An Amsterdam telegram of Thursday states that a hostile aeroplane
threw a bomb upon the Zeppelin hangars at Cologne without causing any damage, and that another aeroplane flew over Diisseldorf and caused some injury by dropping a bomb on the Zeppelin hangars there. If the story is true, and we hardly think that the Germans would have let the news get to Amsterdam if it had not been, it affords a good example of the limitations of attacks from the air. Though, as we have said elsewhere, airships and aeroplanes can do nothing to affect the military situation or overawe a great city, they can produce a certain local effect, and with luck may destroy a particular building, whether a cathedral or an airshed. If they can manage the latter they will, of course, cause a great deal of inconvenience, for sheds big enough to hold Zeppelins cannot be built in a day, and without snug sheds to lie in these delicate machines are of very little use. Even in this very limited sense, however, we must not exaggerate what air- craft can do. Their real metier in war is still observation and reconnaissance.
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