Such was the conclusion, just as day was breaking, of three unique operations, in that almost every branch of modern science had been laid under contribution for their carrying out. The chemist, the engineer, the pyrotechnician—each had been indispensable to the final success, and yet in no undertakings of the naval campaign had the human factor more palpably triumphed.
Drawn from the Grand Fleet, with Admiral Beatty's warm support, from the forces at Harwick and the Dover Patrol, from the three Home Depots, the Royal Marine Light Infantry, and the Royal Marine Artillery, the volunteers had also included representatives of the Australian and French navies; while the Admiralty experimental stations at Stratford and Dover had contributed eager participants. As to the material results, in the case of Zeebrugge's these alone had been well worth attaining. More than a score of torpedo-craft and a dozen submarines were at once, and for many days afterward, immobilized; while the enemy's naval activities, dependent on this port, remained seriously hampered till the end of the war. As regarded Ostend, while the material results were not very great, this was also the less important harbour, and the moral effect of the two attacks was both immediate and profound. Up to the very eve, indeed, of the great retirement, so nervous of future operations did the enemy remain, that two of his divisions were pinned to the coast in view of possible developments, while money and material were poured like water into the further strengthening of its defences.
CHAPTER XI
THE COMING OF THE AMERICANS
These were the stars that they followed.
Eastward returning,
The stars of the old sailors
Steadily burning.
Fearlessness, loyalty, liberty,
These and none others
Shone in the eyes that they turned to us,
Eyes of our brothers.
Among the minor casualties of the war was the disappearance of newspaper contents bills; and it was chalked upon a paving-stone in Holborn, as doubtless upon other paving-stones elsewhere, that a little group of people read the most momentous tidings that had reached London since the days of Elizabeth. That to a certain extent they were not unexpected; that since the Lusitania went down they had perhaps been inevitable—the three words, scribbled by the newspaper vendor, America Declares War, were none the less thrilling. All that lay dormant in them had not yet been revealed; but, even at the time, they were sufficiently overwhelming. For they not only meant that a great people, recruited from almost every nation on earth, had spoken its final and unanimous endorsement of all that Britain and her Allies were shedding their blood for; they not only meant that America had come into the ring on the side of chivalry and clean fighting; but they meant the reconciling, with its infinite implications, of two great branches of one family, each with liberty at the very core of every movement of its policy, and both inheritors of the common tongue of Shakespeare, Milton, and Bunyan.
Of the progressive steps by which the American nation moved from a position of neutrality to one of intervention, this is not the place to give the history. Deeply, and most understandably, reluctant to interfere in the affairs of Europe, it was not until he had judged that the people as a whole—no less on the prairies of Dakota than in the parlours of Boston—had realized the issue as supra-European, did President Wilson voice the great decision. With an extraordinary patience, severely criticized not only abroad but at home, he had refused to allow any incident, however provocative, to become the casus belli for the United States until the essential evil, of which it was but a symptom, was recognized and repudiated beyond the last doubt; and, although diplomatic relations were broken off in February, on Germany's declaration of unrestricted submarine murder, it was not until April 6, 1917, that war was finally declared.