Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Ostend and Zeebrugge: April 23: May 10, 1918; The Dispatches of Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, K. C. B., K. C. V. O., And Other Narratives of the Operations
Admiral Togo's failure to block Port Arthur and place the Russian Fleet out of action in February - May 1904 provided a classic example of the axiom. But in and after 1914 the military situation made a co-operative expedition impossible. On the earliest stroke of war the British Army, 'contemptible' in numbers but in domitable in efficiency and bearing, was called on to participate in the defence of France's soil against the invader. The interests of the whole Alliance, and not merely France herself, demanded that the industrial areas of France and Belgium and their populations should be rescued from the enemy before the battle line settled down to equilibrium. At the same time Britain was deeply pledged to protect Belgium and her neutrality. To regain her lost seaports was not less an urgent duty because it was prescribed impera tively by our own maritime interests. But the military forces the operation called for were needed elsewhere. In 1915, in addition to the Western front, Egypt, Gallipoli, and Mesopotamia made heavy calls upon the British armies. In 1916 Germany's formidable but fruit less attacks upon Verdun pinned them to the Somme and the Ancre. The Russian Revolution, which began in March 1917 and preluded the collapse of our Eastern ally, set free a vast number of German and Austrian troops, and threatened to give the Central Powers at length a decision on the Western front. If plans for a joint operation against the Belgian ports were formed, they were perforce abandoned. It behoved the Navy to act alone.
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