I was from the beginning very anxious to do everything that could be done out of our slender resources to aid the Belgian King and nation to maintain their stronghold, and such small items as the Admiralty could spare in guns and ammunition were freely sent. The reports which we received from Antwerp and the telegrams of the Belgian Government already at the beginning of September began to cause me deep concern. So also did the question of the Scheldt, whose free navigation both for troops and munitions seemed vital to the Belgian people. I thought that Antwerp should be made to play its part in the first phase of the war by keeping as many German troops as possible out of the great battle. If the Belgian Army defending the city could be strengthened by British troops, not only would the defence be invigorated, but the Germans would be continually apprehensive of a British inroad upon them from this direction, the deadliness of which Lord Roberts’s strategic instinct had so clearly appreciated. It was true that we had no troops in England fit to manœuvre in the field against the enemy. But the defence of the fortified lines of Antwerp was a task in which British Territorial troops might well have played their part. Accordingly on September 7 I sent a memorandum to the Prime Minister, Sir Edward Grey and Lord Kitchener emphasising the importance of Antwerp, particularly from the naval standpoint:— [Illustration: ANTWERP and the Belgian Coast 1914] ‘The Admiralty view the sustained and effective defence of Antwerp as a matter of high consequence. It preserves the life of the Belgian nation: it safeguards a strategic point which, if captured, would be of the utmost menace.’ In order to save Antwerp, two things were necessary: first, effective defence of the fortress line; and second, free uninterrupted communication with the sea. The first was tolerably well provided for by the Belgian Army which could easily be reinforced by British Territorial troops. But the second essential, the free communication with the sea, was a larger matter, and in it were involved our relations with the Dutch. I proposed that we should request the Dutch Government to give a free passage up the Scheldt to Antwerp for whatever troops and supplies were needed. I pointed out further that it was impossible to try to supply an army at Antwerp by Ostend and Ghent; that the appeals which the Belgians were then making to us to send 25,000 troops to co-operate with an equal number of Belgian troops for the purpose of keeping open the line Antwerp-St. Nicholas-Ghent-Bruges-Ostend was a counsel of despair.