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
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