The Way to Win

by William Le Queux

But we must not allow ourselves to be deceived by appearances. We must not fail to take into consideration the fact that so far as its real military value is concerned the Zeppelin has shown itself to be an absolute and costly failure. This may seem at first sight a hard saying when we think of the many victims of the Zeppelin raids, of the women and little children slaughtered, of the civilians murdered in midnight raids whose lives against any opponents with the slightest regard for the laws of war or for their own good name would have been absolutely safe.

But the facts cannot be disputed. The Zeppelin is a murder machine pure and simple. Its military value is absolutely negligible, and the destruction it has wrought has been of no military significance whatever. Out of all the victims it has claimed during its frequent nocturnal expeditions here and in France, only the barest handful have been soldiers, and on none of the raids has any military base sustained the slightest damage. Moreover, it has failed in its avowed object of terrorising; neither our own people nor the French have been weakened—rather have they been strengthened—in their determination to carry on the War to the only issue consistent with the future existence of civilisation. The only real and tangible results of the Zeppelin raids from a military point of view have been to cover the Germans with a stigma of crime and murder for which they will pay dearly in the future, and to make the Allies more than ever determined to root out the nest of vermin which for so long has troubled Europe. They have done more, perhaps, than anything else except the infamous submarine campaign to convince the civilised world that so long as Germany retains her power of mischief there will be no peace for the nations at large.

There is no disguising the fact, however, that, for what it is worth, the Zeppelin for the moment holds the field.

We have not yet succeeded in discovering any means either of keeping the raiders away when the conditions are favourable for their visits, or of dealing effectively with them when their presence is detected. Undoubtedly the problem is a very difficult one. Zeppelins can fly so high that gunfire is practically ineffective against them, as has been proved in the raids on both Paris and London; the one recently brought down by the French was flying much lower than usual. They are able to take very effective cover behind any clouds that may be about, and the difficulties by which the aeroplanes are faced in locating and attacking them at night appear to be well-nigh insuperable under present conditions. In time, perhaps, we shall have fleets of powerful aeroplanes which will be able to take the air and not merely rise swiftly to the height at which the Zeppelin flies, but remain aloft all night, if need be, until the dangers inseparable from a landing in the dark have disappeared.

But it must not be forgotten that the very factors which give the Zeppelin its invulnerability against attack practically destroy its value as a fighting machine. No one—not even the commanders of the Zeppelins themselves—would pretend that, flying at a height of 12,000 feet or so on a dark and cloudy night, they can say with certainty where they are, or that they can drop their murderous bombs with any sure hope of hitting an object which would be their justification from a military point of view. They simply wait until they think they are over an inhabited area, and then drop their bombs in the hope of killing as many people as possible, or, perhaps, luckily striking some material object and doing real damage. That is not war as the civilised world understands it, but simply anarchism.

A distinguished writer recently expressed the opinion that as the Germans were essentially a practical people they would not waste effort by dropping at haphazard bombs which they had been at such pains to carry to this country, and that they must therefore be genuinely under the impression that they were doing real military damage. But their whole record in the War entirely disposes of this theory. We know quite well—the Germans have told us so, and their acts have borne out their words—that the policy of “frightfulness” commends itself to their judgment. Their one idea is to terrify; they hope to do enough damage and kill enough people to bring about in England a movement for peace. Nothing but defeat will convince them that they are wrong.

And this consideration brings me naturally to another—the subject of reprisals. If we cannot stop the Zeppelins coming or deal with them adequately when they are here, can we teach the Germans a lesson which will convince them that two can play at the game of “frightfulness,” and that in the long run we can play that game better than they can themselves? I think we can, and I think we should.

It has been one of the most striking characteristics of the career of Lord Rosebery that on more than one occasion he has put into terse and vigorous expression the opinions of the great majority of the English people. With all his apparent detachment, Lord Rosebery has a wonderful understanding of what England is saying, and still more what it is thinking, and the reader will call to mind more than one occasion on which the nebulous and only half-expressed thought of England has been suddenly crystallised in the clearest fashion through the mouth of Lord Rosebery. This has unmistakably been the case in the matter of the Zeppelin raids.

In a recent letter to The Times, dated February 3, Lord Rosebery put the English point of view with his customary clearness and directness. He wrote:

This last Zeppelin raid has cleared the air. There may be difficulties from the aircraft point of view in reprisals. I am not behind the scenes, and I do not know. But as regards policy there can be none. We have too long displayed a passive and excessive patience.

We all remember Grey’s noble lines, “To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land.” For “plenty” read “bombs” and you have the Prussian ideal. To scatter bombs over a countryside, to destroy indiscriminately the mansion and the cottage, the church and the school, to murder unoffending civilians, women, children, and sucklings in their beds—these are the noble aspirations of Prussian chivalry, acclaimed by their nation as deeds of merit and daring.

Let them realise their triumph. Let us bring it directly to their hearts and homes. Let us unsparingly mete out their measure to themselves. Nothing else will make them realise their glories. And the blood of any who may suffer will rest on their Government, not on ours.