To give further publicity I announced in the House of Commons that a British force had begun landing at Ostend. The Marines remained on shore for the best part of a week and were then withdrawn. The old battleships and cruisers which covered them were no doubt in more danger from submarines than we thought at the time, but no mishap occurred; nor was there any loss ashore or afloat. There was no means at the time of knowing whether this petty operation exercised any appreciable influence on German movements. We now know that it was certainly a factor. The Head of the Operations Branch of the German General Staff in his narrative shows that the news of this landing reached Main Headquarters on August 30. He says:— ‘One day countless British troops were said to have landed at Ostend and to be marching on Antwerp; on another that there were about to be great sorties from Antwerp. Even landings of Russian troops, 80,000 men, at Ostend were mentioned. At Ostend a great entrenched camp for the English was in preparation.’ General Dupont, the French Director of Military Intelligence, goes much further and ranks the Belgian sortie as a culminating element in the German decision to make a general retreat, taken on September 10.[61] An unbroken chain of events drew the Admiralty again to the Belgian Coast; and to explain this a digression is necessary. Before the war the British air force was divided into the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service, the former of which were to be concerned with aeroplanes and the latter with hydro-aeroplanes, or seaplanes as I christened them for short. The War Office claimed on behalf of the Royal Flying Corps complete and sole responsibility for the aerial defence of Great Britain. But owing to the difficulties of getting money, they were unable to make any provision for this responsibility, every aeroplane they had being earmarked for the Expeditionary Force. Seeing this and finding myself able to procure funds by various shifts and devices, I began in 1912 and 1913, to form under the Royal Naval Air Service flights of aeroplanes as well as of seaplanes for the aerial protection of our naval harbours, oil tanks and vulnerable points, and also for a general strengthening of our exiguous and inadequate aviation. In consequence I had in my own hand on the eve of the war fifty efficient naval machines, or about one-third of the number in possession of the Army. The War Office viewed this development with disfavour, and claimed that they alone should be charged with the responsibility for home defence. When asked how they proposed to discharge this duty, they admitted sorrowfully that they had not got the machines and could not get the money. They adhered however to the principle.