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General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1922 Original Publisher: Houghton Mifflin company Subjects: Zeebrugge-Ostend Raids, 1918 Zeebrugge History / Europe / Western History / Military / General History / Military / World War I History / Military / World War II Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV PAST EXPERIENCE. SMOKE SCREENS. THE CHANCES OF SUCCESS WHAT were the chances of success? The lessons of personal experience and of past history are the chief guides when calculating the probability of success in any operation. He who ignores history acts unwisely. He who studies history and proposes to attempt something which has always failed hitherto either may be excessively foolish or may be aware of a new factor affecting the situation. He may be merely flying in the face of Providence or basing new proposals on a well-considered judgment of the new circumstances. Naval history contains a few examples of operations somewhat analogous to that under investigation. The more noted are the attacks on Martinique in 1794, on Teneriffe in 1797, the attack on Ostende in 1798, the cutting out of the Hermione from Puerto Cabello in 1799, the sinking of the American steamer Merrimac at Santiago de Cuba in 1898, the Japanese attempts to block the entrance to Port Arthur in 1904, and, during the late war, the attempt to block the Rufigi River by a British collier in November, 1914. In none of these cases were the conditions quite parallel to those at Zeebrugge and Ostende, but some features of each bore a certain similarity. The attacks on Martinique and Puerto CabelloANALOGOUS OPERATIONS 55 showed the great value of determination and initiative in the face of powerful shore d...