While the loss of innocent life is deeply to be
regretted, the net result from a military point of view is most satisfactory. The efficiency of our land defences against Zeppelins in conditions most favourable to the raiders has been con- clusively shown, and the loss of a single unit of the German airship fleet is no negligible matter. Zeppelins cannot be built in a day. Moreover, this is not the first Zeppelin destroyed or disabled after a raid on this country. In the attack on Ramsgate on May 17th, a Zeppelin was chased from the coast by our aeroplanes, attacked off Nieuwport by our naval air squadron from Dunkirk, and seriously damaged by bombs. The Zeppelin which raided the East Coast on the night of June 6th is also believed to have been disabled, and early on the morning of June 7th Lieutenant Warneford completely destroyed e Zeppelin near Ghent. This record takes no account of the destruction of the Zeppelin 'Unshed at Dusseldorf in October, the raid on Friedrichshafen in Novem- ber, the wreck of two Zeppelins in a storm off the coast of Denmark in February, and the destruction of a Zeppelin or Parseval in the airshed at Evere in Belgium in May.
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