We know that two guns have beaten off two large ships with great loss. Had Nelson been here with thirty English ships he would have blockaded the gulf for years, without thinking of attacking such fortresses to get at ships inside. Brest, Toulon, and Cadiz were probably much weaker than these places.... I suppose there will be an outcry at home about doing nothing here, but we might as well try to reach the moon. But the Navy has never left the Belgian coast secure from attack. It has never lost its aggressive spirit. It has attacked from the ship and the air. The seaplanes of the Royal Naval Air Service spotted for the guns when the monitors were bombarding. Bombs have repeatedly been dropped on Ostend, Zeebrugge, and the places in the rear. When the guns were silent there were reasons for it. A conjoint naval and military expedition was required. The enemy began to feel his hold on the coast precarious. Continued operations by sea and land might compel him to relax his grasp. Ships may not attack places defended by big guns, mine-fields, and submarines and destroyers issuing from secret passages through them, but it is certain the British naval offensive will never be paralysed. Such is the magnificent work of the British Navy in blockading the German Fleet, molesting the enemy’s coast positions, and controlling his communications with the oceans. The commercial blockade, by which the enemy’s supplies and commodities are cut off and his exports paralysed, is too large a subject to be dealt with here. The object is to bring the full measure of sea-power to bear in crushing the national life of the enemy. It is vital but “silent” work of the Navy, and does not lend itself to discussion or description. Questions of contraband and the right and method of search, which arise from the blockade, caused discussions with the United States before the States came into the war. The only object of the British Navy and the Foreign Office was to put an end to the transit of the enemy’s commodities, and to do so with the utmost consideration for the interests of neutrals, and complete protection for the lives of the officers and crews in their ships and in the examining ships. For these reasons neutral vessels were taken into port for examination, safe from the attentions of the enemy’s submarines. One great hope of the Germans was that the neutrals would become more and more exasperated with England. They remembered that the war of 1812 arose from this very cause. But they were completely disappointed in all such hopes, and they themselves, by interfering with the free navigation of other countries, brought the United States into the war against them.