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The activity of the French did not diminish as the war progressed, and the activity of the bomb-operating squadron continued. On December 20, 1915, four French aeroplanes designed for bomb-dropping, escorted by seven machines with rapid-fire guns dropped on the fort and station at Mülhausen six shells of 155-millimeter caliber, and twenty shells of ninety-six caliber.
The torpedo boat, the submarine, with other agencies of unseen destruction, have come into play to add enormously to the horrors of naval warfare, while the bomb-dropping airships, letting fall its dire missiles from the sky, has come to add to the dread terror and torment of the battle-field.
But, for nearly a year, the work of killing citizens had been undertaken by the big bomb-dropping Gotha aeroplanes. The work of the Gotha belongs rightly to the second part of this book, which deals with aeroplanes and airmen; but it would be convenient to dispose here of the part played by the Gotha in the air raids upon this country.
The Germans came into the field with well over 600 aeroplanes, mainly two-seaters of standardised design, and with factories back in the Fatherland turning out sufficient new machines to make good the losses. There were a few single-seater scouts built for speed, and the two-seater machines were all fitted with cameras and bomb-dropping gear.
Their male children are beaten from their ninth year to their seventeenth year, by men with sticks. Their women are counted equal with their men. It is reckoned as disgraceful for a Baharanee to show fear when lights are extinguished in the hospital on account of bomb-dropping air-ships, as for an Ul to avoid battle.
Here are huge bomb-dropping machines with a vast wing spread; solid, steady-flying machines for photographic work, and the light, swift-climbing, double-gunned battle-planes, capable of mounting two thousand feet a minute and attaining a speed of two hundred kilometres.
"The numerical superiority of the enemy's airmen," noted General von Arnim, "and the fact that their machines were better made, became disagreeably apparent to us, particularly in their direction of the enemy's artillery fire and in bomb-dropping."
Since yesterday bomb-dropping airmen have come into Baden and Bavaria; further, by violating Belgian neutrality, they have fled over Belgian territory into the Rhine province and tried to destroy our railways. Thus France has begun an attack upon us, and thereby created a state of war. The safety of the Empire compels us to take defensive measures. The Kaiser has given the necessary orders.
Without waiting to have the request conveyed to him in due form, and speaking directly to Edestone he said in an affable voice: "I should like to see again the picture showing the working of the bomb-dropping device, and I would like to have the film stopped exactly at the moment that the projectile leaves the tube. I wish to examine the action of the ejector."
'I know you don't with your mind. Now, what type's that? 'I'll go and get the chart, said Mary. 'You're hopeless! You haven't the mental capacity of a white mouse, he cried, and explained the dials and the sockets for bomb-dropping till it was time to mount and ride the wet clouds once more. 'Ah! said Mary, as the stinking thing flared upward. 'Wait till our Flying Corps gets to work!
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