The attack on Zeebrügge and the two successive attacks on Ostend, carefully planned and boldly and resolutely carried out, achieved a very high measure of success. It was natural enough, on the first receipt of the news, that we should all have been carried away by our wonder and admiration at the astonishing heroism that made it possible to carry through so intricate a series of operations, when every soul engaged was seemingly aware of the desperate character of the enterprise, when no one could have expected to return alive, when the enemy’s means seemed ample, not only for the killing of everyone engaged, but for the immediate frustration of every object that they had in view, and so made most of the astounding gallantry and daring of all concerned. For over four years now we have had a constant recurrence of such feats of courage, and repetition does not lessen their power to intoxicate us with an overwhelming admiration of those who are the heroes of these great adventures. But we should be misconceiving the significance of these events if we were to measure their importance either by the ordered daring of those engaged, or by their successful execution, or by their immediate military results, great and far-reaching as these were. The thing was more important as affording conclusive evidence that the British Navy, as inspired and directed from headquarters, had now abandoned the purely defensive rôle assigned to it by ten years of pre-war, and three and a half years of war, administration. It meant that the Fleet had escaped from those counsels of timorous--because unimaginative and ignorant--caution, which had checked its ardour and limited its activities since August, 1914. The effect may be incalculable. The doctrine that every operation which involved the risk of losing men or ships must necessarily be too hazardous to undertake, was thus shown to be no longer the loadstone of Whitehall’s policy. The Navy was at last set free to act on an older and a better tradition. It is indeed on this tradition that on almost every occasion the Navy has, in fact, acted when it got a chance. When _Swift_ and _Broke_ tackled three times their number of enemy last year, and _Botha_ and _Morris_ six times their number this year, the gallant captains of these gallant vessels did not wait to ask if the position of their ships was “critical” or otherwise; but, with an insight into the true defensive value of attack--which, seemingly, it is the privilege only of the most valorous to possess--went straight for their enemies, fought overwhelming odds at close quarters, and came out as victorious as a rightly reasoned calculation would have shown to be probable.