At the signal, two motor-boats, commanded respectively by Lieutenant Darrel Reid, R.N.R., and Lieutenant A. L. Poland, torpedoed the two ends of the wooden piers at Ostend. Both piers went up with a roar; and at the same moment, the guns opened; an aeroplane dropped a fire-signal; and the aircraft began to drop bombs as the shells from the monitors came hurling through the dark. The surprise of the enemy was complete.

He opened fire from all his heavy batteries and sent up starshells and green fires. At this supreme moment, there stole upon the smoke-fog a real sea-fog, so dense that at this critical moment the crew of the Vindictive could not see the powerful flares burned by her escorting motor-boats to guide her to the harbour mouth.

Vindictive, close to the harbour mouth and unable to make it, groped for it in gross darkness. Acting-Lieutenant G. L. Cockburn, in motor-boat 22, dashed into the harbour mouth under heavy fire, and lit a flare between the ruined piers. Vindictive steamed over it, a mark for every gun. Hull and upper works were struck and shattered. Sub-Lieutenant A. H. MacLachlan was killed. Commander Godsal and the other officers went into the conningtower. Commander Godsal came out the better to con the ship, and just as she was swinging across the entrance a shell exploded on the conning-tower, killing the Commander, and stunning Lieutenant Alleyne. Lieutenant Crutchley took command, got the ship hard and fast across the channel, ordered abandon ship, and blew the charges. The ship sank about six feet and rested on the bottom.

Petty Officer Reed dragged the unconscious Alleyne from the conning-tower and carried him aft under a murderous fire. Alleyne was hit, fell into the water, and was picked up by a motorboat, commanded by Lieutenant Bourke, R.N.V.R., who also rescued two more wounded men. The rest of the crew were taken off by Lieutenant G. H. Drummond, R.N.V.R. who was severely wounded. His second in command, Lieutenant G. Ross, R.N.V.R., and a seaman were killed. The launch was so damaged that when the wounded and the crew had been transhipped from her to Warwick, she was sunk.

The bones of the fighting Vindictive block the harbour against all vessels except small craft. To praise the skill and gallantry of the adventure would be impertinent. Such deeds are immortal.

Easy gentlemen in clubs ask if these expeditions" were successful," and reach for a cigar. The question implies that scepticism of the superior mind which chooses to withhold credence from Admiralty announcements. They may lay their doubts to rest. The British Admiralty always tells less than the truth, and by habit and tradition would prefer to tell nothing at all. The custom was well enough in the days when England owned a

Government that governed. But in these days the people must fight for themselves, and they must therefore be informed.

The two operations, in fact, were wholly successful. The canal mouth at Zeebrugge is closed, Ostend Harbour is blocked. Neither port can be used save for small craft. The German Flanders Submarine Flotilla is shut out from two of its main bases. More the moral effect produced upon the Germans is considerable; and in war, moral is the decisive factor. Germany has received another instruction in the quality of British seamen, who achieved a feat which the Germans would not even contemplate achieving. There is a virtue in these desperate exploits transcending material results, and justifying the sad expenditure of so many of the best lives in England. England needs not to mourn for her fallen; for, as a certain great lady wrote of the death of Nelson, In such a death there is no sting, and in such a grave, everlasting victory"; though England may well mourn her own loss.

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And here a word may be said for the widows and orphans of the fallen, and for the families of the wounded. The State pensions and grants are utterly inadequate. In this matter, as in others, the public must act for themselves and see to it that the children of officers and men are rightly provided. There are several ways of making that provision. The present writer happens to be connected with the raising of funds for the Royal School for Naval and Marine Officers' Daughters, Twickenham. Provision for education, and the independence education confers, is the best of all.

L. COPE CORNFORD

ANOTHER STUDY OF THE GERMAN

AS HE IS *

[The deplorable attitude of the British Authorities-whoever and wherever they may be towards the maltreatment of our unfortunate Prisoners of War in the hands of the German fiend, is universally condemned and must obviously be reconsidered. A change is long overdue. One aspect of that attitude has been, as the chief Government organ, the Times, complains, "the bottling up" of the facts. There has been the utmost official and semi-official discouragement of the discussion of these horrors. For this policy there can be no shadow of any military justification as the greater the knowledge of the truth the greater the gain from the fighting point of view. We are therefore driven to the disagreeable conclusion that like most otherwise inexplicable incidents in this extraordinary war the Government must have been animated by some motive which would seem less satisfactory to the rest of the community than it is to themselves. We suspect that in so far as the conduct was not due to that crass idiocy rampant in many Departments, it was part of the general policy of damping down public indignation against the enemy as calculated to interfere with that ultimate" selling of the pass" for which prominent statesmen are already preparing us.

Although the Authorities have been able to limit publicity of the facts concerning Prisoners of War, which would have made the very best Propaganda, they have not succeeded in suppressing everything. From time to time we get a poignant document from Mr. Justice Younger's Committee disclosing enough to enable us to guess the rest. We reproduce the last of these textually from the White Paper in which it was published, and we earnestly entreat our readers to master its contents and to pledge themselves that, War Cabinet or no War Cabinet, Germany must suffer for such crimes. It is idle to talk "the triumph of Right over Might," of "the vindication of International Law," of" Leagues to Enforce Peace," if deliberate, calcu

* "Report [by Mr. Justice Younger's Committee] on the Treatment by the Enemy of British Prisoners of War behind the Firing-lines in France and Belgium "-presented to both Houses of Parliament, April 1918.

lated, cold-blooded, gratuitous cruelty is to be ignored. Peace without Punishment would be the greatest triumph of wickedness since the creation of this none too virtuous world.-EDITOR, National Review.]

THE detention and employment by the German armies behind their firing-line in Belgium and France of British N.C.O.'s and men captured on the Western Front has brought upon these prisoners an amount of unjustifiable suffering for which a parallel would be hard to find in the history, tragic in so many of its incidents as that history has been, of the treatment by the enemy of their prisoners during this war.

The evidence on the subject rapidly accumulates, although the story is not yet completely known. In full detail it will not be ascertainable until after the close of hostilities. And this for several reasons. As is well known, both American and Dutch visits to prisoners in occupied districts have always been strictly forbidden by the German Command. The actual condition of the men there has accordingly throughout been hidden from neutral eyes. Again, it has only been slowly that information from other quarters has gradually filtered through to this country. At this no surprise need be felt, for reasons that are obvious. That information, however, has now become comprehensive, and it is especially striking in this, that coming as it does from every kind of independent source, all of it conveys the same impression of acute and prolonged suffering.

Accordingly the Committee are satisfied that they are at length in a position to present this Report to His Majesty's Government with confidence that it may be relied upon.

And being so satisfied, the Committee are convinced that such a Report ought no longer to be delayed. Their regret is that they have not been in a position to present it earlier. It is right in their view that the authorities should have before them at the earliest possible moment summarized statements as to the treatment of British prisoners behind the enemy fronts both on the West and the East. This Report the Committee have thought it well to submit first. A Report on the Eastern Front they have now in preparation. It is convenient to deal with the two aspects of the subjects separately.

And there is now no doubt in the minds of the Committee that as early, at the latest, as the month of August 1916 the German Command, under conditions to be described later, were systematically employing their British as well as other prisoners in forced labour close behind the Western firing-line, thereby deliberately, it must be so said, exposing them to the fire of the guns of their own and Allied armies.

This fact has never been acknowledged by the German Govern

ment. On the contrary, it has always been studiously concealed. But that the Germans are chargeable even from that early date with inflicting the physical cruelty and the mental torture inherent in such a practice can no longer be doubted.

Characteristically in this case, as in so many similar instances, when conduct in itself incapable of justification could no longer be concealed, the official German apologist has sought to gloss over or excuse the practice by asserting that Germany was driven to it by way of retaliation for something as bad charged by her against her enemies. In this instance the excuse put forward has been that this treatment, not apparently suggested to be otherwise defensible, was forced upon the German Command as a reprisal for what was asserted to be the fact-namely, that German prisoners in British hands had at some time or other been kept less than 30 kilometres (how much less does not appear) behind the British firing-line in France.

Even if to any extent well founded, that excuse would be no justification for the calculated brutality of the so-called reprisals actually adopted. But in truth the excuse itself will not bear examination.

In the dispatch in which the assertion just mentioned was first made, and the so-called reprisal first foreshadowed-a dispatch dated January 24, 1917-the German Government affirmed that in the French and Belgian territories occupied by German troops no British prisoners of war had hitherto been detained for any considerable time, with the exception of the sick and wounded undergoing treatment in hospitals and the prisoners employed in the hospital services. This statement was quite unfounded. These prisoners in great number, with other prisoners from the Allied armies, had already for months been detained at work immediately behind the German lines in both France and Belgium.

Furthermore, at the end of April 1917 an agreement was definitely concluded between the British and German Governments that prisoners of war should not on either side be employed within 30 kilometres of the firing-line. Nevertheless the German Command continued without intermission so to employ their British prisoners, under the inhuman conditions stated in this Report. And that certainly until the end of 1917--it may be even until now--although it has never even been suggested by the German authorities, so far as the Committee are aware, that the 30 kilometres limit agreed upon has not been scrupulously observed by the British Command in the letter as well as in the spirit.

Indeed, the German excuse is too specious to be worthy of serious refutation. It would not have been mentioned at all in this place had it not been for the fact that it is embodied in different