gh all it did was to disturb the
soil of a cabbage-garden, and excite the pursuit of several of our own
air-craft, which lost their seaward-soaring quarry in the fog brooding
over the Channel; while in the case of the Sheerness invader, on Christmas
Day, which made its appearance just as the visitors at Southend over the
water were about to sit down to their turkey and plum-pudding--little
dreaming of the extra dish of enjoyment which was thus to be added to
their menu--it was at once tackled, as at Dover, by some of our own airmen
and pelted with shot, being hit three or four times; though this aerial
intruder also managed, in the mist, to show a clean pair of heels, or
wings, and make off eastward. These were the German replies to our
bomb-dropping raids on Duesseldorf and Friedrichs-hafen, and intended to be
a foretaste of what we may expect in the shape of German "frightfulness"
as prompted by the "insensate hatred" referred to by Mr. Churchill.

Daring enough in themselves, those German visitations seemed insignificant
by comparison with the raids which were being carried out almost
simultaneously on the other side of the sea by our own naval airmen. For
while the German aeroplanist was helping to dig a cabbage garden at Dover,
one of our Squadron-Commanders--R.B. Davies, R.N.--from a Maurice-Farman
biplane was much more profitably engaged in dropping a dozen bombs
on a Zeppelin shed at Brussels--causing "clouds of smoke" to arise
therefrom--most probably from the flames of the incendiarised air-ship.

__________________________________________________________________________
THE ILLUSTRATED WAR NEWS, DEC. 30, 1914--[Part 21]--5

[Illustration: THE AIR-RAID ON GERMAN WAR-SHIPS OFF CUXHAVEN: BRITISH
SEA-PLANES, SISTERS TO THOSE WHICH TOOK PART IN THE BRILLIANT EXPLOIT.]

The sea-planes came into great prominence, for the first time during the
war, on Christmas Day, when seven of them attacked German war-ships lying
in Schillig Roads, off Cuxhaven. The attack started from a point in the
vicinity of Heligoland, and the air-craft were escorted by a light-cruiser
and destroyer force, together with submarines. The enemy put up a fight by
means of two Zeppelins, three or four bomb-dropping sea-planes, and
several submarines. Six out of the seven pilots returned safely--three
were re-embarked by our ships, a