protect each fresco; as a building it reminds one of a German student padded for a duel.  The Doge’s Palace, too, is more hidden with scaffolding than it could have been when it was being built; each of those delicate columns of different design is set around with a stout palisade of timber balks.  Venice, indeed, looks like a drawing-room with the dust-sheets on the furniture and the chandeliers in bags, and to complete the parallel, the family is going away before one’s eyes.

Sad days for Italy, days unimaginable a month ago.  There must, indeed, be virtue in the Allies’ cause since such ordeals as these still leave our courage high.

Copyright, Century, March, 1918.

* * * * *

The bottling up of the Harbor of Zeebrugge and the attempted closing of the Harbor of Ostend formed what was probably the most brilliant single naval exploit of the war.  These daring and successful attempts are described in the narrative following.

BOTTLING UP ZEEBRUGGE AND OSTEND

THE OFFICIAL NARRATIVE

[Sidenote:  The Vindictive as she lies in Ostend Harbor.]

Those who recall High Wood upon the Somme—­and they must be many, as it was after the battles of 1916—­may easily figure to themselves the decks of H.M.S. Vindictive as she lies to-day, a stark, black profile, against the sea haze of the harbor amid the stripped, trim shapes of the fighting ships which throng these waters.  That wilderness of debris, that litter of the used and broken tools of war, lavish ruin and that prodigal evidence of death and battle, are as obvious and plentiful here as there.  The ruined tank nosing at the stout tree which stopped it has its parallel in the flame-thrower hut at the port wing of Vindictive’s bridge, its iron sides freckled with rents from machine-gun bullets and shell-splinters; the tall white cross which commemorates the martyrdom of the Londoners is sister to the dingy, pierced White Ensign which floated over the fight of the Zeebrugge Mole.

[Sidenote:  The Iris and the Daffodil which shared the honors.]

Looking aft from the chaos of her wrecked bridge, one sees, snug against their wharf, the heroic bourgeois shapes of the two Liverpool ferry-boats (their captains’ quarters are still labelled “Ladies Only”) Iris and Daffodil, which shared with Vindictive the honors and ardors of the fight.  The epic of their achievement shapes itself in the light of that view across the scarred and littered decks, in that environment of gray water and great still ships.

[Sidenote:  The three cruisers that were sunk at Zeebrugge.]