I was grateful but unenthusiastic. I had seen the officers watching the sky for German planes. I had a keen idea that a German aviator overhead, armed with a Belgian block or a bomb or a dart, could have ripped that yellow envelope open from stem to stern, and robbed American literature of one of its shining lights. Besides, even in times of peace I am afraid to look out of a third-story window. We made a tour of the station, which had been a great factory before the war began, beginning with the hangar in which the balloon was now safely housed. Entrance to the station is by means of a bridge over a canal. The bridge is guarded by sentries and the password of the day is necessary to gain admission. East and west along the canal are canal boats that have been painted grey and have guns mounted on them. Side by side with these gunboats are the ordinary canal boats of the region, serving as homes for that part of the populace which remains, with women knitting on the decks or hanging out lines of washing overhead. The endless traffic of a main highroad behind the lines passes the station day and night. Chauffeurs drop in to borrow petrol or to repair their cars; visiting officers from other stations come to watch the airship perform. For England has been slow to believe in the airships, pinning her aëronautical faith to heavier-than-air machines. She has considered the great expense for building and upkeep of each of these dirigible balloons--as much as that of fifty aëroplanes--the necessity of providing hangars for them, and their vulnerability to attack, as overbalancing the advantages of long range, silence as they drift with the wind with engines cut off, and ability to hover over a given spot and thus launch aërial bombs more carefully. There is a friendly rivalry between the two branches of the air service, and so far in this war the credit apparently goes to the aëroplanes. However, until the war is over, and Germany definitely states what part her Zeppelins have had in both sea and land attacks, it will be impossible to make any fair comparison. The officers at the naval air station had their headquarters in the administration building of the factory, a long brick building facing the road. Here in a long room with western windows they rested and relaxed, lined and talked between their adventurous excursions to the lines. Day by day these men went out, some in the airship for a reconnoissance, others to man observation balloons. Day by day it was uncertain who would come back.