f dirigible it would be imitated on
every hand. The inventions of the Wrights have been seized upon,
adapted, improved perhaps by half a hundred airplane designers of
every nation. But nobody has been imitating the Zeppelins.

[Illustration: _The Giant and the Pigmies._

_Painting by John E. Whiting._]

That, however, is a mere passing reflection. If the Zeppelin has not
done all in war that the sanguine German people expected of it,
nevertheless it is not yet to be pronounced an entire failure. And
even though a failure in war, the chief service for which its
stout-hearted inventor designed it, there is still hope that it may
ultimately prove better adapted to many ends of peace than the
airplanes which for the time seem to have outdone it.

Stout-hearted indeed the old _Luftgraaf_--"Air Scout"--as the
Germans call him, was. His was a Bismarckian nature, reminiscent of
the Iron Chancellor alike physically and mentally. In appearance he
recalls irresistibly the heroic figure of Bismarck, jack-booted and
cuirassed at the Congress of Vienna, painted by von Werner. Heir to
an old land-owning family, ennobled and entitled to bear the title
_Landgraf_, Count von Zeppelin was a type of the German aristocrat.
But for his title and aristocratic rank he could never have won his
long fight for recognition by the bureaucrats who control the German
army. In youth he was anti-Prussian in sentiment, and indeed some of
his most interesting army experiences were in service with the army
of South Germany against Prussia and her allied states. But all that
was forgotten in the national unity that followed the defeat of
France in 1872.

Before that, however, the young count--he was born in 1838--had
served with gallantry, if not distinction, in the Union Army in our
Civil War, had made a balloon ascension on the fighting line, had
swum in the Niagara River below the falls, being rescued with
difficulty, and together with two Russian officers and some Indian
guides had almost starved in trying to discover the source of the
Mississippi River--a spot which can now be visited without
undergoing more serious hardships than the upper berth in a Pullman
car.

It was at the siege of Paris that Zeppelin's mind first became
engaged with the problem of aerial navigation. From his post in the
besieging trenches he saw the almost daily ascent of balloons in
which mail was sent out, and persons who could pay the price sought
to escape from the