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Aviation History
1915
1915 - 0719.PDF
SEPTEMBER 24. 1915. ARMCHAIR By THE Zeppelinitis. I SUPPOSE Jupiter sailed majestically through the firma ment when Titanus in far-off Peloponnesus kept his nightly vigil. I doubt not that he knew it was Jupiter. Secure in his astronomical learning, he was well versed in the planet's pathway, knew when to expect it, knew where to look for it, knew it when he saw it. I doubt his having to cogitate whether it was a star or a Zeppelin. Jupiter has caused me much petulance for many months. I know quite well it is Jupiter. I am perfectly willing that he sail his nightly course and wink his eye at me when I stroll out into my garden at night to look for Zeppelins. But there are two troubles. Firstly T appear to be the only person in our neighbourhood who does know him as Jupiter, and, secondly, by that mysterious process known only to suburbanites, of whom I am the sole exception, I am known to be connected with aeroplanes, and, therefore, to be fetched out willy-nilly to explain everything connected with the upper air. I have explained times out of number that it is Jupiter and not a Zep. carrying a strong headlight, that Zeps. do not sail over and flash a great light to help us to find them, yet the same people return in their turn to invite me to come out and look. I wish Hawker on his next altitude stunt would fly up and hang his cap over Jupiter. Twelve months ago my own daughter rushed into the house and dragged me out to see Jupiter. Only last evening she was just as sure that it was at least a captive balloon signalling. A neighbour who lives directly opposite me has had more than a fair share of my explanations, on more than a fair share of occasions. Only last night I called his wife's attention to what I thought, in the dark, was her little girl hanging out over the window-sill. " Look at your little girl, Mrs. . I'm afraid she might fall." " It's not my little girl. She's asleep. It's my husband with his telescope watching the airship." The next time Mr. Over-the-way says anything to me about Jupiter being an airship, I'll brain him. One of my friends is managing director of a very large firm who build iron bridges. He is a really clever fellow. He walks about with slide rules bristling from his every pocket, he bulges with facts, figures and for mulae. He can take the cube root and the square of the distance, put seventeen over thirty-five, and tell me the weight of the Tower Bridge to half-an-ounce, plus the bits of paper lying in the roadway. To me this is black magic. I know nothing of these things, but I know a tram-flash when I see one. I do not follow his lead and mistake it for anti-aircraft stations signalling when it is but common sense that they would have telephones. We have argued the point until I am sick of it. Like the Jupiter people he cannot be moved, and he fixed me the other evening, once and for all. He had found out all about it, and it WAS the anti-aircraft people. They take a flashlight photograph of the heavens every few moments, develop the plate, and if they see a Zeppelin in the picture, fire at it. Mrs. Next-door-on-my-right is a kindly soul; she would not hurt a fly. When I had my first view of a Zep. it had shells bursting all round it. I was wildly excited, and voiced my wish to see it come toppling down. " Oh ! Mr. , don't say that. Think of the poor souls on board." Like a fool, I started to argue with a REFLECTIONS. DREAMER." woman, and, of course, as usual, I got " side-tracked'' and worsted. Mrs. Next-door-on-my-left rescued me— she made some coffee. I have had coffee in France, and I am chary of the English kind. I passed. Mrs. Next-door-on-my right thought not of her own soul as she did of those of the Huns, who have no souls, and par took. She disappeared indoors, I am sure she was violently ill. If Mrs. Next-door-on-my-left would only make coffee and put it up in thermos flasks, which are much the size and shape of a 3-inch shell, and supply them to the anti-aircraft guns, the next raid would be the last. Mrs. Next-door-on-my-left's coffee would devastate at ten thousand yards. But for such . He got in, I think, at Chancery Lane, and his admit tance to our company met with polite disapproval. He was a man perhaps seventy years of age, with a heavy grey moustache, his boots and clothes had seen better days, and true to the custom of his class on Saturday nights he had had some beer. Not enough of this to make him quarrelsome, but enough to make him anxious to talk to anybody that would talk back, and even without this latter condition if necessary. We were the usual respectable travelling class in that carriage, of the class who dress in flannels on Saturdays, and talk tennis and cricket, and he came into our company unasked and unwanted, but with the right, thank God, of every man be he rich or poor in this country. He sat down directly facing me, and glanced round for a victim. Evidently deciding that I would do, he got up and leaned over me, resting his hand on the empty seat by my side, and said, " Do you remember that message to the Scots Greys ?" and dropped back into his seat nodding and mumbling at me. I felt con fused and murmured some silly reply, for I felt, rather than saw, the pitying smiles of my fellow passengers. He fumbled in his pocket and produced several cigarette ends which he stripped of their paper and put in his pipe, all the while talking to himself. I knew he would want a match, such as he never carry matches, so I had my box ready in order to shorten the ordeal as much as possible. He looked at me and started to rise, but I leaned over and handed him the matches, and he sat puffing away without giving me back the box. Suddenly he got up and leaned over me again, " Didn't Napoleon say, ' Give me the Thin Red Line and I'll fight the world' ? " He sat down once more, and forgot to smoke. In stead, he sat staring under the seats opposite, his eyes alternately growing round and flashing, and narrowing with a far-distant look, his jaw set, and his hands con tinually clenching and unclenching. Then he leaned forward and began that peculiar rotary movement of the hands and knees illustrative of jockeying, and holding his pipe by the bowl, commenced to cut to right and left, all the while rotating the imaginary reins in his left hand. He forgot us. He did not see the floor under the seats. He saw only a green field away in some far-off country with the masses of the enemy drawn up in line before him. Unconsciously, and without removing his eyes from the floor, he took off his battered old hat and threw it on the seat beside him, his white hair stood upright—it was rather nice hair, and clean—and once more he settled down to that charge of by-gone days. 719
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