worked two airscrews, eight feet in diameter, at a rate exceeding a
thousand revolutions a minute. The lower part of the envelope was flat,
and secured to a rigid metal framework; six steel tubes, attached to
this framework, supported the car below, and, besides distributing the
load, conveyed the thrust of the airscrew to the ship above. In the
course of a year the ship made twenty-eight return journeys, covering
distances up to twenty-two miles. In November 1903 it broke all records,
first by making the longest voyage that had ever been made by a
navigable balloon, that is, from Moisson to Paris, a distance of about
forty miles, and next, a week later, by successfully combating a wind of
more than twenty miles an hour. 'Aerial navigation', said Colonel
Renard, who witnessed this trial, 'is no longer a Utopia.' After a time
the ship was taken over by the French army, and its immediate Lebaudy
successors, _La Patrie_ of 1906 and _La Republique_ of 1908, also became
military airships. Both were wrecked after a short career, but the
military airship had made good its promise, and three new
airship-building firms were established in France. In 1902 the Astra
Company, in 1909 and 1910 the Zodiac Company and the Clement-Bayard
Company, began to build airships, some for the French army and some for
foreign powers.

Meanwhile, at the time when Santos Dumont was gaining credit for the
smallest airship ever known, the largest known airship had been designed
and launched in Germany. On the 2nd of July 1900 the first Zeppelin made
its trial trip from the floating shed at Manzell, near Friedrichshafen,
on Lake Constance. When the Great War shall be only a faded memory, when
the sufferings of millions of men and women shall be condensed into
matter for handbooks, and their sacrifices shall be expressed only in
arithmetical figures, certain incidents and names, because they caught
the popular imagination, will still be narrated and repeated. The names
that will live are the names that symbolize the causes for which they
stood. Edith Cavell will never be forgotten; when she persevered in her
work of mercy, and calmly faced the ultimate cruelties of a monstrous
system, all that was best in the war seemed to find expression in that
lonely passion. She was brought home to England in a warship, and was
carried to her grave on a gun-carriage, under the Union Jack, because
her cause was her country's cause, and England claimed a title in h