Greatest Defeat of War Crushes German Zeppelin Airfleet
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23.—Germany probably lost one-half of her total effective fleet of super-Zeppelins as a result of the raid of October 20 over England, according to official cablegrams received here. All France is exultant over what the dispatches declare to be the greatest defeat administered to an air fleet since the beginning of the war. The gratification is more intense because it is now known that the German raid was an attempt to carry out a fearful threat of vengeance made four days before.
On that occasion the German government sent out a warning to both France and England of dire punishment to follow what the Germans declared to be unwarranted and inhuman attacks by British and French aviators upon peaceful German towns. Reprisals were threatened in an official German communication, which in part reads: