The recovery of Lille and Ostend on Thursday week, as
a conse- quence of the Allied victories in Flanders, was swiftly followed last Saturday by the entry of the Belgian troops into Bruges and Zeebrugge, while the French captured Thielt and the Second Army took Courtrai. The enemy fell back to the Lys, abandoning or destroying in his Right from the coast the many heavy guns with which he had defended his Flemish submarine bases. The German destroyers at Zeebrugge had escaped, by hugging the Dutch coast on a dark add stormy night. The submarines were removed inland or blown up. Admiral von Tirpitz's dreams of retaining Flanders as a permanent menace to our sea-power vanished into thin air. The task of our Navy is greatly simplified by the enemy's lose of Zeebrugge and Ostend. The Dover and Dunkirk Patrols will no longer have to watch for enemy destroyers making sudden dashes into the Straits. The enemy submarines must now use their home pert; on either side of the Danish Peninsula. Germany has only two.gateways to the sea instead of three.
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