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er sacrifice. It is a far cry from Edith Cavell to the old soldier who gave Germany the giant airship, but the Zeppelin will also be remembered, because the popular imagination, which is often both just and fanciful, found a symbol of Germany's cause in this engine of terror, so carefully and admirably planned down to the minutest detail, so impressive by its bulk, so indiscriminate in its destructive action, and so frail. Its inventor was Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a Lieutenant-General in the German army. His first balloon ascent had been made during the American Civil War, in one of the military balloons of the Federal army. Later on, in the Franco-Prussian War, he distinguished himself by his daring cavalry reconnaissances in Alsace. At about that time there was in Alsace a Frenchman named Spiess, who had drawn a design for a rigid airship not unlike the later Zeppelin, and had endeavoured, without success, to patent it. The suggestion has been made, but with no proof, that Count Zeppelin may have seen Spiess's plans, and borrowed from them. If so, the borrowed idea took long in maturing. It was not until 1898 that the Count went to work on a large scale, and formed a company with a capital of a million marks. It was not until 1908, after ten years of struggle and disaster, that the German Government made him a grant for the continuance of his experiments, and the German people, impressed by his pertinacity and courage in misfortune, raised for him a subscription of three hundred thousand pounds, to enable him to build the great airship works at Friedrichshafen. From this time the Zeppelin was a national ship. Sheds to harbour airships were built at strategic points on the western and eastern fronts, and plans were set on foot to house naval Zeppelins at Heligoland, Emden, and Kiel. With characteristic German thoroughness a network of weather stations on German soil, and, it is believed, of secret weather reports from other countries, was provided for the guidance of airship pilots. All this was a monument to the perseverance, which might almost be called obstinacy, of the indomitable Count. He built enormous and costly airships, one after another; one after another they were wrecked or burnt, and then he built more. The German people watched him as King Robert the Bruce watched the spider, with a scepticism that was gradually turned into wonder, till, in the end, when disaster after disaster found him willing pati
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