had admitted that Zeppelins had again been over Essex and Norfolk and been driven back by our anti-aircraft guns.
Certainly I had no reason to doubt Dick's story. He was a pal of Teddy's, and I had been up with him twice on his new 'Parasol'—that machine which Hendon men will remember as having caused such a sensation.
How flying has changed since the war! In the pre-war days those Sunday meetings out at Hendon, with their passenger-flights, were quite smart frivolous gatherings. In the enclosure stood rows of fine cars with many young 'bloods'—who afterwards gallantly put on khaki—with many of their best girls, some of them of the bluest blood of the land, while others were revue actresses, with a few women aged, apeing and adipose, with of course a good sprinkling of girls on the keen look out for husbands.
There are some men who went regularly to 'exhibitions of flying' before the war who could tell strange tales—of pretty women held in the clutches of blackguards, and of good, innocent boys who fell, were blackmailed, and were 'squeezed' to their death.
But it is ever so in sport. The racecourse and the tapis vert have both been the cause of the downfall of a good many excellent fellows, therefore the organizers of the aerodromes are not to be blamed for the exploits of those pestilent undesirables who as at Epsom, Newmarket or Sandown, having paid the admission fee, passed through its gates.
Ah! I recall—and many will recall with me—
