revalent relapse into extreme untidiness, of
a universal discomfort, of fields, and of ruined houses treated
disregardfully.... But that is not what concerns us now in this
discussion. What concerns us now is the fact that this war is producing
spectacular effects so tremendous and incidents so strange, so
remarkable, so vivid, that the mind forgets both causes and consequences
and simply sits down to stare.

For example, there is this business of the Zeppelin raids in England. It
is a supremely silly business; it is the most conclusive demonstration
of the intellectual inferiority of the German to the Western European
that is should ever have happened. There was the clearest _a priori_
case against the gas-bag. I remember the discussions ten or twelve years
ago in which it was established to the satisfaction of every reasonable
man that ultimately the "heavier than air" machine (as we called it
then) must fly better than the gas-bag, and still more conclusively
that no gas-bag was conceivable that could hope to fight and defeat
aeroplanes. Nevertheless the German, with that dull faith of his in mere
"Will," persisted along his line. He knew instinctively that he could
not produce aviators to meet the Western European; all his social
instincts made him cling to the idea of a great motherly, almost
sow-like bag of wind above him. At an enormous waste of resources
Germany has produced these futile monsters, that drift in the darkness
over England promiscuously dropping bombs on fields and houses. They
are now meeting the fate that was demonstrably certain ten years ago.
If they found us unready for them it is merely that we were unable to
imagine so idiotic an enterprise would ever be seriously sustained and
persisted in. We did not believe in the probability of Zeppelin raids
any more than we believed that Germany would force the world into war.
It was a thing too silly to be believed. But they came--to their certain
fate. In the month after I returned from France and Italy, no less than
four of these fatuities were exploded and destroyed within thirty miles
of my Essex home.... There in chosen phrases you have the truth about
these things. But now mark the perversion of thought due to spectacular
effect.

I find over the Essex countryside, which has been for more than a year
and a half a highway for Zeppelins, a new and curious admiration for
them that has arisen out of these very disasters. Previously they were
regar