British Will Shoot At Alien Airships.

New York Times 100 years ago today, February 13, 1913:
Bill Being Rushed Through Parliament to Prevent Visits of Foreign Aerial Craft.
HAVE BEEN FREQUENT LATELY
And Country Has Become Alarmed — Government Asked the Opposition Not to Delay the Bill.
By Marconi Transatlantic Wireless Telegraph to The New York Times.
    LONDON, Feb. 12.— Parliament is rushing through the Aerial Navigation bill, which will expose any foreign airship traveling over England to the risk of being fired upon under certain specified conditions, although a state of war may not exist between this country and that whence the airship comes.
    No secret is made of the fact that the bill is designed to check German exploits of this kind. For several months at intervals there have been reports of mysterious flights of airships over one part of the country or another, and the introduction of the bill was coupled with a Governmental request to the Opposition not to delay its progress through Parliament. This is taken to mean that the Government has awakened to the fact that foreign airships have actually flown over English territory.
    Col. Seely, the Secretary for War, introduced the bill last Friday afternoon. It prohibits the passage of aircraft over certain areas, or, if the Government deem it necessary, over the whole coastline of the United Kingdom and adjacent territorial waters. If any aerial vessel infringes this law, proper officers shall be entitled, after giving a prescribed warning signal, to fire at or into any such aircraft, and use any and every means to prevent infraction of the law.
    This bill will be law before many days have passed. It was read the second time on Monday, and its remaining stages in the House of Commons were passed in a single session yesterday. The bill will be taken to the House of Lords early next week.
    There was practically no discussion of the bill in the House of Commons. The proceedings took place after midnight in the sessions both of Monday and yesterday. On the second reading Col. Seely said:
    "I would point out to the House that this bill is not aimed at the aircraft of any foreign power, but rather at preventing mischievous persons, possibly from oversea, from hovering over places where there are combustible stores, to the great inconvenience of the people of this country."
    Papers like the Daily Mail scoff at such a suggestion and declare that the urgency given to the measure is due to the frequent reports of the appearance of unknown airships over various parts of England.
    The Times yesterday had an editorial in which it stated that the visits of foreign airships were becoming unpleasantly frequent, adding:
    "They have a way of appearing over our ports just after nightfall or before dawn, coining no one knows whence and going nobody knows whither. It would seem either that they have a predilection in favor of following our coastline or that they pass unnoticed, possibly at a greater height, across our territory.
    "During the last four or five months they have been seen over Sheerness, Portsmouth, Dover, Liverpool, and, on two separate occasions, over Cardiff. Their course has never been traced. They have hovered at a given spot and then have disappeared. That circumstances not only gives a surreptitious air to their visits, but raises an unpleasant suspicion that these visits may be more frequent than we know.
    "This aerial espionage, of unknown extent and minuteness, is an intrusion which we have a right to resent. Its motives are not likely to be friendly, nor can we flatter ourselves that the beauty of the bird's-eye view of our ports is so great as to lead foreigners to spend so much money in order to derive aesthetic gratification from it."
    Col. Seely in the House of Commons yesterday, replying to a question, said that Germany possessed five military airships of the rigid type and large size, capable of being safely used at night and of carrying and discharging quantities of high explosives on to British docks, ships, and magazine stores. He said it was undesirable to make public the steps that had been and were being taken to guard against possible dangers of the kind.
    A number of sky guns designed for firing at air craft were ordered by the Government some time ago. These are to be fixed at various points on the coast in order to carry out the new law, but it is suggested that to rely on the use of guns against airships is very like the plan to catch birds by putting salt on their tails.