Already our fleets are closing the doors of the world upon our enemies, and keeping them wide open for the resources that will feed our victory. As yet it is nothing; but hour by hour we forge a new lock. When Germany and her allies, foaming with rage in the prison to which our ships are the bars, suffer the tortures of famine; when the one hundred and ten millions of Germans, howling at death’s door, demand pity, and beg a bit of bread, when this menagerie tears itself to pieces in the struggle for food; when revolt, insurrection, and the frenzy of civil war shake to its foundations this manufactory of murder; then, Russia, England and France will let loose their bulldogs and their tamers. From their bridges the marines will hear the footsteps of the soldiers’ charge and the barkings of their 75’s. Their hearts will leap with joy, and, gazing at the sea, the companion of evil days and luminous sunrises, they will say to her: “It is we two together who have made it possible for all this to happen.” Why does my vision wander to those happy days, our recompense? Is it because of the contrasting melancholy of winter? Or else, have I not been conducted thither by a natural path, through the letters of comrades, the illustrious marine fusiliers in Belgium? Since their wounds have got better through hospital treatment and convalescence, they have commenced writing again. Nearly all my friends over there are dead. Those who remain describe in simple language the trip to Antwerp, the return in the horror of the conflict, the resistance so savage that our enemies will never acknowledge that it was this handful of brave men who blocked their rush. History will reward these officers, these sailor-soldiers whom we knew on the deck of the men-of-war. Where they have been, we should all like to have fought. The entire “naval army” is jealous of this naval brigade. Exiled from the sea, they were acquainted with the cyclones of the struggle. Separated from the hurricanes at sea, they did not lower their heads before the mysterious thunderstorms of the Yser and Flanders. They paid the price of their courage in a terrific hecatomb; the barrier where the German invasion was stopped is built on blue collars and red pompons.