I think it is right to put this forward as the most important aspect of a significant, stirring, and successful enterprise. It is the most important because the news meant so very much more than that Zeebrügge was blocked, that Ostend was crippled, and that an expedition--at first sight perilous beyond conception--had been carried through with losses altogether disproportionate, either to its dangers or to the results achieved. The news meant that a new direction either had been, or certainly can, and therefore must, now be given to our naval policy. In the spring of 1917 sceptics were asking if the Army could win the war before the Navy lost it. Why, they said, if our land forces can force a way through what we were told were impregnable fortifications, should the greatest sea force in the world be impotent against an enemy who slinks behind his forts with his surface craft, while devastating our sea communications with his submarines? Is naval ingenuity, they asked, so crippled that we can neither protect our trade against the submarine at sea, nor block the enemy’s ports so that the submarine can never get to sea? The critics replied that all was well with the Navy, but that all was sadly wrong with its official chiefs. The reorganization of the Admiralty was immediately followed by the adoption of the convoy principle--and submarine losses were reduced to half. This long-advocated measure, the recently inaugurated barrage at Dover, and now the events of the morning of April 23, have justified the critics and the changes in method and men which they urged. Zeebrügge had been in the enemy’s hands since September, 1914, and it took us three and a half years, not to discover a man capable of attacking it, but in developing an Admiralty capable of picking the man and giving him the right support before the attack could be made. If a similar spirit had actuated a properly constituted Admiralty all these years, what might not the Navy have accomplished?