her they have spent these
unhappy years in exile, or, an even harder fate, have spent them in
their own country, they will be able to look back upon this time of
cruel and unexampled trial, and they will say to themselves, to their
children and to their descendants, that Belgium, though her existence as
a political entity is less than a century, has within that period shown
an example of courage, constancy and virtue to mankind for which all the
world should be grateful."

The English Foreign Minister was perhaps not prophesying. He knew
something of what was coming. The Great Offensive which was to free
Belgium of her German oppressor was already under way. The first move,
however, was not upon land, but upon the sea. In the autumn of 1914 the
little Belgian port of Zeebrugge, with the neighboring port of Ostend,
was captured by the Germans. The Germans, who had already seized the
shipbuilding plants at Antwerp, then began to build submarines, and sent
them down the canals through Bruges to Zeebrugge and Ostend. From these
ports they proceeded to attack the English commerce.

In the spring of 1918 submarine attacks on English shipping were so
serious that England was using every possible effort to destroy these
piratical craft, and it was determined to make an attempt to block the
entrances to the canals at Zeebrugge and at Ostend, by sinking old ships
in the channels.

The expedition took place during the night of April 22d, under the
command of Vice-Admiral Sir Roger Keyes. Six obsolete British cruisers
took part in the expedition. These were the Brilliant, Iphigenia,
Sirius, Intrepid, Thetis and Vindictive. The Vindictive carried storming
parties to destroy the stone mole at Zeebrugge; the remaining five
cruisers were filled with concrete, and it was intended that they should
be sunk in the entrances of the two ports. A large force of monitors and
small fast craft accompanied the expedition. An observer thus describes
the heroic exploit:

The night was overcast and there was a drifting haze. Down the coast a
great searchlight swung its beam to and fro in the small wind and short
sea. From the Vindictive's bridge, as she headed in toward the mole,
there was scarcely a glimmer of light to be seen shoreward. Ahead as she
drove through the water rolled the smoke screen, her cloak of
invisibility, wrapped about her by small craft. This was the device of
Wing-Commander Brock, without which, acknowledged the Admiral in