The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1917-07-24

FLYING 4 SPORT IN BERLIN JUST
 BEFORE THE WAR. before the war will recollect that the air above the town, especially on the outskirts, used to be full of all sorts of machines. They were like mosqui- toes over a summer pool
 Big Zeppelins would come buzzing along, like immense insects. some times at a great height, sometimes so low that you could almost see the face of the men in the gondola. Small CT, wasp-Hke, yellow ochre PsE5evals and occasionally a Schutte-Lanz, a, type now seldom seen, would appear over the city, and high in the blue, no bigger than dragon-ftes, aeroplanes fitted about.
 What was the meaning of all this aircraft activity? It was looked upon ny pSopIo III SI0I1udIly, dS Ut w OLo py that part of the English public who attached any importance to doings in Berlin, as a form of sport, as an in teresting struggle between the mind of man and the forces of nature. But most people in England forgot that sport for the German is merely a branch of military preparation.
 A few, it is true, knew this, and to their timely efforts to induce the gov ernment to interest itself, if ever so little, in aviation we owe an immense debt.
 At the Staff College in Berlin, where about five hundred officers were being trained it was noticeable for quite six months before the war that there was an immense and sud-
 den development of the scientific mili- tary study of aviation. Several of the lecturers, of whom I was one whisper ed their forebodings, and I mentioned the matter to some of our Press peo- pie.
 The military authorities, we could i see, were leaving nothing undone to | make flying fashionable among the 1 more ambitious officers, and day af-
 ter day large numbers of them were exempted from work in other import snt courses to enable them to become l proficient in aviation. When the war broke out the Germans were ready, and they had got ready, so far as the employment of aeroplanes is concern ed, in a remarkably short time. From the very first the German military authorities conceived of the air machine not only it's legitimate spheres of warfare but also an instru- ment for terrorizing the civil popula- ton of the enemy, but they did not 1 say so. They pretended that the French had begun by bombing Nurn- berg. and they did this in order to l prepare the German people for their own indiscriminate and criminal use I of bombs.
 No moreA artificial product is think l able than the furor Teutonicus. The | government has only to accuse the enemy fo some dastard1y action that I it intends to do itself and it breaks
 down any rudimentary moral resist I ance in it's own people to such ac- | tions. Without qualm the German ] public took to the idea of bombing 1 defenceless cities.
 l It soon became one of their most delightful pastnmes to picture Lon don lying at the mercy of their Zeppe- l lins. The Bank of England was to
 vanish in smoke and the Houses of
 Parliament, with the nefarious ,"Sir
 Grey" were to be levelled to the 1 ground. At Wertheim's the Berlin
 Whiteley's. as specail Chritmas treat
 for the children, a very elaborate piece of mechanism was shown repre-
 senting part of London with air l ships hanging over it. John Bull was
 seen through a window, comfortably
 reading his newspaper. On the alarm
 of Zeppelins he rushed to the skylight pushed his head and shoulders l through. and scanned the sky with a 1 telescope. On catching sight of the
 Zeppelin he quickly bobbed down in
 great fear and the skylight slammed l behind him.
 This particular movement always brought the house down. The Ger
 mans felt that they were having a real
 bit of Christmas festivity. In another
 part of the building one saw German
 soldiers spending Christmas in some
 ruined church, reading letters from
 home and gazing sentimentally at their
 love gifts of sausage and schnapps or 1.-the stars that hone through the roof.
 knew an old official who made an
 English poem" with the refrain:
 'tGermania, Germania, Germania rules ! the sky,
 IGermania, Germania, with thee no one can vie.''
 l The Berlin population rejoiced with
 one accord whenever they heard of a
 Zeppelin raid. The only voice ever raised in public against such raids was
 ehat of Dr. Cohn, a member of the ] International Group of Socialists. He
 aroused the bitterest resentment l when. from his place in the Reichstag,
 he accused the military party of hay ing invented the excuse that London was a fortified town, merely in order to wreak vengeance upon it. As a lawyer he accused them of the ille- l gality of their action, and as a man l of it's cowardice.
 | T chanced to meet him in the street not long afterwards and congratulated him on his courage. I told him that the day would come when the German people would be thankful that at least one man out of their midst had had