The “authorities” still kept up a pretence of preparedness. The so-called anti-aircraft guns--really a nondescript lot of ordnance, left over after the fittest of the few available pieces had been requisitioned for use in France, on the coast, or by the Navy--still had their crews of half-trained amateurs, and the golden beams of the searchlights continued to whirl and dip and curtsey in their nocturnal minuets. Buckets of water and boxes of sand stood ready for emergency use in the art galleries and museums, and on the hoardings conspicuous posters gave with meticulous articularity instructions as to how one should act if Zeppelin bombs began raining in his vicinity. At the first sight of a hostile airship, we were told, we should repair at once to the nearest cellar, and in case a smarting sensation in the nostrils indicated the release of deleterious gas, the mouth and nose should be covered with a moist double bandage containing a layer of carbonate of soda. Some of the pharmacies displayed patent anti-gas respirators in their windows, but none would admit ever having had an inquiry for one. “We’ve got a war to fight. Zepps ain’t war; fergit ’em.” So a London bus conductor summed up the situation to me, and so seemed to feel the majority of his fellow townsmen of all classes. Such, as regards Zeppelins, was the spirit of “London and the Eastern Counties”--to use the official phrase--as the summer of 1915 waxed and began to wane. Something of how this spirit met the trying events of the months which followed, I shall try to show by a few extracts from my journal. In deference to the wishes of the British Censorship the names of several points in London have been slightly altered. I On Board Yacht ---- _en voyage,_ Wroxham Broad to Hickling Broad. _August--._ We sailed and poled along the river and canal yesterday, and in the afternoon moored to the bank at this point, which is but a mile or two from the North Sea. The morning papers, which we picked up as we passed through the little village of Potter Heigham, contained an official bulletin telling of a Zeppelin raid on the “Eastern Counties” the previous night; and later in the day word was brought us that Lowestoft, the great trawlers’ port about twenty miles to the south-east, had been heavily bombed. A second raid in this vicinity seemed, therefore, anything but likely.