Our newspapers have been crowded with narratives and curious information
during the week about the Zeppelin raids. A visitor who knew nothing of the circumstances of the war might have been persuaded to believe on this evidence that the raids were a very important matter and the advance on the Somme of no great military account. Yet he would of course have been just as wrong as it is possible for a human being to be. The explanation of the journalistic paradox is natural enough. People at home saw the raids with their own eyes ; they were intensely curious about the Zeppelins which were shot down in English fields—a curiosity which we fully share—and it was in the ordinary course of business to satisfy their curiosity. Yet every Englishman knew all the time that the aerial raids counted for absolutely nothing in the progress of the war, while the victories on the Somme were the most important ever gained by British arms. If London had been Berlin, every piece of bunting would have been hanging from a window and the steeples would have rocked with the clanging of bells in celebration of those victories.
