English Again See Mysterious Airship

New York Times 100 years ago today, February 25, 1913:
Dirigible Passed Over Selby Abbey and Went in Direction of Barlby Arsenal.
CAN LAUGH AT NEW ACT
Great Britain at Present, It Is Asserted, Has No Guns Which Could Hit Such an Air Vessel.
Special Cable to The New York Times.
    LONDON, Feb. 24.— The foreign airship bogey is again creating alarm in England. A story is circulated in well-informed quarters that some power is conducting important experiments in dirigibles over England.
    The evidence seems conclusive that some mysterious aerial visitor is continuing flights over this country. Many persons are prepared to swear that they saw it pass over Selby Abbey, Yorkshire, last Friday night, making its way toward the east coast in the neighborhood of Barlby, where there is an important arsenal.
    One newspaper points out that the appearance of the airship at Selby and the flight of a dirigible over Sheerness last October coincide very nearly with two long-distance flights of Zeppelin airships.
    In reference to the recently passed act whereby foreign airships visiting England are liable to be shot at unless they descend on a prescribed signal, it is stated that the act at present could be treated with impunity, inasmuch as it is very doubtful if England possesses guns which could hit them.
    The recurring reports of nocturnal visits of unknown airships to England are derided by the German newspapers, and the suspicions occasionally uttered that the mysterious strangers are German are bitterly resented in Germany. Non-German authorities in Berlin whose business it is carefully to observe German aerial developments express the opinion that it is wholly beyond the range of possibility for any German airship, even the most powerful Zeppelin, to venture on a secret trip to England. Such a vessel would, they say, be discovered, recognized, and reported times without number.