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 aeronautical 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 aeroplanes—­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 aerial 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 aeroplanes.  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.

But they were very cheerful.  Officers with an hour to spare came up from the gunboats in the canal to smoke a pipe by the fire.  Once in so often a woman came, stopping halfway her frozen journey to a soup kitchen or a railroad station, where she looked after wounded soldiers, to sit in the long room and thaw out; visiting officers from other parts of the front dropped in for a meal, sure of a welcome and a warm fire.  As compared with the trenches, or even with the gunboats on the canal, the station represented cheer, warmth; even, after the working daylight hours, society.

There were several buildings.  Outside near the bridge was the wireless building, where an operator sat all the time with his receivers over his ears.  Not far from the main group was the great hangar of the airship, and to that we went first.  The hangar had been a machine shop with a travelling crane.  It had been partially cleared but the crane still towered at one end.  High above it, reached by a ladder, was a door.