Ostend

Just before this change took place, Marshal Haig had proposed that the French take over some of the southern part of the British line, so that he could have more British troops to use in an attack which he wanted to make in the north near Ypres.

After this attack was over, he proposed that the French take over still more of the British line in the south, so that he could attack in the north in Belgium for the purpose of capturing the ports of Ostend and Zeebrugge.

The British proposition meant that instead of a combined attack being made against the German army, the French were to subordinate their actions to a British attack which had for its purpose not the destruction of the German army, but the capture of seaports being used by the German submarines.

In other words, the strategy on the Western Front was to be twisted from its proper purpose of winning the war through the destruction of the German army to the minor purpose of capturing enemy naval bases in order to help suppress the submarines which were operating in the waters around England.

In the office, they rather thought Jevons was in Belgium.

They'd had a manuscript from him posted at Ostend.

They looked up the date.

It was three days ago.

I sailed that night for Ostend.

Of course, I had no business to follow Jevons.

He had a perfect right to travel, to travel anywhere he liked, without interference from anybody.

It's all right, I said.

It was her origin, the condition of her continuance, her protection, her plague, and her supporter.

Among other circumstances, the siege of Ostend proves how truly this was the case.

It held at bay the weapons of the whole Spanish army, even under the command of a spinola beneath its walls, for three years and three months.

What an inestimable advantage for the young and feeble state!

If Luxembourg pushed on, all was lost.

Louvain must fall, and Mecklen, Neuport, and Ostend.

The Batavian frontier would be in danger.

The cry for peace throughout Holland might be such as neither States General nor Stadtholder would be able to resist.

CHAPTER XX.

in the first place the whigs were on principle attached to the reigning dynasty in their view the revolution had been not merely necessary not merely justifiable but happy and glorious it had been the triumph of their political theory when they swore allegiance to william they swore without scruple or reservation and they were so far from having any doubt about his title that they thought it the best of all titles the tories on the other hand very generally disapproved of that vote of the convention which had placed him on the throne some of them were at heart jacobites and had taken the oath of allegiance to him only that they might be able to injure him others though they thought it their duty to obey him as king in fact denied that he was king by right and if they were loyal to him were loyal without enthusiasm there could therefore be little doubt on which of the two parties it would be safer for him to rely in the second place as to the particular matter on which his heart was at present set the whigs were as a body prepared to support him strenuously and the tories were as a body inclined to thwart him the minds of men were at this time much occupied by the question in what way the war ought to be carried on to that question the two parties returned very different answers an opinion had during many months been growing among the tories that the policy of England ought to be strictly insular, and that she ought to leave the defence of Flanders and the Rhines to the States General, the House of Austria, and the Princes of the Empire, that she ought to carry on hostilities with vigour by sea, but to keep up only such an army as might, with the help of the militia, be sufficient to repel an invasion.

it was plain that if this system were adopted there might be an immediate reduction of the taxes which pressed most heavily on the nation but the whigs maintained that this relief would be dearly purchased many thousands of brave english soldiers were now in flanders yet the allies had not been able to prevent the french from taking mons in sixteen ninety one no more in sixteen ninety two char in sixteen ninety three If the English troops were withdrawn, it was certain that Ostend, Ghent, Liège, Brussels would fall.

The German princes would hasten to make peace, each for himself.