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Show RAID PROVES THE ZEPPELIN WEAK By HUDSON MAXIM, Famous War Expert, Inventor and Author. Au-thor. New York, Jan. 20 This German air raid on England fully demonstrates demon-strates the impracticability of the Zeppelin Zep-pelin as an engine of war. Germany has been threatening to blow up the British isles with the bomb that her great gas bags might drop out of the heavens, and 1 dare say many thousands thou-sands of timid Anglo Saxons have prayed against the coming of the fatal day Now, at last, the much-vaunted and long anticipated Zeppelin invasion has I come, and what is the i-esiilt? Four or five peaceftil citizens killed and a few thousand pounds of property damaged. dam-aged. I was asked not long ago wha' would happen if a German dirigible should drop bombs on the houses of parliament of Westminister Abbey. M questioner was a man who had great faith in aerial attacks, and believed be-lieved the future wars would be aet tied by battles iu the skier I 0 f laughed at him I said that even If a Zeppelin should drop most powerful power-ful explosive that could be carried bj such aircraft into tho very middle of the houses of parliament it would simply sim-ply break some glass and perhaps blow a hole in the floor I called attention to some dynamite outrage which had been perpetrated not long beforo in one of Pngland's historic buildings and. although as much as twenty-five pounds of dynamite dyna-mite was exploded, the concussion simply smashed the windows and shattered shat-tered a bit of the building nearby. Even If Germany could send one hundred Zeppelins a day to London and each ono blow up a house? which, of course, they couldn't do this would wreck onlv '...tOO buildings during a whole year As 60,000 buildings are erected in London every year the Zeppelins Zep-pelins would only cut down the normal nor-mal growth of the city a little more than half. Theie are four reasons why an aerial attack is inconsequential and not really to be regarded seriously: 1 The explosion of the aerial bomb is like an inverted cone Its force rebounds re-bounds and escapes upward. Only a small ioini of force is thrust down ward. Not unless the bomb can be hurled so as to penetrate an object before exploding can it effect much destruction 2 The airship cannot aim accurately accurate-ly It is moving forward perhaps ihirty fie miles an hour Consequents 1 j the bomb is carried forward as well as downward by the force of gravitation gravita-tion Unless 'he marksman Is excep-( tionally fortunate he cannot hit what he aims at. He strikes, theiefore, in haphazard fashion 7, Nearly always these aerial raids are conducted at night, which adds still further to the liklihood of failure j 4 The Zeppelin is a slow unwieldy craft and is therefore exposed to counter coun-ter attack from the more agile aeroplane aero-plane or the fire of high-angle guns from the earth I believe that the Germans have realized that their serial warships could not really work much material harm, and so planned these raids more for their moral effect iion the British |