shipping, the land netted
with rails, and open ways. Then suddenly the German air-fleets sweep
across the scene, and we are in the beginning of the end.

2

This story has already told of the swift rush upon New York of the
first German air-fleet and of the wild, inevitable orgy of inconclusive
destruction that ensued. Behind it a second air-fleet was already
swelling at its gasometers when England and France and Spain and Italy
showed their hands. None of these countries had prepared for aeronautic
warfare on the magnificent scale of the Germans, but each guarded
secrets, each in a measure was making ready, and a common dread of
German vigour and that aggressive spirit Prince Karl Albert embodied,
had long been drawing these powers together in secret anticipation of
some such attack. This rendered their prompt co-operation possible, and
they certainly co-operated promptly. The second aerial power in Europe
at this time was France; the British, nervous for their Asiatic
empire, and sensible of the immense moral effect of the airship upon
half-educated populations, had placed their aeronautic parks in North
India, and were able to play but a subordinate part in the European
conflict. Still, even in England they had nine or ten big navigables,
twenty or thirty smaller ones, and a variety of experimental aeroplanes.
Before the fleet of Prince Karl Albert had crossed England, while
Bert was still surveying Manchester in bird's-eye view, the diplomatic
exchanges were going on that led to an attack upon Germany. A
heterogeneous collection of navigable balloons of all sizes and types
gathered over the Bernese Oberland, crushed and burnt the twenty-five
Swiss air-ships that unexpectedly resisted this concentration in the
battle of the Alps, and then, leaving the Alpine glaciers and valleys
strewn with strange wreckage, divided into two fleets and set itself
to terrorise Berlin and destroy the Franconian Park, seeking to do this
before the second air-fleet could be inflated.

Both over Berlin and Franconia the assailants with their modern
explosives effected great damage before they were driven off. In
Franconia twelve fully distended and five partially filled and manned
giants were able to make head against and at last, with the help of a
squadron of drachenflieger from Hamburg, defeat and pursue the attack
and to relieve Berlin, and the Germans were straining every nerve to get
an overwhelming fleet in the air, and were al