one on the Atlantic Coast, and a central station near Berlin. The exact places are Strassburg, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Posen, Wilhelmshafen, and Berlin. This does not include the marvelous station at Helgoland in the North Sea, this being a strategic point in relation to Great Britain. Nothing is known about this Helgoland station. No one but those on official business are permitted within a thousand yards of it. I shall tell things concerning it.
Besides these purely military posts, there are a number of commercial stations necessary as depots of the regular transportation aëerial lines that operate for the convenience of the public. Like Germany's commercial steamers, however, they are controlled and subsidized by the Government. At a few hours' notice they can be converted and made use of for Government purposes. Taking these transportation lines into consideration, it is safe to state that by summer of the present year Germany could send fifty huge airships to war.
It may be a puzzle to Americans why, in the face of disasters and accidents to these Zeppelins, Germany is spending about $4,000,000 on her aërial fleet. Now we come to a very significant point. I know and certain members of the German General Staff know, as well as trusted men in the aërial corps, that there are two conditions under which airships are operated in Germany. One is the ordinary more or less well-known system which characterizes the operation of all the passenger lines now in service in the Empire. It is the system under which all the disasters that appear in the newspapers occur. Airships that are used in the general army flights and maneuvers are also run under the same system as the passenger dirigibles--for a reason.
The other system is an absolute secret of the German General Staff. It is not used in the general maneuvers, only in specific cases, and these always secretly. It has been proved to be effective in eliminating 75 per cent. of the accidents which have characterized all of Germany's adventures in dirigibles and heavier-than-air machines. These statistics are known only by the German General Staff office.
Let us go into this further. Critics of the German dirigible who foolishly rate the French aëroplane superior point out that the Zeppelins have three serious defects--bulk and heaviness of structure, inflammability of the gas that floats them, and inability to store enough gas to stay in the air the desirable length of time without coming down. The secret devices of the German War Office have eliminated all these objectionable features. They have overcome the condition of bulk and heaviness of structure by their government chemists devising the formula of a material that is lighter than aluminum, yet which possesses all of that metal's density and which has also the flexibility of steel. Airships not among the twelve that Germany admits officially are made of this material. Its formula is a government secret and England or France would give thousands of dollars to possess it.
The objection of inflammability of the lifting power has also been overcome. The power of the ordinary hydrogen gas in all its various forms has been multiplied threefold by a new dioxygen gas discovered at the Spandau government chemical laboratory. This gas has also the enormous advantages of being absolutely noninflammable. I have seen experiments made with it. It cannot be used for illuminating purposes. Dirigibles that are equipped with it are not liable to the awful explosions that have characterized flights under the ordinary system. The new gas has also the enormous advantage of having a liquid form. To produce the gas it is only necessary to let the ordinary atmosphere come in contact with the liquid. Carried in cylinders two feet long and with a diameter of six inches it is obvious that enough of this liquid can be carried aboard the big war dirigibles to permit their refilling in midair. So, you see, all the objections to the commonly known system of operation have been overcome by the War Office.
The last dirigible tried by the War Office in 1912, the mysterious Zeppelin X, made a continuous trip from Stettin over the Baltic to Upsala in Sweden, thence across the Baltic again to Riga in the Gulf of Finland, where it doubled and sailed back to Stettin. This was a journey of 976 miles. The airship had a complement of twenty-five men and five tons of dead weight. It traveled under severe weather conditions, the month being March, and snow-storms, hail and rain occurring throughout the voyage. The significance of this flight can be easily understood if you consider the distance from Strassburg or Düsseldorf to Paris or other strategical points to France is approximately 298 miles. A ship like the Zeppelin X could sail over the French border, dynamite the fortifications around Paris and return, the journey being roughly 900 miles--76 miles less than the actual trip made by the Zeppelin X. Moreover, the German military trials have shown the possibility of an aërial fleet leaving their home ports and cruising to foreign lands and returning without the necessity of landing to replenish their gas tanks or fuel.
Let me show you how the German aërial corps is made up. It is called the Luftschiffer Abteilung and is composed of ten battalions, each consisting of 350 men. They are all trained absolutely for this branch of the service. Only the smartest mechanics and artificers are selected. In the higher branches the most intelligent and bravest officers hold command. Considering the usual pay in continental armies, the wages of the men in the General aërial corps are exceptionally high. In fact they are the highest paid in the German army. They are not ordinary enlisted men, meaning that they serve only their two years' time. Most of them have agreed to serve a lengthy term. Married men are not encouraged to enroll in this branch of the service. It is obvious from the nature of the work that the hazards are often great. The wonderful system of the German War Machine has been installed with rare detail in the aërial corps. The equipment of the different stations is really marvelous. For everything human ingenuity has been able to devise concerning the dirigible you will find in application. Each station is fully equipped and is an absolutely independent center in itself. Take the base at Helgoland. It is the newest and the one that is always cloaked with secrecy.
At the extreme eastern corner of the island of Helgoland one sees, amid the sandy dunes, three vast oblong, iron-gray structures. At a distance they are not unlike overgrown gasometers. I say at a distance, for it is impossible for any visitor to get within a thousand yards of the station. The solitary approach is guarded by a triple post of the marine guard. If you walk toward the station, before you come within a hundred yards of the guard, you will find large signs setting forth in unmistakable and terse language that dire and swift penalties follow any further exploration in that direction. Not only English but German visitors to Helgoland have found out through their course that even the slightest infringement of the rules of these signs is dangerous. I shall however, take you a little closer.
Walking on until you are within fifty yards of the great balloon sheds, you pause before a tall fence of barbed wire, this connected with an elaborate alarm-bell system that sounds in the two guard houses. For instance, if an enterprising secret agent of France were to try to steal up on the station, if he came by night and cut through the barbed wire, a series of bells would immediately sound the general alarm. Having passed through the six strands of barbed wire a tall octagonal tower meets the eye. In this tower are installed two powerful searchlights as well as a complete wireless outfit. All the Zeppelins carry wireless. By means of elaborate reflectors, it is possible with the searchlights to flood the whole place with daylight in the middle of the night. Thus ascensions can be made safely at any hour of the twenty-four. The three oblong sheds stand in a row, the middle being the largest, having spaces for two complete dirigibles, while the other sheds house but one each. They are about 800 feet long, 200 feet broad and 120 feet high. The whole structure itself can be shifted to about an angle of forty degrees, this being worked on a plan similar to the railroad engine turntable. The reason for it is that with the veering of the wind the sheds are turned so that the doors will be placed advantageously for the removal of the airship from its place of shelter.
The whole layout and the vast area of space show that it is the Government's intention to still further increase the plant. In fact, on my last visit to Helgoland--and it was more than two years ago--I saw the evidence of another shed about to be built. At the station is the most efficient meteorological department of all the stations. The most up-to-date and sensitive instruments connected with this science are there in duplicates and the highest experts such as only Germany can produce are in charge of the department.
When I was at Helgoland I noticed a vast difference in the strength of the fortifications compared to what they had been. They used to be tremendous, but since the addition of the naval base they have become secondary. Half the soldiers on duty there have been transferred elsewhere; so with the big guns. There is no longer any need for them. As I stated, I saw a fourth big balloon shed in the course of construction. I have not been on the island for two years. Nobody has been near the extreme eastern end except those closely identified with the service. Considering that Germany has not built more than one extra shed, that means five dirigibles, and there is nothing on earth that could stand up against them. Helgoland does not need forts any more. The new forts float in the sky and can rain death.
Helgoland has always been a sore spot of British diplomacy. Originally England owned the island; now it is a menace to England. When Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister of England, he conceived what he believed to be a shrewd diplomatic move. He offered Bismarck the island of Helgoland in exchange for some East African concessions. Helgoland is now the key and guard of Germany's main artery of commerce, being the key to Hamburg. With the dirigible station of Helgoland to guard her, Hamburg is impregnable and on England's northern coast they have a way of looking out across the North Sea with troubled eyes, for who knows when those terrible cartridge-shaped monsters will rise into the air and sweep over the sea? Stranger things have happened, even though the countries have their secret diplomatic understandings.
Let us consider one of these new war monsters, the latest and most powerful, the X 15. The latest Zeppelins, charged with the newly discovered dioxygenous gas, giving these sky battleships triple lifting capacity; the perfecting of the Diesel motor, giving enormous consumption (fifty of these Diesel engines, their workings secret to the German Government, are stored under guard at the big navy yards at Wilhelmshafen and Kiel, ready to be installed at the break of war into submarines and dirigibles), have given the German type of aircraft an importance undreamed of and unsuspected by the rest of the world.
The operating sphere of the new balloons has extended from 100 to 1,200-1,400 kilometers. Secret trial trips of a fully equipped Zeppelin like X 15, carrying a crew of twenty-four men, six quick-firing guns, seven tons of explosive, have extended from Stettin, over the Baltic, over Swedenburg in Sweden, recrossing the Baltic and landing at Swinemunde, with enough gas, fuel, and provisions left to keep aloft another thirty-six hours. The distance all told covered on one of these trips was 1,180 kilometers. This fact speaks for itself. The return distance from Helgoland to London, or any midland towns in England, corresponds with the mileage covered on recent trips. In the event of hostilities between England and Germany, this statement needs no explanation. That is why I mentioned that the latter-day Zeppelins were a powerful factor in bringing about an amiable understanding between those two powerful countries. For neither the historic wooden walls of Nelson's day nor the steel plates of her modern navy could help England or any other nation against the inroads of the monsters of the air.
The capacity of seven tons of explosive does not exhaust the resources of this type of weapon. I have it on good authority that the new Zeppelins can carry double that quantity of explosive if necessary. As the size of these vessels increases, so does the ratio of their carrying capacity.
Picture the havoc a dozen such vultures could create attacking a city like London or Paris. Present-day defense against these ships is totally inadequate. In attacking large places, the Zeppelins would rise to a height of from 6,000 to 8,000 feet, at which distance these huge cigar-shaped engines of death, 700 feet long, would appear the size of a football, and no bigger. I know that Zeppelins have successfully sailed aloft at an altitude of 10,000 feet. Picture them at that elevation, everybody aboard in warm, comfortable quarters, ready to drop explosives to the ground. The half informed man--and there appear to be many such in European cabinets, which recalls the proverb about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing--likes to say that a flock of aëroplanes can put a dirigible out of business. Consider now an aëroplane at an elevation of 6,000 feet and remember that the new Zeppelins have gone thousands of feet higher. An aviator at 6,000 feet is so cold that he is practically useless for anything but guiding his machine. How in the world is he or his seat-mate going to do harm to a big craft the size of the Zeppelin that is far above him? An aviator who has ever gone up, say 8,000 feet, will tell you when he comes down what a harrowing experience he has had. What good can an individual be, exposed to the temperature and the elements at such an altitude, in doing harm to the calm, comfortable gentlemen in the heated compartments of the Zeppelin?--Quatsch! which is a German army term for piffle!
At 8,000 feet the small target a Zeppelin affords would move at a rate of speed of from thirty-five to sixty miles an hour. The possible chances of being hit by terrestrial gunfire are infinitesimally small. This does not take into account the vast opportunities that a dirigible has for night attacks or the possibility of hiding among the clouds. The X 15, sailing over London, could drop explosives down and create terrible havoc. They don't have to aim. They are not like aviators trying to drop a bomb on the deck of a warship. They simply dump overboard some of the new explosive of the German Government, these new chemicals having the property of setting on fire anything that they hit, and they sail on. They do not have to worry about hitting the mark. Consider the size of their target. They are simply throwing something at the City of London. If they do not hit Buckingham Palace they are apt to hit Knightsbridge. And remember that whatever one of the new German explosives strikes, conflagration begins.
Aëroplanes, biplanes, monoplanes, and the other innumerable host of small craft so often quoted as a possible counterdefense against the Zeppelin, are overrated, and are in any case theoretical. The German authorities have made vast and exhaustive trials in these matters. The strenuous efforts on the part of this Empire to increase its dirigible fleet is to my way of thinking answer enough. The German General Staff at Berlin tries out more thoroughly than any nation in the world every new device of warfare. They have tried the aëroplane and the dirigible. I have heard the leading experts and aviators who have been assigned to both types agreeing that the Zeppelins of the X 15 type have nothing to fear from any present-day flying machine--and that is good enough for me.
[XIII]
ARMING FOR PEACE OR WAR
The map of Europe is certain to undergo some very decided changes within the next decade, very possibly in less time. Social and economic conditions, let alone the paramount political ambitions of the individual rulers, must bring about a decided alteration in state boundaries in Central Europe. This will be accomplished either with or without war--with bloodshed most likely. History and human propensities have shown the inability to settle any vital points by peaceful arbitration and the more one comes in contact with the forces, obvious and otherwise, directing human affairs, the more one learns the rather disheartening fact that the millennium is as far off as ever. The prophecies of the old Biblical prophets about wars and rumors of wars are as pertinent to-day as before the advent of Christ. The methods may have changed since the conception of the Christian religion but the results will be attained now as ever by the right of a mighty sword arm.
The most virile and aggressive power in the center of Europe is Germany proper--this term of Germany, including the whole of the Teutonic races, such as the German-speaking portion of Austria, Hungary (for your true Hungarian is a keen admirer of strength and force), Holland, Switzerland and in all probability the Norsemen and Viking branches of the Teutonic clan, meaning Sweden, Norway and Denmark. Social and commercial aims and aspirations in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, independent as they are and probably always will be, still show a decided trend to Central Germanic cohesion. The whole of Europe is roughly divided into three dominant races--the Teutonic, the Latin and the Slavish. The Teutonic has Anglo-Saxon, Germanic and Norse subdivisions. The Latin, Gallic, has the French, Italian and Spanish nations; and the Slavonic comprises the Slavs and Romanic races with their innumerable subdivisions such as Moscovite, Chech, Pole, Croat, Serb, Bulgar, Bojar, etc. These three groups are distinctly different in habits, thoughts, manners and ambitions. Through race and religion they are also deeply antagonistic by reason of its higher commercial development (I do not say education, and art, music or literature, for there your Latin or Slav excels), the Teutonic races have outstripped the other two. Commercialism means consolidation and concentration and since the Napoleonic wars the Germanic races--at the beginning slowly but within the last twenty-five years rapidly--have drawn together at an astonishing pace. In countries such as Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Switzerland, each possessing their own petty machinery of expensive government; existent only through the mutual jealousies of their bigger neighbors, there has grown up a decidedly incorporating spirit. Notwithstanding the natural disinclination of the ruling factions of that country, the general mass of the people are by no means averse to become members of a vast central European empire, the unswerving ambition of the house of the Hohenzollerns.
Since the days when the Counts of Nuremburg became electors of Brandenburg, from the grosse Kurfurst, Frederick the Great, to the present Emperor, the house of Hohenzollern has shown itself to be the most virile dynasty in modern history. Not always clever, they possessed the rare faculty of finding, developing and using men having the necessary ability to execute their current policies.
In thoroughly feudal and aristocratic countries such as comprise Central Europe, especially Germany, decided, unswerving aims are necessary. If these policies are conducted in a clear, level-headed manner, judiciously developing the wealth and culture of the general masses, the stability of such a government or throne is well-nigh unshakable.
It has often been spoken and written that in countries such as Germany and Austria, Socialism, to quote but one of the numerous "isms," has undermined existing governmental powers. To a close student, these assertions are absolutely wrong. Teutonic Germanic races have ever been given to deeply analytical, philosophical studies, criticising and dissecting, the policies of their rulers. But underlying, you will find a deeply practical sense and appreciation of material benefits. The German Socialist is in fact a practical dreamer, quite in contrast to his mercurial, effervescent Latin prototype. The rulers of Germany have learned the lesson that the stability of a throne rests in the welfare of her people and everyone must admit that they have succeeded in this respect better than any other dynasty known to history. Germany without doubt is the most uniformly prosperous and civilized country in the world. And therein lies the danger, as no sane and prosperous business can afford to stand still. Neither can a solvent virile nation such as Germany, mark time. For this reason: Two things must happen in the near future. Germany must expand peacefully in Europe, to the northeast and west; or there will be war. The reasons for this I gave in the chapter on "The Isolation of France."
And that the chances of peaceful and really sensible adjustment are thoroughly discounted among German men of affairs, must be pretty obvious to the careful reader. An intensely practical and saving people such as the Germans would not spend billions in money, a vast amount of time and labor, in perfecting and keeping up a fighting machine without being thoroughly convinced of the necessity of this investment. Strong, wealthy and powerful as Germany is to-day, the strain is tremendous and for this reason alone existing political and geographical conditions in Europe must undergo a decided change.
These changes are bound to occur but it is hard to set a correct time. It may be to-morrow; it certainly will not be more than a decade hence. The death of the Emperor Francis Joseph will precipitate it at once--and he is old and feeble.
Secondly, the Church. The mainstay of the Catholic Church rests with the Austrian monarchy and with the death of the old Emperor, it would--in fact have to--look to some other country and ruler for protection. There is no Catholic ruler in a Catholic country to-day able to support and protect the dignity of the Church. The German Emperor is a Protestant monarch, but he is first and last a Christian, and thanks to his usual keen and far-sighted policy, backed up by strong spiritual convictions, religious dissensions are almost unknown in his empire. The Catholic religion enjoys in no country, save the United States, more real freedom from persecution than it does in Germany. And the Emperor's personal standing with the Vatican is excellent. I need only remind the reader of his perennial visits to the King of Italy when he never fails to visit the Vatican, paying his respects as the ruler of twenty-seven millions of Catholics, if you please, to the keeper of Peter's keys.
In my work, I have met eminent dignitaries and princes of the Catholic Church who voiced pretty freely--that is for churchmen--their confidences, willingness of their support to the Emperor's general policies.