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Title: Memories by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher
Author: Fisher, John
Language: English
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[Illustration: (cover)]
MEMORIES
[Illustration:
[_Portrait by J. C. Beresford._
LORD FISHER, 1917.
Admiral of the Fleet.]
MEMORIES
BY
ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET
LORD FISHER
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMXIX
_Readers of this book will quickly observe that Admiral of the Fleet
Lord Fisher has small faith in the printed word; and those who have
enjoyed the privilege of having “his fist shaken in their faces” will
readily admit that the printed word, though faithfully taken down from
his dictation, must lack a large measure of the power--the “aroma,” as
he calls it--which his personality lends to his spoken word._
_Had Lord Fisher been allowed his own way, there would have been no
Book. Not for the first time in his career, the need of serving his
country and his country’s Navy has over-ridden his personal feeling.
These “Memories,” therefore, must be regarded as a compromise (“the
beastliest word in the English language”--see “The Times” of September
9th, 1919) between the No-Book of Lord Fisher’s inclination and the
orderly, complete Autobiography which the public wishes to possess._
_The book consists in the main of the author’s_ ipsissima verba,
_dictated during the month of September, 1919. One or two chapters
have been put together from fugitive writings which Lord Fisher had
collected and printed (in noble and eloquently various type) as a gift
to his friends after his death. The discreeter passages of the letters
which he wrote to Lord Esher between 1903 and 1912 illustrate some
portions of the life’s work which--caring little for the past and much
for the future,[1] much for the idea and little for the fact--Lord
Fisher has successfully declined to describe in his own words._
_Preamble_
There is no plan nor sequence! Just as the thoughts have arisen so
have they been written or dictated! The spoken word has not been
amended--better the fragrance of the fresh picked flower than trying
to get more scent out of it by adding hot water afterwards! Also it is
more life-like to have the first impulse of the heart than vainly to
endeavour after studied phrases! Perhaps the only curiosity is that I
begin my life backwards and leave my birth and being weaned till the
end!
“_=The last shall be first=_” is good for Autobiography!
I think a text is a good thing! So I adopt the following (from R. L.
Stevenson) as being nice for the young ones to read what follows:--
To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little and to spend a little
less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to
renounce when that shall be necessary, and not be embittered, to
keep a few friends _but those without capitulation_, above all on
the same grim condition to keep friends with himself, here is a
task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.
PREFACE
Not long ago a gentleman enclosed me the manuscript of his book, and
asked me for a preface. I had never heard of him. He reminded me of
Mark Twain in a similar case--the gentleman in a postscript asked Mr.
Twain if he found fish good for the brain; he had been recommended it,
he said. Twain replied, Yes! and he suggested his correspondent having
whales for breakfast!
One gentleman sent me a cheque for two thousand guineas, and asked
me to let him have a short article, on any subject. I returned the
cheque--I had never heard of him either. I have had some most generous
offers from publishers.
Sir George Reid said to me: “Never write an Autobiography. You only
know one view of yourself--others see you all round.” But I don’t see
any harm in such “Memories” as I now indite! In regard to Sir G. Reid’s
observation, there’s one side no one else can see, and that’s “_the
inside!_”
Nothing in this Volume in the least approaches the idea of a Biography.
Facts illumined by letters, and the life divided into sections, to be
filled in with the struggles of the ascent, seems the ideal sort of
representation of a man’s life. A friend once wrote me the requisites
of a biographer. Three qualifications were:
(_a_) Plenty of time for the job.
(_b_) A keen appreciation of the work done.
(_c_) A devotion to the Hero.
And, as if it didn’t so much matter, he added--the biographer should
possess a high standard of literary ability.
But yet I believe that the vindication of a man’s lifework is almost
an impossible task for even the most intimate of friends or the most
assiduous and talented of Biographers, simply because they cannot
possibly appreciate how great deeds have been belittled and ravaged by
small contemporary men. These yelping curs made the most noise, as the
empty barrels do! and it’s only long afterwards that the truth emerges
out of the mist of obloquy and becomes history.
Remember it’s only in this century that Nelson has come into his own.
FISHER.
* * * * *
“Sworn to no Party--Of no Sect am I!
I can’t be silent and I will not lie!”
* * * * *
“Time and the Ocean and some Guiding Star
In High Cabal have made us what we are!”
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
KING EDWARD VII 1
CHAPTER II
“THE MOON SWAYS OCEANS AND PROVOKES THE HOUND” 22
CHAPTER III
ADMIRAL VON POHL AND ADMIRAL VON TIRPITZ 29
CHAPTER IV
ECONOMY IS VICTORY 41
CHAPTER V
THE DARDANELLES 49
CHAPTER VI
ABDUL HAMID AND THE POPE 91
CHAPTER VII
A JEU D’ESPRIT 98
CHAPTER VIII
NAVAL WAR STAFF AND ADMIRALTY CLERKS 102
CHAPTER IX
RECAPITULATION OF DEEDS AND IDEAS 113
CHAPTER X
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA 134
CHAPTER XI
NELSON 158
CHAPTER XII
LETTERS TO LORD ESHER 165
CHAPTER XIII
AMERICANS 221
CHAPTER XIV
SOME SPECIAL MISSIONS 229
CHAPTER XV
SOME PERSONALITIES 242
CHAPTER XVI
THINGS THAT PLEASE ME 272
EPILOGUE 281
INDEX 287
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LORD FISHER, 1917--ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET _Frontispiece_
_Facing page_
KING EDWARD VII. AND LORD FISHER 16
SIR JOHN FISHER IN “RENOWN,” 1897 33
SIR JOHN FISHER AND LORD ROBERTS, 1906 48
THE KINGFISHER 65
THE FIRST SEA LORD. BY WILLIAM NICHOLSON 80
ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET LORD FISHER, G.C.B., O.M., etc. 1917 97
AGE 14.--MIDSHIPMAN 112
AGE 19.--LIEUTENANT 129
1885.--AGE 41.--POST-CAPTAIN 144
1904.--AGE 63.--ADMIRAL 161
THE FUNERAL OF KING EDWARD VII. 192
THE ANNIVERSARY OF TRAFALGAR 209
AMERICA AND THE BLOCKADE 224
SIR JOHN FISHER AT THE HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCE, MAY, 1899 256
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE MEDITERRANEAN FLEET, 1899–1902 273
MEMORIES
CHAPTER I
KING EDWARD VII
King Edward had faith in me, and so supported me always that it is
only natural I should begin this book with the remarks about him which
I privately printed long since for use at my death; but events have
occurred to alter that decision and induce me to publish this book.
There are more intimate touches than those related here, which I
forbear to publish. There is a limit to those peculiar and pregnant
little exhibitions of a kind heart’s purpose being put in print. They
lose their aroma.
In the _Dictionary of National Biography_ there is a Marginal Heading
in the Life of King Edward as follows:
“_HIS FAITH IN LORD FISHER._”
It is the only personal marginal note! I now descant upon it, not to
be egotistical, but to exemplify one of the finest traits in King
Edward’s noble character--without doubt I personally could not be of
the very least service to him in any way, and yet in his belief of
my being right in the vast and drastic reforms in the Navy he gave
me his unfaltering support right through unswervingly, though every
sycophantic effort was exhausted in the endeavour to alienate him from
his support of me. He quite enjoyed the numberless communications he
got, and the more outrageous the calumnies the more he revelled in
my reputed wickedness! I can’t very well put some of them on paper,
but the Minotaur wasn’t in it with me! Also I was a Malay! I was the
son of a Cingalese Princess--hence my wicked cunning and duplicity!
I had formed a syndicate and bought all the land round Rosyth before
the Government fixed on it as a Naval Base--hence my wealth! How the
King enjoyed my showing him my private income as given to the Income
Tax Commissioners was £382 6s. 11d. after the legal charges for income
tax, annuities, etc., were subtracted from the total private income of
£750![2]
But King Edward’s abiding characteristic was his unfailing intuition
in doing the right thing and saying the right thing at the right time.
I once heard him on the spur of the moment make a quite impromptu and
totally unexpected speech to the notabilities of Malta which was simply
superb! Elsewhere I have related his visit to Russia when I accompanied
him. As Prince Orloff said to me, swept away by King Edward’s
eloquence, “_Your King has changed the atmosphere!_”
King Edward, besides his wonderful likeness to King Henry the Eighth,
had that great King’s remarkable attributes of combining autocracy
with almost a socialistic tie with the masses. I said to His Majesty
once: “Sir, that was a real low form of cunning on your Majesty’s part
sending to ask after Keir Hardie’s stomach-ache!” By Jove, he went for
me like a mad bull! and replied: “You don’t understand me! I am the
King of _ALL_ the People! No one has got me in their pockets, as some
of them think they have!” and he proceeded with names I can’t quote!
Acting on Sir Francis Knollys’s example and advice I burnt all his
letters to me, except one or two purely personal in their delightful
adherence to Right and Justice! but even these I won’t publish
ever--they were not meant to be seen by others. What anointed cads are
those who sell Nelson’s letters to Lady Hamilton! letters written out
of the abundance of his heart and the thankfulness of an emotional
nature full of heartfelt gratitude to the sympathising woman who
dressed his wounds, his torn-off scalp after the Nile, and his
never-ceasing calamity of what is now called neuritis, which was for
ever wasting his frail body with pain and anguish of spirit as it so
unfitted him for exertion.
Here is a letter to King Edward, dated March 14th, 1908:
“With Sir John Fisher’s humble duty to your Majesty and in
accordance with your Majesty’s orders, I saw Mr. Blank as to the
contents of the secret paper sent your Majesty, but I did not
disclose what makes it so valuable--that it came from a Minister
of Foreign Affairs, whose testimony is absolutely reliable.
“I told Mr. Blank and asked him to forgive my presumption in
saying it, that we were making a hideous mistake in our half
measures, which pleased no one and thus we perpetuate the fable of
‘Perfidious Albion,’ and that we ought to have thrown in our lot
with Russia and completely allowed her to fortify the Aland Islands
as against Sweden and Germany.
“For a Naval War against Germany we want Russia with us, and we
want the Aland Islands fortified.
“Germany has got Sweden in her pocket, and they will divide Denmark
between them in a War against Russia and England, and unless our
Offensive is quick and overwhelming Germany will close the Baltic
just as effectually as Turkey locks up the Black Sea with the
possession of the Dardanelles.
“_Russia and Turkey are the two Powers, and the only two Powers,
that matter to us as against Germany, and that we have eventually
to fight Germany is just as sure as anything can be, solely because
she can’t expand commercially without it._
“I humbly trust your Majesty will forgive my presumption in thus
talking Politics, but I know I am right, and I only look at it
because if we fight we want Russia and Turkey on our side against
Germany.
“With my grateful thanks for your Majesty’s letter,
“I am your Majesty’s humble servant,
“J. A. FISHER.”
* * * * *
_March 14th, 1908._
_Note._--This letter to King Edward followed on a previous long
secret conversation with his Majesty in which I urged that we
should “Copenhagen” the German Fleet at Kiel _à la_ Nelson, and I
lamented that we possessed neither a Pitt nor a Bismarck to give
the order. I have alluded to this matter in my account of Mr.
Beit’s interview with the German Emperor, and the German Emperor’s
indignation with Lord Esher as signified in the German Emperor’s
letter to Lord Tweedmouth that Sir John Fisher was the most dreaded
man in Germany from the Emperor downwards.
It must be emphasized that at this moment we had a mass of
effective Submarines and Germany only had three, and we had seven
Dreadnoughts fit to fight and Germany had none!
This proposal of mine having been discarded, all that then
remained for our inevitable war with Germany was to continue the
concentration of our whole Naval strength in the Decisive Theatre
of the War, in Northern Waters, which was so unostentatiously
carried out that it was only Admiral Mahan’s article in _The
Scientific American_ that drew attention to the fact, when he said
that 88 per cent. of England’s guns were pointed at Germany.
I mention another excellent illustration of King Edward’s fine and
magnanimous character though it’s to my own detriment. He used to say
to me often at Big Functions: “Have I missed out anyone, do you think?”
for he would go round in a most careful way to speak to all he should.
Just then a certain Admiral approached--perhaps the biggest ass I ever
met. The King shook hands with him and said something I thought quite
unnecessarily loving to him: when he had gone he turned on me like a
tiger and said: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” I humbly said,
“What for?” “Why!” he replied, “when that man came up to me your face
was perfectly demoniacal! Everyone saw it! and the poor fellow couldn’t
kick you back! You’re First Sea Lord and he’s a ruined man! You’ve no
business to show your hate!” and the lovely thing was that then a
man came up I knew the King did perfectly hate, and I’m blessed if he
didn’t smile on him and cuddle him as if he was his long-lost brother,
and then he turned to me afterwards and said with joyful revenge,
“_Well! did you see that?_” Isn’t that a Great Heart? and is it to be
wondered at that he was so Popular?
An Australian wrote a book of his first visit to England. He was
on a horse omnibus sitting alongside the ’Bus Driver--suddenly he
pulled up the horses with a jerk! The Australian said to him, “What’s
up?” The Driver said, “Don’t you see?” pointing to a single mounted
policeman riding in front of a one-horse brougham. The Australian said,
“What is it?” The ’Bus Driver said, “It’s the King!” The Australian
said, “Where’s the escort?” thinking of cavalry and outriders and
equerries that he had read of! The ’Bus Driver turned and looked on the
Australian with a contemptuous regard and said: “Hescourt? ’e wants no
Hescourt! Nobody will touch a ’air of ’is ’ead!” The Australian writes
that fixed him up as regards King Edward!
His astounding memory served King Edward beautifully. Once he beckoned
me up to him, having finished his tour round the room, to talk about
something and I said: “Sir, the new Japanese Ambassador is just behind
you and I don’t believe your Majesty has spoken to His Excellency.” The
King instantly turned round and said these very words straight off. I
remember them exactly; he took my breath away: “My dear Ambassador,
do let me shake you by the hand and congratulate you warmly on the
splendid achievement yesterday of your wonderful country in launching
a ‘Dreadnought’ so completely home-produced in every way, guns, armour
engines, and steel, etc. Kindly convey my admiration of this splendid
achievement!”
I remembered then that in the yesterday’s paper there had been an
account of the great rejoicings in Japan on the launch of this
“Dreadnought.” The sequel is good. The Japanese Ambassador sought
me later in the evening and said: “Sir John! it was kind of you to
remind the King about the ‘Dreadnought’ as it enables me to send a
much coveted recognition to Japan in the King’s words!” I said: “My
dear Ambassador, I never said a word to the King, and I am truly and
heartily ashamed that as First Sea Lord it never occurred to me to
congratulate you on what the King has truly designated as a splendid
feat!”
I expect the Ambassador spent a young fortune in sending out a telegram
to Japan, and do you wonder that King Edward was a Cosmopolitan Idol?
Another occasion to illustrate his saying out of his heart always the
right thing at the right time. I was journeying with His Majesty from
Biarritz to Toulon--I was alone with him in his railway carriage, there
was a railway time table before him. The train began unexpectedly to
slow down, and he said “Hulloa! why are we stopping?” I said, “Perhaps,
your Majesty, the engine wants a drink!” so we stopped at a big station
we were to have passed through--the masses of people shouted not “Vive
le Roi!” but “EDOUARD!” (As the Governor of the Bank of France said
to a friend of mine, “If he stays in France much longer we shall have
him as our King! When’s he going?”). Sir Stanley Clarke I saw get out
and fetch the Prefect and the General in Command to the King--the King
got out, said something sweet to the Prefect and then turned to the
General and said with quite unaffected delight, “Oh, Mon Général! How
delightful to meet you again! how glorious was that splendid regiment
of yours, the --th Regiment of Infantry, which I inspected 20 years
ago!” If I ever saw Heaven in a man’s face, that General had it! He was
certainly a most splendid looking man and not to be forgotten, but yet
it was striking the King coming out with his immediate remembrance of
him. Well! that incident you may be sure went through the French Army,
and being a conscript nation, it went into every village of France! Do
you wonder he was loved in France? And yet the King had the simplicity
and even the weaknesses of a child, and sometimes the petulance
thereof. He gave me a lovely box of all sizes of rosettes of the Legion
of Honour adapted to each kind of uniform coat, and he added, “Always
wear this in France--I find it aids me very much in getting about!” As
if he wasn’t as well known in all France as the Town Pump!
These are the sweet incidents that illustrate his nature!
He went to a lunch at Marienbad with some great swells who were there
who had invited His Majesty to meet a party of the King’s friends from
Carlsbad, where I was--I wasn’t asked--being an arranged snub! A
looker-on described the scene to me. The King came in and said “How
d’ye do” all round and then said to the Host, “Where’s the Admiral?”
My absence was apologised for--lunch was ready and announced. The King
said, “Excuse me a moment, I must write him a letter to say how sorry I
am at the oversight,” so he left them stewing in their own juice, and
His Majesty’s letter to me was lovely--I’ve kept that one. He began by
d----ing the pen and then the blotting paper!--there were big blots and
smudges! He came back and gave the letter to my friend and said, “See
he gets it directly you get back to Carlsbad to-night.”
Once at a very dull lunch party given in his honour I sat next King
Edward and said to His Majesty: “Pretty dull, Sir, this--hadn’t I
better give them a song?” He was delighted! (_he always did enjoy
everything!_) so I recited (but, of course, I can’t repeat the
delicious Cockney tune in writing, so it loses all its aroma!). Two
tramps had been camping out (as was their usual custom) in Trafalgar
Square. They appear on the stage leaning against each other for
support!--too much beer! They look upwards at Nelson on his monument,
and in an inimitable and “beery” voice they each sing:
“We live in Trafalgar Square, with four Lions to guard us,
Fountains and statues all over the place!
The ‘Metropole’ staring us right in the face!
We own it’s a trifle draughty--but we don’t want to make no fuss!
What’s _good e-nough_ for Nelson is good _e-nough_ for us!”
On another occasion I was driving with him alone, and utterly carried
away by my feelings, I suddenly stood up in the carriage and waved to
a very beautiful woman who I thought was in America! The King was
awfully angry, but I made it much worse by saying I had forgotten
all about him! But he added, “Well! find out where she lives and let
me know,” and he gave her little child a sovereign and asked her to
dinner, to my intense joy!
On a classic occasion at Balmoral, when staying with King Edward,
I unfolded a plan, much to his delight (now that masts and sails
are extinct), of fusing the Army into the Navy--an “Army and Navy
co-operative society.” And my favourite illustration has always been
the magnificent help of our splendid soldiers at the Battle of Cape
St. Vincent, where a Sergeant of the 69th Regiment was the first to
board the Spanish three-decker, “San Josef,” and he turned then round
to help Lord Nelson, who, with his one arm, found it difficult to get
through the stern port of the “San Josef” again. In Lord Howe’s victory
two Regiments participated--the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment
(formerly the 2nd Foot) and the Worcestershire Regiment (formerly the
29th and 36th Regiment). Let us hope that the Future will bring us back
to that good old practice! This was the occasion when I was so carried
away by the subject that I found myself shaking my fist in the King’s
face!
Lord Denbigh, in a lecture he gave at the Royal Colonial Institute,
related an incident which he quite correctly stated had hitherto been
a piece of diplomatic secret history, and it is how I got the Grand
Cordon of the Legion of Honour, associated with a lovely episode with
King Edward of blessed memory.
In 1906, at Madeira, the Germans first took an hotel; then they wanted
a Convalescent Home; and finally put forth the desire to establish
certain vested interests. They imperiously demanded certain concessions
from Portugal. The most significant of these amounted to a coaling
station isolated and fortified. The German Ambassador at Lisbon called
on the Portuguese Prime Minister at 10 o’clock one Saturday night and
said that if he didn’t get his answer by 10 o’clock the next night he
should leave. The Portuguese sent us a telegram. That night we ordered
the British Fleet to move. The next morning the German Ambassador told
the Portuguese Prime Minister that he had made a mistake in the cipher,
and he was awfully sorry but he wasn’t going; it was all his fault, he
said, and he had been reprimanded by his Government. (As if any German
had ever yet made a mistake with a telegram!)
To resume about the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour. The French
Official statement when conveying to me the felicitations of the
President of the French Republic was that I had the distinction of
being at that time the only living Englishman who had received this
honour, but the disaster that had been averted by the timely action of
the British Fleet deserved it. So that evening, on meeting King Edward,
I told His Majesty of the quite unexpected honour that I had received,
and that I had been informed that I was the only Englishman that had
got it, on which the King said: “Excuse me I’ve got it!” Then, alas, I
made a _faux pas_ and said “Kings don’t count!” And no more do they!
He got it because certainly they all loved him in the first place, and
secondly, President Loubet couldn’t help it, while if it hadn’t been
for the British Fleet on this occasion the Germans would have been in
Paris in a week, and if the Germans had known as much as they do now
they would have been!
I don’t mean to urge that King Edward was in any way a clever man.
I’m not sure that he could do the rule of three, _but he had the
Heavenly gift of Proportion and Perspective!_ Brains never yet moved
the Masses--but Emotion and Earnestness will not only move the Masses,
but they will remove Mountains! As I told Queen Alexandra on seeing his
dear face (dead) for the last time, his epitaph is the great words of
Pascal in the “Pensées” (Chapter ix, 19):
“Le cœur a ses raisons
Que la raison ne connaît point.”
(“The heart has reasons that reason knows nothing about”!)
He was a noble man and every inch a King! God Bless Him! I don’t either
say he was a Saint! I know lots of cabbages that are saints!--they
couldn’t sin if they wanted to!
_Postscript._
It suddenly occurred to me to send these notes on King Edward to Lord
Esher as he had peculiar opportunities of realizing King Edward’s
special qualities as a King, and realized how much there was in him of
the Tudor gift of being an autocrat and yet being loved of the people!
_Lord Esher to Lord Fisher_
ROMAN CAMP,
CALLANDER, N.B.
_July 30, 1918._
MY DEAR ADMIRAL,
The pages are wonderful, because they are _you_.
Not a square inch of pose about them.
Tears! that was the result of reading what you have to say about
King Edward. But do you recollect our talk with him on board
the Royal Yacht about France and Germany? Surely that was worth
recording.
I have kept many of his letters. They show him to have been
one of the “cleverest” of men. He had never depended upon
book-learning--why should he?
He read, not books--but men and women--and jolly good reading too!
But he knew everything that it was requisite a King should
know--unless Learning prepares a man for action, it is not of much
value in this work-a-day world: and no Sovereign since the Tudors
was so brave and wise in action as this King!
Your anecdotes of him are splendid. Add to them all that you can
remember.
It was a pleasure to be scolded by the King for the sake of the
smile you subsequently got.
The most awful time I ever had with him was at Balmoral when I
refused to be Secretary of State for War. But I beat him on that,
thank God!
Ever yours,
My beloved Admiral,
ESHER.
_Letter from Lord Redesdale_
1 KENSINGTON COURT, W.
_May 24, 1915._
MY DEAR FISHER,
Do me the favour of accepting this little attempt to render justice
to the best friend you ever had. (King Edward the Seventh.)
You and he were worthy of one another. Your old and very
affectionate friend,
REDESDALE.
The following letter, written in 1907, would never
have been penned but for the kindly intimacy and
confidence placed and reposed in me by King Edward;
it therefore rightly comes in these remarks about him;
and so does the subsequent explanatory note on “Nelson
and Copenhagen.”
EXTRACT FROM A LETTER FROM SIR JOHN FISHER TO KING EDWARD
I have just received Reich’s book. It is one unmitigated mass of
misrepresentations.
In March this year, 1907, it is an absolute fact that Germany
had not laid down a single “Dreadnought,” nor had she commenced
building a single Battleship or Big Cruiser for eighteen months.
_Germany has been paralysed by the “Dreadnought.”_
The more the German Admiralty looked into her qualities the more
convinced they became that they must follow suit, and the more
convinced they were that the whole of their existing Battle Fleet
was utterly useless because utterly wanting in gun power! For
instance, half of the whole German Battle Fleet is only about equal
to the English Armoured Cruisers.
The German Admiralty wrestled with the “Dreadnought” problem for
eighteen months, and did nothing. Why? Because it meant their
spending twelve and a half million sterling on widening and
deepening the Kiel Canal, and in dredging all their harbours and
all the approaches to their harbours, because if they did not
do so it would be no use building German “Dreadnoughts” because
they could not float! But there was another reason never yet made
public. It is this: Our Battleships draw too much water to get
close into the German Coast and harbours (we have to build ours big
to go all over the world with great fuel endurance). But the German
Admiralty is going, is indeed obliged, to spend twelve and a half
million sterling in dredging so as to allow these existing ships
of ours to go and fight them in their own waters when before they
could not do so. It was, indeed, a Machiavellian interference of
Providence on our behalf that brought about the evolution of the
“Dreadnought.”
To return to Mr. Reich. He makes the flesh of the British public
creep at page 78 _et seq._, by saying what the Germans are going to
do. He does not say what they have done and what we have done.
Now this is the truth: England has seven “Dreadnoughts” and three
“Dreadnought” Battle Cruisers (which last three ships are, in my
opinion, far better than “Dreadnoughts”); total, ten “Dreadnoughts”
built and building, while Germany, in March last, had not begun
even one “Dreadnought.” It is doubtful if, even so late as May
last, a German “Dreadnought” had been commenced. It will therefore
be seen, from this one fact, what a liar Mr. Reich is.
Again, at page 86, he makes out the Germans are stronger than we
are in torpedo craft, and states that England has only 24 fully
commissioned Destroyers.
Again, what are the real facts? As stated in an Admiralty official
document, dated August 22nd, 1907: “We have 123 Destroyers and 40
Submarines. The Germans have 48 Destroyers and 1 Submarine.”
The whole of our Destroyers and Submarines are absolutely efficient
and ready for instant battle and are fully manned, except a portion
of the Destroyers, which have four-fifths of their crew on board.
Quite enough for instant service, and can be filled up under an
hour to full crew. And they are all of them constantly being
exercised.
There is one more piece of information I have to give: Admiral
Tirpitz, the German Minister of Marine, has just stated, in a
secret official document, that the English Navy is now four times
stronger than the German Navy. Yes, that is so, and we are going to
keep the British Navy at that strength, _vide_ ten “Dreadnoughts”
built and building, and not one German “Dreadnought” commenced last
May. But we don’t want to parade all this to the world at large.
Also we might have Parliamentary trouble. A hundred and fifty
members of the House of Commons have just prepared one of the best
papers I have ever read, shewing convincingly that we don’t want to
lay down any new ships at all because we are so strong. My answer
is: We can’t be too strong. Sir Charles Dilke, in the _United
Service Magazine_ for this month, says: “Sir George Clarke points
out that the Navy is now, in October, 1907, stronger than at any
previous time in all History,” and he adds that Sir George Clarke,
in making this printed statement, makes it with the full knowledge
of all the secrets of the Government, because, as Secretary of the
Committee of Imperial Defence, he, Sir George Clarke, has access
to every bit of information that exists in regard to our own and
foreign Naval strength.
[Illustration:
KING EDWARD VII. (WHO DIED MAY 6TH, 1910)
SAYING GOOD-BYE TO LORD FISHER, FIRST SEA
LORD, 1910.
(Lord Fisher 69, so also the King.)
N.B.--The King thought the 1841 vintage very
good. Certainly good men were born that year!]
In conclusion, a letter in _The Times_ of September 17th, 1907,
should be read. The writer of the letter understates the case, as
the British Home Fleet is twenty per cent. stronger than he puts it.
As regards Mr. Reich’s Naval statements, they are a _réchauffé_
of the mendacious drivel of a certain English newspaper. I got a
letter last night from a trustworthy person _à propos_ of these
virulent and persistent newspaper attacks as to the weakness of
the Navy, stating that the recent inspection of the Fleet by
Your Majesty has knocked the bottom out of the case against the
Admiralty.
I don’t mean to say that we are not now menaced by Germany. Her
diplomacy is, and always has been, and always will be, infinitely
superior to ours. Observe our treatment of the Sultan as compared
with Germany. The Sultan is the most important personage in the
whole world for England. He lifts his finger, and Egypt and India
are in a blaze of religious disaffection. That great American,
Mr. Choate, swore to me before going to the Hague Conference that
he would side with England over submarine mines and other Naval
matters, but Germany has diplomatically collared the United States
absolutely at The Hague.
_The only thing in the world that England has to fear is
Germany, and none else._
We have no idea, at the Foreign Office, of coping with the German
propaganda in America. Our Naval Attaché in the United States tells
me that the German Emperor is unceasing in his efforts to win over
the American Official authorities, and that the German Embassy
at Washington is far and away in the ascendant with the American
Government.
I hope I shall not be considered presumptuous in saying all this.
I humbly confess I am neither a diplomatist nor a politician. I
thank God I am neither. The former are senile, and the latter are
liars. But it all does seem such simple common sense to me that for
our Army we require mobile troops as against sedentary garrisons,
and that our military intervention in any very great Continental
struggle is unwise, remembering what Napoleon said on that point
with such emphasis and such sure conception of war, and that great
combined Naval and Military expeditions should be our rôle. In the
splendid words of Sir Edward Grey: “The British Army should be a
projectile to be fired by the British Navy.”
The foundation of our policy is that the communications of the
Empire must be kept open by a predominant Fleet, and _ipso facto_
such a Fleet will suffice to allay the fears of the “old women of
both sexes” in regard to the invasion of England or the invasion of
her Colonies.
NELSON’S COPENHAGEN
In May, 1907, England had seven “Dreadnoughts” ready for battle, and
Germany had not one. And England had flotillas of submarines peculiarly
adapted to the shallower German waters when Germany had none.
Even in 1908 Germany only had four submarines. At that time, in the
above letter I wrote to King Edward, I approached His Majesty, and
quoted certain apposite sayings of Mr. Pitt about dealing with the
probable enemy before he got too strong. It is admitted that it was
not quite a gentlemanly sort of thing for Nelson to go and destroy the
Danish Fleet at Copenhagen without notice, but “la raison du plus fort
est toujours la meilleure.”
Therefore, in view of the known steadfast German purpose, as always
unmitigatedly set forth by the German High Authority that it was
Germany’s set intention to make even England’s mighty Navy hesitate
at sea, it seemed to me simply a sagacious act on England’s part to
seize the German Fleet when it was so very easy of accomplishment
in the manner I sketched out to His Majesty, and probably without
bloodshed. But, alas! even the very whisper of it excited exasperation
against the supposed bellicose, but really peaceful, First Sea Lord,
and the project was damned. At that time, Germany was peculiarly
open to this “peaceful penetration.” A new Kiel Canal, at the cost
of many, many millions, had been rendered necessary by the advent of
the “Dreadnought”; but worse still for the Germans, it was necessary
for them to spend further vast millions in deepening not only the
approaches to the German Harbours, but the Harbours themselves, to
allow the German “Dreadnoughts,” when built, to be able to float. In
doing this, the Germans were thus forced to arrange that thirty-three
British pre-“Dreadnoughts” should be capable of attacking their shores,
which shallow water had previously denied them. Such, therefore, was
the time of stress and unreadiness in Germany that made it peculiarly
timely to repeat Nelson’s Copenhagen. Alas! we had no Pitt, no
Bismarck, no Gambetta! And consequently came those terrible years of
War, with millions massacred and maimed and many millions more of their
kith and kin with piercèd hearts and bereft of all that was mortal for
their joy.
QUEEN ALEXANDRA, LORD KNOLLYS, and SIR DIGHTON
PROBYN.
At the end of these short and much too scant memories of him whom Lord
Redesdale rightly calls in the letter I printed above
“_The best friend you ever had_,”
I can’t but allude to a Trio forming so great a part of his Glory.
Not to name them here would be “King Edward--an Unreality.” I could
not ask Queen Alexandra for permission either to print her Letters or
her Words, but I am justified in printing how her steadfast love, and
faith, and wonderful loyalty and fidelity to her husband have proved
how just is the judgment of Her Majesty by the Common People--“the most
loved Woman in the whole Nation.”
And then Lord Knollys and Sir Dighton Probyn, those two Great Pillars
of Wisdom and Judgment, who so reminded me, as they used to sit side by
side in the Royal Chapel, of those two who on either side held up the
arms of Moses in fighting the Amalekites:
“And Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands,
The one on the one side, and the other on the other side;
And his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.”
Yes! King Edward’s hands were held steady till the setting of his sun
on May 6th, 1910, and so did he “discomfit his enemies by their aid.”
For over forty years Lord Knollys played that great part in great
affairs which will occupy his Biographer with Admiration of his
Self-Effacement and unerring Judgment. Myself I owe him gratitude
inexpressible.
For myself, those Great Three ever live in my heart and ever will.
There are no such that I know of who are left to us to rise in their
place.
CHAPTER II
“THE MOON SWAYS OCEANS AND PROVOKES THE HOUND.”
The hound keeps baying at the moon but gets no answer from her, and she
continues silently her mighty influence in causing the tides of the
earth, such a mighty influence as I have seen in the Bay of Fundy, and
on the coast of Arcadia where the tide rises some 40 feet--you see it
like a high wall rolling in towards you on the beach! It exalts one,
and the base things of earth vanish from one’s thoughts. So also may
the contents of this book be like-minded by a mighty silence against
baying hounds! I hope to name no living name except for praise, and
even against envy I hope I may be silent. Envy caused the first murder.
It was the biggest and nastiest of all Cæsar’s wounds:
“See what a rent the _envious_ Casca made.”
My impenetrable armour is Contempt and Fortitude.
Well, yesterday September 7th, 1919, we completed our conversations for
the six articles in _The Times_, and to-day we begin this book with
similar talks.
My reluctance to this book being published before my death is
increasingly definite; but I have put my hand to the plough, because
of the overbearing argument that I cannot resist, that I shall be
helping to
(_a_) Avoid national bankruptcy.
(_b_) Avert the insanity and wickedness of building a Navy against the
United States.
(_c_) Establish a union with America, as advocated by John Bright and
Mr. Roosevelt.
(_d_) Enable the United States and British Navies to say to all other
Navies “If you build more, we will fight you, here and now. We’ll
‘Copenhagen’ you, without remorse.”
This is why I have consented, with such extreme reluctance, to write
letters to _The Times_ and dictate six articles; and having thus
entered into the fight, I follow the advice of Polonius--_Vestigia
nulla retrorsum_. And so, to-day, I will begin this book--not an
autobiography, but a collection of memories of a life-long war against
limpets, parasites, sycophants, and jellyfish--at one time there were
19½ millions sterling of ’em. At times they stung; but that only made
me more relentless, ruthless and remorseless.
Why I so hate a book, and those articles in _The Times_, and even the
letters, is that the printed word never can convey the virtue of the
soul. The _aroma_ is not there--it evaporates when printed--a scentless
product, flat and stale like a bad bottle of champagne. It is like
an embalmed corpse. Personality, which is the soul of man, is absent
from the reader. It is a man’s personality that is the living thing,
and in the other world that is the thing you will meet. I have often
asked ecclesiastics--“What period of life will the resurrected body
represent?” It has always been a poser for them! There will not be any
bodies, thank God! we have had quite enough trouble with them down
below here. St. Paul distinctly says that it is a spiritual body in the
Resurrection. It is our Personalities that will talk to each other in
Heaven. I don’t care at what age of a man’s life, even when toothless
and decrepit and indistinguishable as he may then be, yet like another
Rip Van Winkle, when he speaks you know him. However, that’s a
digression.
What I want to rub in is this: The man who reads this in his armchair
in the Athenæum Club would take it all quite differently if I could
walk up and down in front of him and shake my fist in his face.
(It was a lovely episode this recalls to my mind. King Edward--God
bless him!--said to me once in one of my moments of wild enthusiasm:
“Would you kindly leave off shaking your fist in my face?”)
I tried once, so as to make the dead print more lifelike,
using different kinds of type--big Roman block letters for the
“fist-shaking,” large italics for the cajoling, small italics for
the facts, and ordinary print for the fool. The printer’s price was
ruinous, and the effect ludicrous. But I made this compromise and he
agreed to it--whenever the following words occurred they were to be
printed in large capitals: “Fool,” “Ass,” “Congenital Idiot.” Myself,
I don’t know that I am singular, but I seldom read a book. I look at
the pages as you look at a picture, and grasp it that way. Of course,
I know what the skunks will say when they read this--“Didn’t I tell
you he was superficial? and here he is judged out of his own mouth.”
I do confess to having only one idea at a time, and King Edward found
fault with me and said it would be my ruin; so I replied: “Anyhow, I am
stopping a fortnight with you at Balmoral, and I never expected that
when I entered the Navy, penniless, friendless, and forlorn!” Besides,
didn’t Solomon and Mr. Disraeli both say that whatever you did you were
to do it with all your might? You can’t do more than one thing at a
time with all your might--that’s Euclid. Mr. Disraeli added something
to Solomon--he said “there was nothing you couldn’t have if only you
wanted it enough.” And such is my only excuse for whatever success
I have had. I have only had one idea at a time. _Longo intervallo_,
I have been a humble, and I endeavoured to be an unostentatious,
follower of our Immortal Hero. Some venomous reptile (his name has
disappeared--I tried in vain to get hold of it at Mr. Maggs’s bookshop
only the other day) called Nelson “vain and egotistical.” Good God!
if he seemed so, how could he help it? Some nip-cheese clerk at the
Admiralty wrote to him for a statement of his services, to justify his
being given a pension for his wounds. His arm off, his eye out, his
scalp torn off at the Nile--that clerk must have known that quite well
but it elicited a gem. Let us thank God for that clerk! How this shows
one the wonderful working of the Almighty Providence, and no doubt
whatever that fools are an essential feature in the great scheme of
creation. Why!--didn’t some geese cackling save Rome? Nelson told this
clerk he had been in a hundred fights and he enumerated his wounds; and
his letter lives to illumine his fame.
The Almighty has a place for nip-cheese clerks as much as for the
sweetest wild flower that perishes in a day.
It is really astounding that Nelson’s life has not yet been properly
written. All that has been written is utterly unrepresentative of him.
The key-notes of his being were imagination, audacity, tenderness.
He never flogged a man. (One of my first Captains flogged every man
in the ship and was tried for cruelty, but being the scion of a noble
house he was promoted to a bigger ship instead of being shot.) It
oozed out of Nelson that he felt in himself the certainty of effecting
what to other men seemed rash and even maniacal rashness; and this
involved his seeming vain and egotistical. Like Napoleon’s presence on
the field of battle that meant 40,000 men, so did the advent of Nelson
in a fleet (this is a fact) make every common sailor in that fleet as
sure of victory as he was breathing. I have somewhere a conversation
of two sailors that was overheard and taken down after the battle
of Trafalgar, which illustrates what I have been saying. Great odds
against ’em--but going into action the odds were not even thought of,
they were not dreamt of, by these common men. Nelson’s presence was
victory. However, I must add here that he hated the word Victory. What
he wanted was Annihilation. That Crowning Mercy (as Cromwell would have
called it), the battle of the Nile, deserves the wonderful pen of Lord
Rosebery, but he won’t do it. Warburton in “The Crescent and the Cross”
gives a faint inkling of what the glorious chronicle should be. For
two years, that frail body of his daily tormented with pain (he was a
martyr to what they now call neuritis--I believe they called it then
“_tic douloureux_”), he never put his foot outside his ship, watching
off Toulon. The Lord Mayor and Citizens of London sent him a gold
casket for keeping the hostile fleet locked up in Toulon. He wrote back
to say he would take the casket, but he never wanted to keep the French
Fleet in harbour; he wanted them to come out. But he did keep close in
to Toulon for fear of missing them coming out in darkness or in a fog.
In his two years off Toulon Nelson only made £6,000 of prize money,
while it was a common thing for the Captain of a single man-of-war off
the Straits of Gibraltar to make a haul of £20,000, and Prize-Money
Admirals in crowds basked in Bath enriched beyond the dreams of
avarice. Nelson practically died a pauper.
Now this is another big digression which I must apologise for, but
that’s the damnable part of a book. If one could walk up and down
and talk to someone, it never strikes them as incongruous having a
digression.
I wind up this chapter, as I began it, with the fervent intention of
avoiding any reference to those who have assailed me. I will only print
their affectionate letters to me, for which I still retain the most
affectionate feelings towards them. I regret now that on one occasion
I did so far lose my self-control as to tell a specific Judas to take
back his thirty pieces of silver and go and hang himself. However,
eventually he did get hanged, so it was all right.
CHAPTER III
ADMIRAL VON POHL AND ADMIRAL VON TIRPITZ
Yesterday, September 8th, 1919 (I must put this date down because
yesterday in a telegram I called von Tirpitz a liar) I got an enquiry
whether it was correct that in 1909, as stated by Admiral von Tirpitz,
I, as First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, engineered a German Naval
Scare in England in order to get bigger British Naval estimates--and
that I had said this to the German Naval Attaché. I replied “Tell
Tirpitz--using the immortal words of Dr. Johnson--‘you lie Sir, and you
know it!’” Now, first of all, could I possibly have told the German
Naval Attaché such a thing if I possessed the Machiavellian nature
which is inferred by Tirpitz?
Secondly, there was a vast multitude of acute domestic enemies too
closely watching me to permit any such manœuvre.
This affords an opportunity of telling you some very interesting facts
about Tirpitz. They came to be known through the widow of Admiral
von Pohl (who had been at the German Admiralty and commanded the
German High Sea Fleet) interviewing a man who had been a prisoner at
Ruhleben. He relates a conversation with Frau von Pohl, and he mentions
her being an intimate friend of the German ex-Crown Princess, and
as being extremely intelligent. Frau von Pohl had been reading Lord
Jellicoe’s book, and said to the ex-Ruhleben prisoner: “How strange
is the parallel between Germany and Britain, that in both Navies the
Admirals were in a stew as to the failings of their respective fleets.”
So much so on the German side, she said, that the German Fleet did
not consider itself ready to fight till two months before the battle
of Jutland, and the Germans till then lived in a constant fever of
trepidation. These were the questions she heard. “‘Why do the English
not attack? Will the English attack to-morrow?’[3] These questions we
asked ourselves hourly. We felt like crabs in the process of changing
their shells. Apparently our secret never oozed out.” She put the
inefficiency of the German Fleet all down to Tirpitz, and said that if
any man deserved hanging it was he. Admiral von Pohl was supposed to
have committed suicide through dejection. If all this be true, how it
does once more illuminate that great Nelsonic maxim of an immediate
Offensive in war! Presumably Frau von Pohl had good information; and
she added: “The only reason Tirpitz was not dismissed sooner was lest
the British should suspect from his fall something serious was the
matter, and attack at once.”[4] Part of her interview is of special
interest, as it so reminded me of my deciding on Scapa Flow as the base
for the fleet. For as Frau von Pohl states, its speciality was that
the German Destroyers could not get to Scapa Flow and back at full
speed. Their fuel arrangements were inadequate for such a distance.
“My husband,” she said, “was called out by the Emperor to put things
right, but was in a constant state of trepidation.” Alas! trepidation
was on our side also, for in a book written by a Naval Lieutenant he
says how a German submarine was supposed to have got inside Scapa.[5]
As a matter of fact, it was subsequently discovered that a torpedo had
rolled out of its tube aboard one of our Destroyers and passed close to
H.M.S. “Leda,” who quite properly reported “a torpedo has passed under
my stern.” This caused all the excitement.
Admiral von Pohl succeeded Admiral von Ingenohl as Commander-in-Chief
of the German High Sea Fleet. It has not much bearing on what I have
been saying, but it is interesting that Frau von Pohl said that the
wife of the German Minister of the Interior had told her that her
husband, on November 6th, five days before the Armistice, had talked
to the Emperor of the truth as to the German inferiority. The Emperor
listened, first with amazement, and then with incredulity, and
ultimately in a passion of rage called him a madman and an arrogant
fool, and turned him out in fury from his presence. This is not quite
on all fours with Ludendorff, but Ludendorff may have been confining
himself strictly to the fighting condition of the Army; and without
doubt he was right there, for General Plumer told me himself he had the
opportunity of bearing personal testimony to the complete efficiency of
the German Army at the moment of the Armistice. Plumer was, it may be
observed, rightly accorded the honour of leading the British Army into
Cologne.
The man who contemplates all the things that may be somewhat at
fault and adds up his own war deficiencies with that curious failure
of judgment to realise that his enemy has got as many if not more,
has neither the Napoleonic nor the Nelsonic gift of Imagination and
Audacity. We know, now, how very near--within almost a few minutes
of total destruction (at the time the battle-cruiser “Blucher” was
sunk)--was the loss to the Germans of several even more powerful ships
than the “Blucher,” more particularly the “Seydlitz.” Alas! there
was a fatal doubt which prevented the continuance of the onslaught,
and it was indeed too grievous that we missed by so little so great a
“Might Have Been!” Well, anyhow, we won the war and it is all over.
But I for one simply abominate the saying “Let bygones be bygones.” I
should shoot ’em now! And seek another Voltaire.
[Illustration: SIR JOHN FISHER IN “RENOWN,” 1897.]
I get the following from Lord Esher:--“In January, 1906, King Edward
sent me to see Mr. Beit, who had been recently received by the German
Emperor at Potsdam. The Emperor said to Beit that ‘England wanted war:
not the King--not, perhaps, the Government; but influential people
like Sir John Fisher.’ He said Fisher held that because the British
Fleet was in perfect order, and the German Fleet was not ready, England
should provoke war. Beit said he had met Fisher at Carlsbad, and had
long talks with him, and that what he said to him did not convey at all
the impression gathered by His Imperial Majesty. The Emperor replied:
‘He thinks it is the hour for an attack, and I am not blaming him. I
quite understand his point of view; but we, too, are prepared, and
if it comes to war the result will depend upon the weight you carry
into action--namely, a good conscience, and I have that.... Fisher
can, no doubt, land 100,000 men in Schleswig-Holstein--it would not be
difficult--and the British Navy has reconnoitred the coast of Denmark
with this object during the cruise of the Fleet. But Fisher forgets
that it will be for me to deal with the 100,000 men when they are
landed.’”
The German Emperor told another friend of mine the real spot. It was
not Schleswig-Holstein--that was only a feint to be turned into a
reality against the Kiel Canal if things went well. No, the real spot
was the Pomeranian Coast, under a hundred miles from Berlin, where the
Russian Army landed in the time of Frederick the Great. Frederick felt
it was the end and sent for a bottle of poison, but he didn’t take it,
as the Russian Empress died that night and peace came.
Long before I heard from Lord Esher, I had written the following note
about Beit:--
A mutual friend at Carlsbad introduced me to Mr. Beit, the great
South African millionaire. He adored Cecil Rhodes, and so did I.
Beit, so I was told, had got it into his head that I somewhat
resembled his dead friend, and he talked to me on one occasion
about Rhodes until 3 a.m. after dining together. Beit begged me to
come and see him on my return to London at his house in Park Lane,
just then finished, but I never did for I was vastly busy then. I
was troubled on all sides, like St. Paul.
“Without were fightings, and within were fears.” Fighting outside
the Admiralty, and fears inside it.
He really was a dear man, was Beit.
Of course I don’t know anything about his business character.
Apparently there is a character a man puts on in business, just
as a man does in politics, and it may be quite different from his
character as a gentleman.
Beit every year made a pilgrimage to Hamburg, to see his old
mother, who lived there, and it much touched me, his devotion to
her. But our bond of affection was our affection for Rhodes.
The German Emperor sent for Beit, for I gathered that Beit saw how
peace was threatened. I don’t know if this was the reason of the
interview. In this Imperial conversation my name turned up as Lord
Esher had made a statement that by all from the German Emperor
downwards I was the most hated man in Germany. The German Emperor
did say to Beit that I was dangerous, and that he knew of my ideas
as regards the Baltic being Germany’s vulnerable spot, and he had
heard of my idea for the “Copenhagening” of the German Fleet. But
this last I much doubt. He only said it because he knew it was what
we ought to have done.
With regard to saying anything more of that interview I prefer to
keep silent. In an Italian book, printed at Brescia in A.D. 1594,
occur these words of Steven Guazzo;
“They should know,” says Anniball, “that it is no lesse admirable
to know how to holde one’s peace than to know how to speake. For,
as wordes well uttered shewe eloquance and learning, so silence
well kept sheweth prudence and gravitie!”
I wish Beit could have read Stead’s splendid appreciation of Cecil
Rhodes, who describes him as a Titan of intrinsic nobility and
sincerity, of innate excellence of heart, and immense vitality of
genius, and describes the splendid impulsiveness of his generous
nature. I am told that Rhodes’s favourite quotation was from Marcus
Aurelius:
“Take care always to remember you are a Roman, and let every action
be done with perfect and unaffected gravity, humanity, freedom and
justice.”
Stead’s opinion was that Rhodes was a practical mystic of the
Cromwell type. Stead was right. Rhodes was a Cromwell. He was
Cromwellian in thoroughness, he was Napoleonic in audacity, and he
was Nelsonic in execution.
“Let us praise famous men.”
(_Ecclesiasticus_, chapter 44, verse 1).
_From Lord Fisher to a Friend_
36, BERKELEY SQUARE.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
I was asked yesterday: Could I end the War?
I said: “Yes, by one decisive stroke!”
“What’s the stroke?” I was asked.
I replied: “Never prescribe till you are called in.”
But I said this: “Winston once told me, ‘You can see Visions!
That’s why you should come back.’”
For instance, even Jellicoe was against me in sending the Battle
Cruisers to gobble up von Spee at the Falkland Islands! (All were
against me!) Yes! and all were against me in 1904! when the Navy
was turned inside out--ships, officers and men. “A New Heaven
and a New Earth!” 160 ships put on the scrap heap because they
could neither fight nor run away! _Vide_ Mr. Balfour’s speech at
Manchester about this “Courageous stroke of the pen!”
We now want another Courageous Stroke! And the Stroke is ready!
It’s the British Navy waiting to strike! And it would end the War!
This project of mine sounds an impossibility! but so did von Spee’s
annihilation! Pitt said “I walk on Impossibilities.” All the old
women of both sexes would squirm at it! They equally squirmed
when I did away with 19½ millions sterling of parasites in ships,
officers and men, between 1904 and 1910! They squirmed when, at
one big plunge, we introduced the Turbine in the Dreadnought
(the Turbine only before having been in a penny steamboat). They
squirmed at my introduction of the water tube Boiler, when I put
the fire where the water used to be and the water where the fire
used to be! And now 82 per cent. of the Horse Power of the whole
world is Turbine propulsion actuated by water tube Boilers!
They squirmed when I concentrated 88 per cent. of the British
Fleet in the North Sea, and this concentration was only found out
by accident, and so published to the ignorant world, by Admiral
Mahan in an article in _The Scientific American_!
And they squirm now when I say at one stroke the War could be
ended. It could be!
Yours, etc.
(Signed) FISHER.
_Lord Fisher to a Privy Councillor_
36, BERKELEY SQUARE,
LONDON,
_Dec. 27, 1916_.
MY DEAR FRIEND,
You’ve sent me a very charming letter, though I begged you not
to trouble yourself to write, but as you have written and said
things I am constrained to reply, lest you should be under false
impressions. I have an immense regard for Jellicoe.... Callaghan I
got where he was--he was a great friend of mine--but Jellicoe was
better; and Jellicoe, in spite of mutinous threats, was appointed
Admiralissimo on the eve of war. I just mention all this to show
what I’ve done for Jellicoe because I knew him to be a born
Commander of a Fleet! Like poets, Fleet Admirals are born, not
made! _Nascitur non fit!_ Jellicoe is incomparable as the Commander
of a Fleet, but to prop up an effete Administration he allowed
himself to be cajoled away from his great post of duty. I enclose
my letter to him.
I need hardly say how private all this is, but you are so closely
associated with all the wonders we effected from October 21, 1904,
onwards, that I feel bound to take you into my inmost confidence.
Jellicoe retorted I had praised Beatty--_so I had!_ See my reply
thereon. I told the Dardanelles Commission (why they asked me I
don’t know!) that Jellicoe had all the Nelsonic attributes except
_one_--he is totally wanting in the great gift of Insubordination.
Nelson’s greatest achievements were all solely due to his
disobeying orders! But that’s another story, as Mr. Kipling would
say. Wait till we meet, and I’ll astonish you on this subject! Any
fool can obey orders! But it required a Nelson to disobey Sir John
Jervis at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, to disregard the order to
retire at Copenhagen, to go into the Battle of the Nile by night
with no charts against orders, and, to crown all, to enter into the
Battle of Trafalgar in a battle formation contrary to all the Sea
orders of the time! BLESS HIM! Alas! Jellicoe is saturated with
Discipline! He is THE ONE MAN to command the Fleet, BUT he is not
the man to stand up against a pack of lawyers clothed with Cabinet
garments, and possessed with tongues that have put them where they
are!
David was nodding when he said in the Psalms: “A man full of words
shall not prosper on the Earth.” _They are the very ones that_ DO
_prosper!_ For War, my dead Friend, you want a totally differently
constituted mind to that of a statesman and politician! There are
great exemplars of immense minds being utter fools! They weigh
everything in the Balance! I know great men who never came to a
prompt decision--men who could talk a bird out of a tree!
War is Big Conceptions and Quick Decisions. Think in Oceans. Shoot
at Sight! The essence of War is Violence. Moderation in War is
Imbecility. All we have done this war is to imitate the Germans!
We have neither been Napoleonic in Audacity nor Cromwellian in
Thoroughness nor Nelsonic in execution. Always, always, always “TOO
LATE”!
I could finish this present German submarine menace in a few weeks,
but I must have POWER! My plans would be emasculated if I handed
them in. I must be able to say to the men I employ: “_If you don’t
do what I tell you, I’ll make your wife a widow and your house a
dunghill!!!_” (_and they know I would!_)
Don’t prescribe till you’re called in! Someone else might put
something else in the pill!
Heaven bless you!
When people come and sympathise with me, I always reply, with those
old Romans 2,000 years ago expelled:
“Non fugimus:
Nos fugamur.”
“We are not Deserters,
We are Outcasts.”
Yours, etc.
(Signed) FISHER.
_From a Privy Councillor to Lord Fisher_
_Jan. 8th, 1917._
MY DEAR FISHER,
I have always thought Jellicoe one of those rare exceptions to the
general rule that no great commander is ever a good administrator.
I knew you had picked him out long ago to command the Grand Fleet
if war came, and it is in my mind that you had told me years
ago your opinion of him as a Sea Commander so that it was what
I was expecting and hoping for at the time, though I was sorry
for Jellicoe superseding Callaghan when the war broke out, but
I remembered your old saying, “Some day the Empire will go down
because it is Buggins’s turn”! At the same time, I’m not sure
that any man can stand the strain of active command under present
conditions for more than 2½ years. I see no sign of tiredness
about Jellicoe now, but it must be almost impossible to keep at
high tension so long without losing some of the spring and dash,
and it did look as if a stronger man than Jackson was wanted as
First Sea Lord at the Admiralty. Of course when you were First
Sea Lord and Jellicoe with the Grand Fleet it was absolutely the
right combination, but as they haven’t brought you back to the
Admiralty I feel Jellicoe is the man to be where he is, provided
his successor is the right man too. I don’t know Beatty, so can
only go by what I hear of him. I can only pray that when his day of
trial comes he will come up to your high standard.
I largely agree with all you say about the politicians. No doubt
our great handicap in this war is that nearly all the party leaders
get their positions through qualities which serve them admirably
in peace time, but are fatal in war. The great art in politics in
recent years has always seemed to me to be to pretend to lead, when
you are really following the public bent of the moment. All sense
of right and wrong is blunted, and no one stands up for what he
honestly believes in but which may not at the moment be popular.
If he does, he is regarded as a fool, and a “waster,” and may
get out. A habit of mind is thus formed which is wholly wanting
in initiative, and in war the initiative is everything. I agree
with you absolutely:--“_Make up your mind, and strike! and strike
hard and without mercy._” We have thrown away chance upon chance,
and nothing saves us but the splendid fighting material at our
disposal. I doubt whether the recent changes will bring about any
great change. I trust they may, but, whatever happens, neither side
can go on indefinitely. Everything points to Germany’s economic
condition being very bad, and there may come a crash, _but meantime
the submarine warfare is most serious, and no complete answer to it
is yet available_.
Yours very sincerely,
________________
CHAPTER IV
ECONOMY IS VICTORY
Mr. Gladstone stood by me last night. Mr. McKenna was by his side. I am
not inventing this dream. It is a true story. (It is Godly sincerity
that wins--not fleshly wisdom!)
A gentleman, such as you, was by way of interviewing Mr. Gladstone. Mr.
Gladstone was castigating me. I was a Public Department. He said to
you, who were interviewing him, that he was helpless against all the
Public Departments, for he was fighting for Economy, and he gave a case
to you worse than either Chepstow or Slough. I am sorry to say it was
the War Office he was illustrating, as I am devoted to Mr. Churchill
and would not hurt him for the world--even in a dream. It is too
puerile to describe in print, but what Mr. Gladstone pointed to I have
told you in conversation.
Now, the above is an Allegory.
Imagine! nearly a year after the Armistice and yet we are spending two
millions sterling a day beyond an absolutely fabulous income--beyond
any income ever yet produced by any Empire or any Nation!
_Sweep them out!_
Dr. Macnamara, a few days since, in his _apologia pro vita sua_ excuses
his Department to the public by saying that on the very day of the
Armistice the Board of Admiralty sat on Economy! _So they did!_ They
_sat_ on it!
Economy! To send Squadrons all over the globe that were not there
before! The globe did without them during the War--why not now? “Oh my
Sacred Aunt!” (as the French say when in an extremity). “Showing the
flag,” I suppose, for that was the cry of the “baying hounds” in 1905
when we brought home some 160 vessels of war that could neither fight
nor run away--and whose Officers were shooting pheasants up Chinese
rivers and giving tea parties to British Consuls. How those Consuls did
write! And how agitated was the Foreign Office! I must produce some of
these communications directly “DORA” is abolished. Well, that’s what
“showing the flag” means.
_Sweep ’em out!_
Gladstone was hopeless against Departments--so is now the Nation.
Dr. Macnamara may not know it, but Mr. Herbert Samuel was to have had
his place. I did not know either of them, but I said to the Prime
Minister “Let’s have the ‘Two Macs’!” Mind, I don’t class him with
the Music Hall artist. (_Tempus_: Death of Campbell-Bannerman)--that
epoch--I cannot forget Mr. Asquith’s kindness to me. He had telephoned
to me from Bordeaux after seeing the King at Biarritz, asking me to
meet him on his arrival home next night at 8.30 p.m. at 40 Cavendish
Square. His motor car was leaving the door as I arrived. He told me he
had seen the King, and had proposed Mr. McKenna as First Lord of the
Admiralty. The King seemed to have some suspicion that I should not
think Mr. McKenna a congenial spirit. I made no objection--I thought
to myself that if Mr. McKenna were hostile then _Tempus edax rerum_.
I don’t think Jonathan and David were “in it,” when Mr. McKenna and I
parted on January 25th, 1910--my selected day to go and plant roses in
Norfolk. I blush to quote the Latin inscription on the beautiful vase
he gave me;
Joanni Fisher
Baroni Kilverstonæ
Navarchorum Principi, Ensis, Linguæ,
Stili Valde Perito,
Vel in Concilio vel in Praelio insigni,
Nihil Timenti,
Inflexibili, Indomitabili, Invincibili,[6]
Pignus Amicitiæ Sempiternae,
Dederunt Reginaldus et Pamela McKenna.
To
John
Lord Fisher of Kilverstone
First of Admirals
Skilled of Sword, Tongue & Pen
Brilliant in Council and Battle
Dreading Nought
Inflexible, Indomitable, Invincible[6]
This Token of Enduring Friendship
a Gift from
Reginald & Pamela McKenna
And, even now, when time and absence might have deadened those feelings
of affection, he casts himself into the burning fiery furnace, bound
with me in a trusteeship of a huge estate with only 3_s._ 4_d._ in
the £ left--all that the spendthrifts leave us. “Showing the flag”
and presumably resuscitating the same old game of multitudinous
dockyards to minister to the ships that are “showing the flag”; and so
more Chepstows and more Sloughs! And these multitudes of shipwrights
superfluous in Government Dockyards who ought to be in day and night
shifts making good at Private Yards the seven millions sterling of
merchant vessels that Dr. Macnamara’s Government associates supinely
allowed to be sent to the bottom! Those political and professional
associates, who, instead of using the unparalleled British Navy of the
moment as a colossal weapon for landing Russian Armies in Pomerania
and Schleswig-Holstein, aided by the calm and tideless waters of the
Baltic, were led astray to follow the road that led to conscription and
an army of Four Million Soldiers, while the Navy was described in the
House of Commons as “a subsidiary service.” How Napoleon must now be
chortling at his prognostication coming true, that he put forth at St.
Helena, as described on page 177 of Lord Rosebery’s “Last Phase,” that
the day we left the sea would be our downfall!
But this chapter is on “Economy”; and I have to tell a story here about
my dear friend McKenna. He was Secretary of the Treasury; he, and
an almost equal friend of mine--Mr. Runciman--were, as we all know,
extremely cunning at figures. Lots of people were then looking after
me--Kind friends! For instance, I remember my good friend John Burns
at one Cabinet Committee meeting instructing me on a piece of blotting
paper how to deal with a hostile fleet. I don’t mean to say that John
Burns would not have been a first-class Admiral. To be a good Admiral,
a man does not need to be a good sailor. That’s a common mistake. He
wants good sailors under him. He is the Conceptionist. However, to
resume. At that time I was “Pooh-Bah” at the Admiralty; the First Lord
was in a trance, and the Financial Secretary had locomotor ataxy. I was
First Sea Lord, and I acted for both the Financial Secretary and the
First Lord in their absence. I wasn’t justified, but I did it. So I was
the _tria juncta in uno_; and I referred, as First Sea Lord, a matter
to the Financial Secretary for his urgent and favourable consideration,
and he favourably commended it to the First Lord, who invariably
cordially approved. It was all over in about a minute. _Business
buzzed!_
(I’m doubtful whether this ought to come out before Dora’s abolished.
That’s why I wanted these papers to be edited in the United States by
some indiscreet woman, where no action for libel lies. Colonel House
did ask me to go to America when I saw him in Paris last May. There is
a great temptation, for the climate goes from the Equator to the Pole,
and a dear American Admiral friend of mine expatiated to me on the joy
of laying hold of the hand of the summer girl at Palm Beach in Florida
and never letting it go until you get to Bar Harbour in the State
of Maine. I have had endless invitations and most hearty words from
Florida to Maine, and from Passedena to Boston, and I have as many
American dear friends as I have English.)
Well! the Treasury could not make out how all those submarines were
being built--where the devil the money was coming from; so these
ferrets came over. I led a dog’s life, or rather a rabbit’s life,
chased from hole to hole. Nothing came of it; and as an outcome of that
time I left the Admiralty with 61 good submarines and 13 building. The
Germans, thank God! had gone to the bottom with their first submarine,
which never came up again, and the few more they had at that time were
not much use.
I must tell a story now. Mind! I don’t want to run down the Treasury.
The Treasury is an absolutely necessary affliction.
There was once a good Parsee ship-owner with a good Captain. But this
Captain _would_ charge his owner with the cost of his carriage from
his ship to the office. Not being far, the old Parsee thought the
Captain ought to walk, and if he didn’t walk then he ought to pay for
the cab himself. They call the carriages “buggies” at Bombay. However,
when the old Parsee had to pay the bill next month--there it was:
“Buggy--so many rupees.” He told his Captain he would pay that once
but never again; and not finding it in the items of the bill presented
the following month he gave the Captain his cheque. As the Captain put
it in his pocket he said: “Buggy’s there!” That’s what happened to the
Treasury and the submarines.
I had a friend in the Accountant-General’s Department called “The
Mole.” He taught me how to hide the money. I may observe I was called
a “Mole.” It wasn’t a bad name. I was not seen or heard, but I was
recognised by upheavals--“There is that damned fellow Fisher again, I
will swear to it!” But, as David said, “Let us be abundantly satisfied”
that we have such among us as McKennas and Runcimans. I should like to
let those ferrets loose now. However, “Out of Evil Good comes.” Now
comes a pardonable digression, I think.
Here’s a letter I got yesterday, September 9th, 1919, coming from
Russia. Now suppose we had not made the very damnedest mess of
Russia ever made in this world--with Lord Milner first going there
and then Mr. Henderson, the head of the Labour Party, ambassadoring
(as least, he says so) and this nation in every possible conceivable
way alienating the Russian people--then I never could have had this
magnificent letter from Russia to give you. Just observing, before I
quote it: Supposing a French Army landed at Dover to help us subjugate
Ireland? I guess we should all forget whether we were Tories or Carsons
or Smillies, and unite to get this French army out of our Archangel,
and the Entente Cordial would be “in the cart,” as the vulgar say.
Well, this is the letter which does my heart good. It is from a young
lad in an English man-of-war, now off St. Petersburg. He is writing of
the recent defeat of the Russian fleet there:--
“There has been such a fight. I was only a looker-on. I was
furious. Kronstadt was attacked by our motor boats each carrying
two torpedoes” [by the way, I was vilified for introducing motor
boats] “and seaplanes with destroyers backing them up” [isn’t it
awful! I introduced destroyers also]. “Two Russian battleships, a
Depôt ship and a Destroyer Leader were torpedoed.
“Our motor boats were MAGNIFICENT!
“I nearly cried with pride at belonging to the same Race.
“There has been nothing like it in the whole War.
“I would rather take part in a thing like that than be Prime
Minister of England. You would have been so proud if you could have
seen them.”
The letter is to the boy’s mother. On it is written, by him who sends
it me, “The Nelson touch, I think!”
[Illustration:
[_By kind permission of “The Westminster Gazette._”
NATIONAL SERVICE OR THE NAVY?
SIR JOHN FISHER AND LORD ROBERTS, 1906.]
CHAPTER V
THE DARDANELLES
“UNTIL THIS DAY REMAINETH THE SAME VAIL UNTAKEN AWAY”
2 Corinthians, iii, 14.
I compared this morning early what I had formerly written on the
subject of Personalities with what I said to you yesterday on the same
subject in my peripatetic dictation--I can’t recognise what is in type
for the same as what I spoke.
This morning I get a letter from Lord Rosebery. Lord Rosebery is, I
think, in a way attached to me. In fact he must be, or I should not
have drunk so much of his splendid champagne! Now _you_ don’t call
me “frisky” when I walk up and down talking to you; and although he
reads the actual living words I say to you, yet when he sees the
beastly thing in print he calls me “frisky”! I keep on saying this _ad
nauseam_, to keep on hammering it not only into you but into the public
at large who happen to read these words--that no printed effusion
can ever represent what, when face to face, cannot help conveying
conviction to the hearer. And so we come to the same old story, that
the written word is an inanimate corpse. You want to have the Soul of
the Man pouring out to you his personality.
And here again, when I contrasted the notes which I spoke from with
what I said, again I find I don’t recognise them--Well! enough of that!
Now if anyone thinks that in this chapter they are going to see Sport
and that I am going to trounce Mr. Winston Churchill and abuse Mr.
Asquith and put it all upon poor Kitchener they are woefully mistaken.
It was a Miasma that brought about the Dardanelles Adventure. A Miasma
like the invisible, scentless, poisonous--_deadly_ poisonous--gas with
which my dear friend Brock, of imperishable memory and Victoria Cross
bravery, wickedly massacred at Zeebrugge, was going (in unison with a
plan I had) to polish off not alone every human soul in Heligoland and
its surrounding fleet sheltered under its guns from the Grand Fleet,
but every rabbit. It was much the same gas the German put into the
“Inflexible” (which I commanded), in 1882 to light the engine-room.
When it escaped it was scentless; instead of going up, as it ought
to have done, it went down, and permeated the double-bottom, and
we kept hauling up unconscious men like poisoned miners out of a
coalpit. Gas catastrophe--Yes! Brock was lost to us at the massacre
of Zeebrugge--lost uselessly; for no such folly was ever devised by
fools as such an operation as that of Zeebrugge divorced from military
co-operation on land. What were the bravest of the brave massacred for?
Was it glory? Is the British Navy a young Navy requiring glory? When 25
per cent. of our Officers were killed a few days since, sinking two
Bolshevik battleships, etc., and heroic on their own element, the sea,
we all thank God, as we should do, that Nelson, looking down on us in
Trafalgar Square, feels his spirit is still with us. But for sailors
to go on shore and attack forts, which Nelson said no sailor but a
lunatic would do, without those on shore of the military persuasion to
keep what you have stormed, is not only silly but it’s murder and it’s
criminal. Also by the time Zeebrugge was attacked, the German submarine
had got far beyond a fighting radius that required this base near the
English coast. As Dean Inge says: “We must hope that in the Paradise of
brave men the knowledge is mercifully hid from them that they died in
vain.”
Again, this is a digression--but such must be the nature of this book
when speaking _ore rotundo_ and from the fulness of a disgusted heart,
that such Lions should be led by such Asses. The book can’t convey my
feelings, however carefully my good friend the typewriter is taking it
down. All the quill drivers, the ink spillers, and the Junius-aping
journalists will jeer at you as the Editor, and say, “Why didn’t you
stop him? Where’s the argument? Where’s the lucid exposition? Where’s
the subtle dialectician who will talk a bird out of a tree? Where is
this wonderful personality I’m told of, who fooled King Edward, and
ravished virgins, and preached the Gospel (so he says)? Like Gaul, he
is divided into three parts; we don’t see one of them.”
We’ll get along with the Dardanelles now. All this will make pulp for
paper for the _National Review_.
“Imperial Cæsar dead and turned to clay
Now stops a hole to keep the wind away.”
Well, I left off at the “Miasma” that, imperceptibly to each of them
in the War Council, floated down on them with rare subtle dialectical
skill, and proved so incontestably to them that cutting off the enemy’s
big toe in the East was better than stabbing him to the heart in the
West; and that the Dardanelles was better than the Baltic, and that
Gallipoli knocked spots off the Kiel Canal, or a Russian Army landed by
the British Fleet on the Baltic shore of Schleswig-Holstein.
Without any doubt, the “beseechings” of the Grand Duke Nicholas in
the Caucasus on January 2nd, 1915,[7] addressed to Kitchener in such
soldierly terms, moved that great man’s heart; for say what you will,
Kitchener was a great man. But he was a great deception, all the same,
inasmuch as he couldn’t do what a lot of people thought he could do.
Like Moses, he was a great Commissariat Officer, but he was not a
Napoleon or a Moltke; he was a Carnot _in excelsis_, and he was the
facile dupe of his own failings. But “Speak well of those who treat
you well.” I went to him one evening at 5 p.m., with Mr. Churchill’s
knowledge, and said to him as First Sea Lord of the Admiralty that if
his myrmidons did not cease that same night from seducing men from the
private shipyards to become “Cannon-fodder” I was going to resign at
6 p.m. I explained to him the egregious folly of not pressing on our
shipbuilding to its utmost limits. He admitted the soft impeachment
as to the seduction; and there, while I waited, he wrote the telegram
calling off the seducers. If only that had been stuck to after I left
the Admiralty, we shouldn’t be rationed now in sugar nearly a year
after the Armistice, nor should we be bidding fair to become a second
Carthage. We left our element, the sea, to make ourselves into a
conscript nation fighting on the Continent with four million soldiers
out of a population of forty millions. More than all the other nations’
was our Army.
The last words of Mr. A. G. Gardiner’s article about him who is now
dictating are these: “He is fighting his last great battle. And his foe
is the veteran of the rival service. For in his struggle to establish
conscription Lord Roberts’s most formidable antagonist is the author of
the ‘Dreadnought.’”
Well, once more resuming the Dardanelles story. These side-lights
really illuminate the situation. These Armies we were raising incited
us to these wild-cat expeditions. I haven’t reckoned them up, but there
must have been a Baker’s Dozen of ’em going on. Now, do endeavour to
get this vital fact into your mind. We are an Island. Every soldier
that wants to go anywhere out of England--a sailor has got to carry him
there on his back.
Consequently, every soldier that you raise or enlist, or recruit, or
whatever the proper word is, unless he is absolutely part of a Lord
Lieutenant’s Army, never to go out of England and only recruited,
like the Militia--that splendid force!--to be called up only in case
of invasion--as I say, every soldier that is recruited on any other
basis means so much tonnage in shipping that has to be provided, not
only to take him to the Continent; but it’s got to be kept ready to
bring him back, in case of his being wounded, and all the time to take
him provisions, ammunition, stores. Those vessels again have to have
other vessels to carry out coal for those vessels, and those colliers
have again to be supplemented by other colliers to take the place of
those removed from the normal trade, and the coal mines themselves
necessitate more miners or the miners’ working beyond the hours of
fatigue to bring forth the extra coal; or else the commercial work of
the nation gets diminished and your economic resources get crippled,
and that of itself carried _in extremis_ means finishing the war. As
a matter of fact, it _has_ nearly finished the English Nation--the
crippling of our economic resources by endeavouring to swell ourselves
out like the Frog in Æsop’s Fables, and become a great continental
Power--forgetting the Heaven-sent gift of an incomparable Navy dating
from the time of Alfred the Great, and God’s providing a breakwater 600
miles long (the British Islands) in front of the German Coast to stop
the German access to the ocean, and thus by easy blockade killing him
from the sea as he was killed eventually. Alas! what happened? In the
House of Commons the British Navy is called a subsidiary Service. And
then Lord Rosebery doesn’t like my “frisking”; and cartoons represent
that I want a job; and fossil Admirals call me immodest!
Mr. Churchill was behind no one both in his enthusiasm for the Baltic
project, and also in his belief that the decisive theatre of the war
was beyond doubt in Northern waters; and both he and Mr. Lloyd George,
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, magnificently responded to the idea of
constructing a great Armada of 612 vessels, to be rapidly built--mostly
in a few weeks and only a few extending over a few months--to carry
out the great purpose; and I prepared my own self with my own hands
alone, to preserve secrecy, all the arrangements for landing three
great armies at different places--two of them being feints that could
be turned into a reality. Also I made all the preparations, shortly
before these expeditions were to start, to practise them embarking at
Southampton and disembarking at Stokes Bay, so that those who were
going to work the Russian Armies would be practised in the art, having
seen the experiment conducted on a scale of twelve inches to the foot
with 50,000 men.
(We once embarked 8,000 soldiers on board the Mediterranean Fleet in
nineteen minutes, and the fleet steamed out and landed them at similar
speed. Old Abdul Hamid, the Sultan, heard of it, and he complimented me
on there being such a Navy. That was the occasion when a red-haired,
short, fat Major, livid with rage, complained to me on the beach that
a bluejacket had shoved him into the boat and said to him “Hurry up,
you bloody lobster, or I’ll be ’ung!” I explained to the Major that the
man _would_ have been hanged; he was responsible for getting the boat
filled and shoved off in so many seconds.)
I remember that at the War Council held on January 28th, 1915, at 11.30
a.m., Mr. Churchill announced that the real purpose of the Navy was to
obtain access to the Baltic, and he illustrated that there were three
naval phases. The first phase was the clearing of the outer seas; and
that had been accomplished. The second phase was the clearing of the
North Sea. And the third phase was the clearing of the Baltic. Mr.
Churchill laid stress on the importance of this latter operation,
because Germany always had been and still was very much afraid of being
attacked in the Baltic. For this purpose special vessels were needed
and the First Sea Lord, Lord Fisher, had designed cruisers, etc., etc.,
meaning the Armada. Mr. Lloyd George said to me at another meeting of
the War Council, with all listening: “How many battleships shall we
lose in the Dardanelles?” “A dozen!” said I, “but I prefer to lose them
elsewhere.” In dictating this account I can’t represent his face when I
said this.
Here I insert a letter on the subject which I wrote to Lord Cromer in
October, 1916:--
36, BERKELEY SQUARE,
_October 11th, 1916_.
DEAR LORD CROMER,
To-day Sir F. Cawley asked me to reconcile Kitchener’s statement
of May 14th at the War Council that the Admiralty proposed the
Dardanelles enterprise with my assertion that he (Kitchener) did
it. Please see question No. 1119. Mr. Churchill is speaking, and
Lord Kitchener said to him “_could we not for instance make a
demonstration at the Dardanelles?_”
I repeat that before Kitchener’s letter of Jan. 2nd to Mr.
Churchill there was no Dardanelles! Mr. Churchill had been rightly
wrapped up in the splendid project of the British Army sweeping
along the sea in association with the British Fleet. See Mr.
Churchill at Question No. 1179.
“The advance of the (British) Army along the Coast was _an
attractive operation, but we could not get it settled_. Sir John
French wanted very much to do it, but it fell through.”
See Lord Fisher, _War Council of Jan. 13th_! Sir John French then
present--(_3 times he came over about it_)--“Lord Fisher demurred
to any attempt to attack Zeebrugge without the co-operation of the
British Army along the coast.”
As to the _Queen Elizabeth_, Mr. Churchill is right in saying there
was great tension between Kitchener and myself. He came over to the
Admiralty and when I said “_if the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ didn’t leave
the Dardanelles that night I should!_” he got up from the table
and he left! and wrote an unpleasant letter about me to the Prime
Minister! _Lucky she did leave!!_ The German submarine prowling
around for a fortnight looking for her (_and neglecting all the
other battleships_) blew up her duplicate wooden image.
Yours, etc.,
(Signed) FISHER.
Mr. Churchill is quite correct. I backed him up till I resigned. _I
would do the same again!_ He had courage and imagination! He was a
War Man!
If you doubt my dictum that the Cabinet Ministers only were
members of the War Council and the rest of us voice tubes to convey
information and advice, ask Hankey to come before you again and
state the status!
Otherwise the experts would be the Government! Kindly read what Mr.
Asquith said on Nov. 2nd, 1915, in Parliament. (See p. 70.)
(We had constructed a fleet of dummy battleships to draw off the German
submarines. This squadron appeared with effect in the Atlantic and much
confused the enemy.)
Mr. Asquith also was miasma-ed; and it’s not allowable to describe the
discussion that he, I, and Mr. Churchill had in the Prime Minister’s
private room, except so far as to observe that Mr. Churchill had been
strongly in favour of military co-operation with the fleet on the
Belgian Coast, and Sir John French, on three different visits to the
War Council, had assented to carrying out the operation, provided he
had another Division added to his Force. This project--so fruitful as
it would have been in its results at the early stage of the war--was,
I understand, prevented by three deterrents: (1) Lord Kitchener’s
disinclination; (2) The French didn’t want the British Army to get into
Belgium; (3) The Dardanelles came along.
I objected to any Naval action on the Belgian Coast without such
military co-operation. Those flat shores of the Belgian coast,
enfiladed by the guns of the accompanying British Fleet, rendered that
enterprise feasible, encouraging and, beyond doubt, deadly to the
enemy’s sea flank. Besides preventing Zeebrugge from being fortified
and the Belgian Coast being made use of as a jumping-off place for the
air raids on London and elsewhere, with guns capable of ranging such
an enormous distance as those mounted in the Monitors, we could have
enfiladed with great effect all attacks by the Germans.
When we got to the Council table--the members having been kept waiting
a considerable time--the Prime Minister gave the decision that the
Dardanelles project must proceed; and as I rose from the Council table
Kitchener followed me, and was so earnest and even emotional[8] that
I should return that I said to myself after some delay: “Well, we can
withdraw the ships at any moment, so long as the Military don’t land,”
and I succumbed. I was mad on that Armada of 612 vessels, so generously
fostered by Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Churchill and sustained by the
Prime Minister. They were of all sorts and sizes--but alas! as they
reached completion they began to be gradually perverted and diverted to
purposes for which they were unfitted and employed in waters to which
they were unsuited. Nevertheless they made (some of them) the Germans
flee for their lives, and with such a one as the gallant Arbuthnot
or the splendid Hood, who gave their lives for nothing at Jutland, we
might have had another Quiberon.
To resume: I gave Lord Cromer, the Chairman of the Dardanelles
Commission a précis of the Dardanelles case. It doesn’t appear in the
Report of the Dardanelles Commission. I forgive him that, because,
when in his prime, he did me a good deed. It is worth relating. I
entreated him to cut a channel into Alexandria Harbour deep enough for
a Dreadnought; and he did it, though it cost a million sterling, and
thus gave us a base of incalculable advantage in certain contingencies.
I will now shortly pass in review the Dardanelles statement that I gave
Lord Cromer. Those who will read this book won’t want to be fooled
with figures. I give a figurative synopsis. Of course, as I told the
Dardanelles Commission (Cromer thought it judicious to omit my comment,
I believe), the continuation of the Dardanelles adventure beyond the
first operations, confined solely to the ships of the fleet which could
be withdrawn at any moment and the matter ended--the continuation, I
explained to the Dardanelles Commission, was largely due to champion
liars. It must ever be so in these matters. I presume that’s how it
came about that two Cabinet Ministers--no doubt so fully fed up with
the voice tube, as it has been described--told the nation that we were
within a few yards of victory at the Dardanelles, and so justified
and encouraged a continuance of that deplorable massacre. However, no
politician regards truth from the same point of view as a gentleman.
He puts on the spectacles of his Party. The _suppressio veri_ and the
_suggestio falsi_ flourish in politics like the green baize tree.
Sworn to no Party--of no Sect am I:
I can’t be silent and I will not lie.
Before the insertion of the following narrative prepared by me at the
time of the Dardanelles Commission I wish to interject this remark:
When sailors get round a Council Board they are almost invariably mute.
The Politicians who are round that Board are not mute; they never would
have got there if they had been mute. That’s why for the life of me I
can’t understand what on earth made David say in the Psalms “A man full
of words shall not prosper on the Earth.” They are the very ones who do
prosper! It shows what a wonderful fellow St. Paul was; he was a bad
talker and yet he got on. He gives a bit of autobiography, and tells us
that his bodily presence was weak and his speech contemptible, though
his letters were weighty and powerful. However, in that case, another
Gospel was being preached, where the worldly wise were confounded by
the worldly foolish.
While my evidence was being taken before the Dardanelles Commission,
the Secretary (Mears) was splendid in his kindness to me, and my
everlasting gratitude is with the “Dauntless Three” who broke away
from their colleagues and made an independent report. They were Mr.
Fisher--formerly Prime Minister of Australia, (a fellow labourer), Sir
Thomas Mackenzie (High Commissioner for New Zealand), and Mr. Roch,
M.P. Their Report was my life-buoy; a précis of their Report, so far
as it affects me and which I consider unanswerable, establishes that
it is the duty of any Officer, however highly placed, to subordinate
his views to that of the Government, unless he considers such a course
so vitally antagonistic to his Country’s interests as to compel him
to resign. I know of no line of action so criminally outrageous and
subversive of all discipline as that of public wrangling between a
subordinate and his superior, or the Board of Admiralty and an Admiral
afloat, or the War Office and their Commander-in-Chief in the Field.
This Dardanelles Commission reminds me of another “cloudy and dark
day,” as Ezekiel would describe it, when five Cabinet Ministers, at the
instigation of an Admiral recently serving, held an enquiry absolutely
technical and professional on matters about which not one of them
could give an authoritative opinion but only an opinion which regarded
political opportunism--an enquiry neither more nor less than of my
professional capacity as First Sea Lord of the Admiralty. The trained
mind of Mr. McKenna only just succeeded in saving me from being thrown
to the wolves of the hustings. But it has inflicted a mortal wound on
the discipline of the Navy. Hereafter no mutinous Admiral need despair
(only provided he has political and social influence) of obtaining
countenance for an onslaught against his superiors; and we may yet lose
the decisive battle of the world in consequence.
The following is my narrative of my connexion with the Dardanelles
Operations.
“The position will not be clear and, indeed, will be incomprehensible,
if it be not first explained how very close an official intimacy
existed between Mr. Winston Churchill and Lord Fisher for very many
years previous to the Dardanelles episode, and how Lord Fisher thus
formed the conviction that Mr. Churchill’s audacity, courage, and
imagination specially fitted him to be a War Minister.
“When, in the autumn of 1911, Mr. Winston Churchill became First Lord
of the Admiralty, Lord Fisher had retired from the position of First
Sea Lord which he had occupied from October 21st, 1904, to January
25th, 1910, amidst great turmoil all the time. During Lord Fisher’s
tenure of office as First Lord, vast Naval reforms were carried out,
including the scrapping of some 160 ships of no fighting value, and
great naval economies were effected, and all this time (except for one
unhappy lapse when Mr. Churchill resisted the additional ‘Dreadnought’
building programme) Mr. Winston Churchill was in close association
with these drastic reforms, and gave Lord Fisher all his sympathy
when hostile criticism was both malignant and perilous. For this
reason, on Mr. Churchill’s advent as First Lord of the Admiralty in
the autumn of 1911, Lord Fisher most gladly complied with his request
to return home from Italy to help him to proceed with that great task
that had previously occupied Lord Fisher for six years as First Sea
Lord, namely, the preparation for a German War which Lord Fisher had
predicted in 1905 would certainly occur in August, 1914, in a written
memorandum, and afterwards also personally to Sir M. Hankey, the
Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, necessitating that
drastic revolution in all things Naval which brought 88 per cent. of
the British Fleet into close proximity with Germany and _made its
future battle ground in the North Sea its drill ground_, weeding out
of the Navy inefficiency in ships, officers, and men, and obtaining
absolute fighting sea supremacy by an unparalleled advance in types of
fighting vessels.
“Mr. Churchill then at Lord Fisher’s request did a fine thing in so
disposing his patronage as First Lord as to develop Sir John Jellicoe
into his Nelsonic position. So that when the day of war came Sir
John Jellicoe became admiralissimo in spite of great professional
opposition....
“This increased Lord Fisher’s regard for Mr. Churchill, and on July
30th, 1914, at his request, Lord Fisher spent hours with him on that
fifth day before war was declared and by his wish saw Mr. Balfour to
explain to him the Naval situation. This is just mentioned to show the
close official intimacy existing between Mr. Churchill and Lord Fisher,
and when, on October 20th, 1914, Mr. Churchill asked Lord Fisher to
become First Sea Lord he gladly assented to co-operating with him in
using the great weapon Lord Fisher had helped to forge.
[Illustration:
[_By kind permission of “The Pall Mall Gazette._”
THE KINGFISHER.
“This bird has a somewhat long bill and is equipped with a
brilliant blue back and tail; the latter not of sufficient length
to be in the way. Its usual cry is much like the typical cry of the
family, but besides this it gives a low, hoarse croak from time to
time when seated in the shadows. Although exclusively a water bird,
it is not unfrequently found at some distance from any water. It is
very wary, keeping a good look-out, and defends its breeding place
with great courage and daring.”--_Zoological Studies._]
“Mr. Churchill and Lord Fisher worked in absolute accord until it
came to the question of the Dardanelles, when Lord Fisher’s instinct
absolutely forbade him to give it any welcome. But finding himself the
one solitary person dissenting from the project in the War Council,
and knowing it to be of vital importance that he should personally see
to the completion of the great shipbuilding programme of 612 vessels
initiated on his recent advent to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord, also
being confident that all these vessels could only be finished rapidly
if he remained, Lord Fisher allowed himself to be persuaded by Lord
Kitchener on January 28th, 1915, to continue as First Sea Lord. That
point now remains to be related in somewhat greater detail.
“To begin with:--When exactly 10 years previously Lord Fisher became
First Sea Lord, on October 20th, 1904, that very day occurred the
Dogger Bank incident with Russia, and the Prime Minister made a speech
at Southampton that seemed to make war with Russia a certainty; so Lord
Fisher, as First Sea Lord, immediately looked into the Forcing of the
Dardanelles in the event of Russia’s movements necessitating British
action in the Dardanelles. He then satisfied himself that, even with
military co-operation, it was mighty hazardous, and he so represented
it at that time. The proceedings of the Committee of Imperial Defence,
however, will furnish full details respecting the Dardanelles,
especially Field-Marshal Lord Nicholson’s remarks when Director of
Military Operations, and also those of Sir N. Lyttelton when Chief of
the General Staff.
“But Lord Fisher had had the great advantage of commanding a
battleship under Admiral Sir Geoffrey Phipps Hornby when, during the
Russo-Turkish War, that celebrated Flag Officer lay with the British
Fleet near Constantinople, and Lord Fisher listened at the feet of
that Naval Gamaliel when he supported Nelson’s dictum that no sailor
but a fool would ever attack a fort! Nevertheless, Nelson did attack
Copenhagen--was really beaten, but he bluffed the Danish Crown Prince
and came out ostensibly as victor. Nelson’s Commander-in-Chief, Sir
Hyde Parker, knew Nelson was beaten and signalled to him to retreat,
but Nelson disobeyed orders as he did at St. Vincent and the Nile, and
with equal judgment.
“We might have done the same bluff with the Turks, had promptitude and
decision directed us, but procrastination, indecision, and vacillation
dogged us instead. The 29th Division oscillated for weeks between
France and Turkey. (_See_ below my notes of the War Council Meetings of
February 19th and 24th.)
“_Note._--_See_ Mr. Churchill’s statement at the 19th Meeting of the
War Council on May 14th, 1915, that had it been known three months
previously that an English army of 100,000 men would have been
available for the attack on the Dardanelles, _the naval attack would
never have been undertaken_.
“The War Council met on May 14th, 1915, and certain steps proposed to
be taken by Mr. Churchill immediately afterwards, decided Lord Fisher
that he could no longer support the Dardanelles operations. He could
not go further in this project with Mr. Churchill, and was himself
convinced that we should seize that moment to give up the Dardanelles
operations. So Lord Fisher went.
“Lord Fisher’s parting with Mr. Churchill was pathetic, but it was
the only way out. When the Prime Minister read to Lord Fisher Lord
Kitchener’s letter to the Prime Minister attacking Lord Fisher for
withdrawing the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ from certain destruction at the
Dardanelles, Lord Fisher then realised how splendid had been Mr.
Churchill’s support of him as to her withdrawal. A few days afterwards
the German submarine that had been hovering round the British Fleet for
a fortnight blew up the wooden image of the super-Dreadnought we had
sent out there as a bait for the German submarines, showing how the
Germans realised the ‘Queen Elizabeth’s’ value in letting all the other
older battleships alone for about a fortnight till they thought they
really had the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ in this wooden prototype!
“It must be emphasised on Mr. Churchill’s behalf that he had the whole
Naval opinion at the Admiralty as well as the Naval opinion at the
Dardanelles with him--Lord Fisher was the only dissentient.
“It must be again repeated that though Lord Fisher was so decidedly
against the Dardanelles operations from the very first, yet he was very
largely influenced to remain because he was convinced it was of vital
importance to the nation to carry out the large building programme
initiated by him, which was to enable the Navy to deal such a decisive
blow in the decisive theatre (in Northern Waters) as would shorten the
war--by the great projects alluded to by Mr. Churchill at the 9th
meeting of the War Council on January 28th, 1915, when he described the
Three Naval phases of the War, leading to our occupation of the Baltic
as being the supreme end to be attained.
“Had Lord Fisher maintained his resignation on 28th January, 1915, the
Dardanelles enterprise would certainly still have gone on, because
it was considered a matter of vital political expediency (_see_ Mr.
Balfour’s memorandum of 24th February, 1915), but those 612 new vessels
would not have been built, or they would have been so delayed as to
be useless. As it was, by Lord Fisher’s leaving the Admiralty even so
late as May 22nd, 1915, there was great delay in the completion of the
five fast Battle Cruisers and in the laying down of further Destroyers
and Submarines, and, in fact, four large Monitors (some of which had
been advanced one thousand tons) that had been considerably advanced
were stopped altogether for a time and the further building of fast
Battle Cruisers was given up. Lord Fisher had prepared a design for
a very fast Battle Cruiser carrying six 20-inch guns, and the model
was completed. She was of exceptionally light draught of water and of
exceptionally high speed. He had arranged for the manufacture of these
20-inch guns.
“It has also to be emphasised that that programme of new vessels owed
its inception to a great plan, sketched out in secret memoranda, which
it can be confidently asserted would have produced such great military
results as would certainly have ended the war in 1915.
“These plans were in addition to that concurred in by Sir John French
in his three visits to the War Council in November, 1914, for joint
action of the British Army and the British Fleet on the Belgian Coast.
“_Note._--_See_ Note to 8th meeting of the War Council on January
13th, 1915, where Lord Fisher demurs to any Naval action without
the co-operation of the British Army along the coast.”
I quote here a report of the opinion of Mr. Andrew
Fisher, the High Commissioner of Australia, and
formerly Prime Minister of Australia; a member of the
Dardanelles Commission, on the duty of departmental
advisers:--
“I am of opinion it would seal the fate of responsible government
if servants of the State were to share the responsibility of
Ministers to Parliament and to the people on matters of public
policy. The Minister has command of the opinions and views of all
officers of the department he administers on matters of public
policy. Good stewardship demands from Ministers of the Crown frank,
fair, full statements of all opinions of trusted experienced
officials to colleagues when they have direct reference to matters
of high policy.” _I give prominence to this because Ministers, and
Ministers only, must be responsible to the democracy._
If they find themselves in conflict with their expert advisers
_they should sack the advisers or themselves resign_. An official,
whether a Sea Lord or a junior clerk--having been asked a question
by his immediate chief and given his answer and the chief acts
contrary to advice--should not be subjected to reprimand for not
stating to the board of directors that he disagrees with his chief
or that he has given a reluctant consent. _If there is blame it
rests with the Minister and not with his subordinates._
“_I dissent in the strongest terms,” says Mr. Fisher in his
Minority Report, “from any suggestion that the Departmental
Adviser of a Minister in his company at a Council meeting should
express any views at all other than to the Minister and through him
unless specifically invited to do so._”
Sir Thomas Mackenzie expresses exactly the same view.
Mr. Asquith, in the House of Commons on November 2,
1915, said:--
“It is the duty of the Government--of any Government--to rely very
largely upon the advice of its military and naval counsellors; but
in the long run, a Government which is worthy of the name, which is
adequate in the discharge of the trust which the nation reposes in
it, must bring all these things into some kind of proportion one to
the other, and sometimes it is not only expedient, but necessary,
to run risks and to encounter dangers which pure naval or military
policy would warn you against.”
The Government and the War Council knew my opinion--as I told the
Dardanelles Commission, it was known to all. It was known even to the
charwomen at the Admiralty. It was my duty to acquiesce cheerfully and
do my best, but when the moment came that there was jeopardy to the
Nation I resigned.
Such is the stupidity of the General Public--and such was the stupidity
of Lord Cromer--that it was not realized there would be an end of
Parliamentary Government and of the People’s will, therefore, being
followed, if experts were able to override a Government Policy. Sea
Lords are the servants of the Government. Having given their advice,
then it’s their duty to carry out the commands of the political party
in power until the moment comes when they feel they can no longer
support a policy which they are convinced is disastrous.
Here follows a summary for the Chairman of the Dardanelles Commission
of my evidence (handed to Lord Cromer, but not circulated by him or
printed in the Report of the Commission):--
“Mr. Churchill and I worked in absolute accord at the Admiralty
until it came to the question of the Dardanelles.
“I was absolutely unable to give the Dardanelles proposal any
welcome, for there was the Nelsonic dictum that ‘any sailor who
attacked a fort was a fool.’
“My direct personal knowledge of the Dardanelles problem dates
back many years. I had had the great advantage of commanding a
battleship under Admiral Sir Geoffrey Phipps Hornby when, during
the Russo-Turkish War, that celebrated flag officer took the Fleet
through the Dardanelles.
“I had again knowledge of the subject as Commander-in-Chief of the
Mediterranean Fleet for three years during the Boer War, when for a
long period the Fleet under my command lay at Lemnos off the mouth
of the Dardanelles, thus affording me means of close study of the
feasibility of forcing the Straits.
“When I became First Sea Lord on October 20th, 1904, there arrived
that very day the news of the Dogger Bank incident with Russia.
“In my official capacity, in view of the possibility of a war with
Russia, I immediately examined the question of the forcing of the
Dardanelles, and I satisfied myself at that time that even with
military co-operation the operation was mighty hazardous.
“Basing myself on the experience gained over so many years, when
the project was mooted in the present War my opinion was that the
attempt to force the Dardanelles would not succeed.
“I was the only member of the War Council who dissented from
the project, but I did not carry my dissent to the point of
resignation because I understood that there were overwhelming
political reasons why the attempt at least should be made.
“Moreover, I felt it to be of vital importance that I should
personally see to the completion of the great shipbuilding
programme which was then under construction, which had been
initiated by me on my advent to the Admiralty, and which included
no less than 612 vessels.
“The change in my opinion as to the relative importance of the
probable failure in the Dardanelles began when the ever-increasing
drain upon the Fleet, as the result of the prosecution of the
Dardanelles undertaking, reached a point at which in my opinion it
destroyed the possibility of other naval operations which I had in
view, and even approached to jeopardising our naval supremacy in
the decisive theatre of the War.
“I may be pressed with the question why did I not carry my
objections to the point of resignation when the decision was first
reached to attack the Dardanelles with naval forces.
“In my judgment it is not the business of the chief technical
advisers of the Government to resign because their advice is not
accepted, unless they are of opinion that the operation proposed
must lead to disastrous results.
“The attempt to force the Dardanelles, though a failure, would
not have been disastrous so long as the ships employed could be
withdrawn at any moment, and only such vessels were engaged, as in
the beginning of the operations was in fact the case, as could be
spared without detriment to the general service of the Fleet.
“I may next be asked whether I made any protest at the War Council
when the First Lord proposed the Dardanelles enterprise, or at any
later date.
“Mr. Churchill knew my opinion. I did not think it would tend
towards good relations between the First Lord and myself nor to
the smooth working of the Board of Admiralty to raise objections
in the War Council’s discussions. My opinion being known to Mr.
Churchill in what I regarded as the proper constitutional way, I
preferred thereafter to remain silent.
“When the operation was undertaken my duty from that time onwards
was confined to seeing that the Government plan was carried out as
successfully as possible with the available means.
“I did everything I could to secure its success, and I only
resigned when the drain it was making on the resources of the Navy
became so great as to jeopardise the major operations of the Fleet.
“On May 14th, 1915, the War Council made it clear to me that the
great projects in Northern waters which I had in view in laying
down the Armada of new vessels were at an end, and the further
drain on our naval resources foreshadowed that evening convinced me
that I could no longer countenance the Dardanelles operations, and
the next day I resigned.
“It seemed to me that I was faced at last by a progressive
frustration of my main scheme of naval strategy.
“Gradually the crowning work of war construction was being diverted
and perverted from its original aim. The Monitors, for instance,
planned for the banks and shallows of Northern waters, were sent
off to the Mediterranean where they had never been meant to operate.
“I felt I was right in remaining in office until this situation,
never contemplated at first by anyone, was accepted by the War
Council. I felt right in resigning on this decision.
“My conduct and the interpretation of my responsibility I
respectfully submit to the judgment of the Committee. Perhaps I may
be allowed to say that as regards the opinion I held I was right.
FISHER, _October 7th, 1916_.”
This is a letter which I wrote to Colonel Sir Maurice
Hankey, Secretary of the War Council:--
_September 1st, 1916._
DEAR HANKEY,
In reply to your letter in which you propose to give only one
extract concerning my hostility to the Dardanelles enterprise, do
you not think that the following words in the official Print of
Proceedings of War Council should be inserted in your report in
justice to me?
“_19th Meeting of the War Council, May 14th, 1915._--Lord
Fisher reminded the War Council that he had been no party to
the Dardanelles operations. When the matter was first under
consideration he had stated his opinion to the Prime Minister at a
private interview.”
The reason I abstained from any further pronouncement was stated.
Yours, etc.,
(Signed) _Fisher_.
I note you will kindly testify to the accuracy of my statement
that I left the Council table with the intention of resigning, but
yielded to Kitchener’s entreaty to return.
Have you the letter I wrote on January 28th, 1915, to Mr. Asquith,
beginning:--
“I am giving this note to Colonel Hankey to hand to you ...,”
because in it occur these following words:--“At any moment the
great crisis may occur in the North Sea, for the German High Sea
Fleet may be driven to fight by the German Military Headquarters,
as part of some great German military operation.”
It looks as if Hindenburg might try such a coup now.
I heard from Jellicoe a few days since that the Zeppelins now made
the German submarines very formidable, and by way of example he
pointed out that the “Falmouth” was torpedoed even when at a speed
of 25 knots and zigzagging every five minutes.
* * * * *
In some notes compiled on this matter I find it recorded that I
was present at the meeting on the 13th January, when the plan was
first proposed and approved in principle, and was also present at
the meeting on the evening of the 28th January, when Mr. Churchill
announced that the Admiralty had decided to push on with the
project. On the morning of the 28th January I said that I had
understood that this question would not be raised to-day, and that
the Prime Minister was well aware of my own views in regard to it.
After the failure of the naval attack on the Narrows on the 18th
March, I remarked at the meeting on the 19th March that I had
always said that a loss of 12 battleships must be expected before
the Dardanelles could be forced by the Navy alone, and that I still
adhered to this view.
Also, at the meeting held on the 14th May, I reminded the War
Council that I had been no party to the Dardanelles operations.
When the matter was under consideration I had stated my opinion to
the Prime Minister at a private interview.
Some light is perhaps thrown on my general attitude towards naval
attacks by the following remark, made at the meeting held on the
13th January, which related, not to the Dardanelles project, but to
a proposed naval attack on Zeebrugge:--
I said that the Navy had only a limited number of battleships to
lose, and would probably sustain losses in an attack on Zeebrugge.
I demurred to any attempt to attack Zeebrugge _without the
co-operation of the Army along the coast_.
This note is here inserted because the Dardanelles operation
interfered with the project of certain action in the Decisive
Theatre of the War explained in a Memorandum given to the Prime
Minister on January 25th, 1915, but it has been decided to be too
secret for publication even now, so it is not included in these
papers.
A Memorandum was also submitted by me on General Naval Policy,
deprecating the use of Naval Force in Coast Operations unsupported
by Military Force and emphasising the supreme importance of
maintaining the unchallengeable strength of the Grand Fleet in the
Decisive Theatre.
LORD FISHER TO COLONEL SIR MAURICE HANKEY
_September 6th, 1916._
DEAR HANKEY,
I have only just this very moment received your letter, dated
September 4th, and its enclosure, for I had suddenly to leave the
address you wrote to on important official business....
The Prime Minister and Kitchener knew from me on January 7th or
January 8th that I objected to the Dardanelles enterprise, but
I admit this does not come under your official cognisance as
Secretary of the War Council, consequently I cannot press you in
the matter.
If I ever am allowed hereafter to see what you have prepared for
Lord Cromer’s Committee of Inquiry I shall be better able to judge
of its personal application to myself.
I was told yesterday by an influential Parliamentary friend that
the likelihood was that _all_ would emerge from the Dardanelles
Inquiry as free from blame, except one person only--Lord Fisher!
That really would be comic! considering that I was the only
sufferer by it, by loss of office and of an immense certainty in my
mind of Big Things in the North Sea and Baltic by the unparalleled
Armada we were building so marvellously quickly, _e.g._, submarines
in five months instead of 14, and destroyers in nine months instead
of 18! and immense fast Battle Cruisers with 18-inch and 15-inch
guns in 11 months instead of two years! _Why, it was the desolation
of my life to leave the Admiralty at that moment!_ Knowing that
once out I should never get back! The “wherefore” you know!
Yours, etc.,
(Signed) FISHER,
_6th September, 1916_.
LORD FISHER TO THE RIGHT HON. WINSTON CHURCHILL.
“_The Baltic a German Lake._”
MY DEAR WINSTON,
I am here for a few days longer before rejoining my “Wise men” at
Victory House--
“The World forgetting,
By the World forgot!”
but some Headlines in the newspapers have utterly upset me!
Terrible!!
“The German Fleet to assist the Land operations in the Baltic.”
“Landing the German Army South of Reval.”
We are five times stronger at Sea than our enemies and here is a
small Fleet that we could gobble up in a few minutes playing the
great vital Sea part of landing an Army in the enemies’ rear and
probably capturing the Russian Capital by Sea!
This is “Holding the ring” with a vengeance!
Are we really incapable of a big Enterprise?
I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis--O.M.G. (Oh!
My God!)--Shower it on the Admiralty!!
Yours,
FISHER.
9/9/17.
P.S.--In War, you want--“SURPRISE.”
To beget “SURPRISE” you want “IMAGINATION” to go to bed with
“AUDACITY.”
Admiral von Spee’s first words at the Falkland Islands when he saw
the British Battle Cruisers were
“Oh, what a surprise”!
And he went to the bottom with 3,000 men and 11 ships, and not one
man killed or wounded on board the “Invincible.”
LORD FISHER’S NOTES OF HIS OWN SPECIAL INTERVENTIONS AT WAR COUNCIL
MEETINGS
Notes.--_The first two meetings of the War Committee took place on
August 5th and August 6th, 1914._
_Lord Fisher was appointed First Sea Lord on October 30th, 1914._
_The third meeting of the War Council (being the first after Lord
Fisher’s appointment) took place on November 25th, 1914._
_3rd Meeting of the War Council, November 25th, 1914._
Lord Fisher asked whether Greece might not attack Gallipoli in
conjunction with Bulgaria.
It was pointed out Bulgaria blocked the way.
(_Note._--From his experience of three years as Commander-in-Chief
of the Mediterranean Fleet, Lord Fisher had formed the conviction
that Bulgaria was the key of the situation, and this he had
pointed out to Lord Kitchener personally at the War Office.)
_4th Meeting of War Council, December 1st, 1914._
Lord Fisher pressed for the adoption of the Offensive.
The Defensive attitude of the Fleet was bad for its morale, and was
no real protection from enemy submarines.
The suggestion of seizing an island off the German coast was
adjourned.
_7th Meeting of War Council, January 8th, 1915._
ZEEBRUGGE.
Asked whether the bombardment of Zeebrugge would materially lessen
the risks to transports and other ships in the English Channel,
Lord Fisher replied that he thought not. In his opinion the danger
involved in the operation (in loss of ships) would outweigh the
results.
_8th Meeting of War Council, January 13th, 1915._
ZEEBRUGGE.
Lord Fisher said that the Navy had not unlimited battleships
to lose, and there would probably be losses in any attack on
Zeebrugge. He objected to any attack on Zeebrugge _without the
co-operation of the Army along the coast_.
The Dardanelles was mentioned, Mr. Churchill stating that he had
exchanged telegrams with Admiral Carden as to the possibilities of
a naval attack on the Dardanelles. He had taken this step because
Lord Kitchener, in a letter to him, dated January 3rd, had urged
instant naval action at the Dardanelles to relieve the pressure on
the Grand Duke Nicholas in the Caucasus.
_9th Meeting of War Council, January 28th, 1915, 11.30 a.m._
(_Note._--Before this meeting the Prime Minister discussed with Mr.
Churchill and Lord Fisher the proposed Dardanelles operations and
decided in favour of considering the project in opposition to Lord
Fisher’s opinion.)
THE DARDANELLES.
Mr. Churchill asked if the War Council attached importance to the
proposed Dardanelles operations, which undoubtedly involved risks.
Lord Fisher said that he had understood that this question was not
to be raised at this meeting. The Prime Minister knew his (Lord
Fisher’s) views on the subject.
The Prime Minister said that, in view of what had already been
done, the question could not be left in abeyance.
(_Note._--Thereupon Lord Fisher left the Council table. He was
followed by Lord Kitchener, who asked him what he intended to do.
Lord Fisher replied to Lord Kitchener that he would not return
to the Council table, and would resign his office as First Sea
Lord. Lord Kitchener then pointed out to Lord Fisher that he
(Lord Fisher) was the only dissentient, and that the Dardanelles
operations had been decided upon by the Prime Minister; and he
urged on Lord Fisher that his duty to his country was to go on
carrying out the duties of First Sea Lord. After further talk Lord
Fisher reluctantly gave in to Lord Kitchener and went back to the
Council table.[9])
[Illustration: THE FIRST SEA LORD. By William Nicholson.]
Mr. Churchill stated _that the ultimate object of the Navy was to
obtain access to the Baltic_. There were, he said, three Naval
phases:--
1st phase.--The clearing of the outer seas (this had been
accomplished).
2nd phase.--The clearing of the North Sea.
_3rd phase.--The clearing of the Baltic._
_Mr. Churchill laid stress on the importance of the third phase and
said this latter operation was of great importance, as Germany always
had been, and still was, very nervous of an attack from the Baltic._
For this purpose special vessels were required, and the First Sea Lord
(Lord Fisher) had designed cruisers, &c., &c.[10] The meeting was
adjourned to 6.30 the same evening.
_10th Meeting of War Council (same day), January 28th, 1915, at 6.30
p.m._
The plan of a naval attack on Zeebrugge was abandoned and the
Dardanelles operations were decided upon.
_11th Meeting of War Council, February 9th, 1915._
Mr. Churchill reported that the Naval attack on the Dardanelles would
take place on February 15th. (This was afterwards postponed until
February 19th.)
_12th Meeting of War Council, February 16th, 1915._
Agreed that the 29th Division should be sent to the Dardanelles and
other arrangements made to support the Naval attack on the Dardanelles.
The Admiralty were authorised and pressed to build or obtain special
craft for landing 50,000 men wherever a landing might be required.
_13th Meeting of War Council, February 19th, 1915._
Transports ordered to be got ready:--
1. To convey troops from Egypt to the Dardanelles;
2. To convey the 29th Division from England to the Dardanelles,
_but no final decision to be taken as to 29th Division_.
_14th Meeting of War Council, February 24th, 1915._
General Birdwood selected to join Admiral Carden before the Dardanelles.
_The decision as to sending 29th Division postponed._
_15th Meeting of War Council, February 26th, 1915._
Mr. Churchill said he could not offer any assurance of success in the
Dardanelles attack.
_16th Meeting of War Council, March 3rd, 1915._
The future of Constantinople was discussed, and what should be the next
step after the Dardanelles. Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Bonar Law, besides
Mr. Balfour, were present.
_17th Meeting of War Council, March 10th, 1915._
The War Office was directed to prepare a memorandum on the strategical
advantages of Alexandretta.
_18th Meeting of War Council, March 19th, 1915._
The sinking of the battleships “Irresistible,” “Ocean,” and “Bouvet,”
the running ashore of “Gaulois” and the disablement of “Inflexible,”
were discussed.
The continuance of naval operations against Dardanelles was authorised
if the Admiral at the Dardanelles agreed.
Lord Fisher said that it was impossible to explain away the sinking of
four battleships. _He had always said that a loss of 12 battleships
must be expected before the Dardanelles could be forced by the Navy
alone._ He still adhered to this view.
_Note._--There was no meeting of the War Council from March 19th to May
14th.
_19th Meeting of War Council, May 14th, 1915._
Mr. Churchill reported that one, or perhaps two, German submarines
had arrived in the Eastern Mediterranean, _and that the attack on the
Dardanelles had now become primarily a military rather than a naval
operation_. It had been decided to recall the “Queen Elizabeth.” Mr.
Churchill stated that if it had been known three months ago that an
army of from 80,000 to 100,000 men would now be available for the
attack on the Dardanelles the naval attack would never have been
undertaken.
_Lord Fisher reminded the War Council that he had been no party to the
Dardanelles operations. When the matter was first under consideration
he had stated his opinion to the Prime Minister at a private interview._
_Conclusion._--Lord Kitchener to send a telegram to Sir Ian Hamilton
asking what military force he would require in order to ensure success
at the Dardanelles.
_Note._--On the evening of this day Mr. Churchill drafted orders for
further naval reinforcements for the Dardanelles, a course to which
Lord Fisher could not assent.
(This led to Lord Fisher leaving the Admiralty.)
_A Note on the Dardanelles Operations._
Major-General Sir Chas. Caldwell, K.C.B., was Director of Military
Operations at the War Office during the whole period of the inception,
incubation and execution of the Dardanelles adventure, and in an
article in the “Nineteenth Century” for March, 1919, he completely
disposes of the criticisms of Mr. G. A. Schreiner in his book “From
Berlin to Bagdad,” and of those of Mr. H. Morgenthau, the late United
States Ambassador at Constantinople, in his recent book, “The Secrets
of the Bosphorus.” Both these works convey the impression that the
general attack by the Fleet upon the Defences of the Narrows on March
18th, 1915, very nearly succeeded. This verdict is not justified by the
facts as certified by Sir C. Caldwell. He proves incontestably that,
even in the very unlikely case of indirect bombardment really effecting
its object in putting the batteries out of action, there would still
be the movable armament of the Turks left to worry and defeat the
mine-sweepers, and there would still be the drifting mines and possibly
the torpedoes fired from the shore to imperil the battleships. When
peace did come it occupied the British Admiral a very long time to
sweep up the mines. The damaging effect of Naval Bombardment was
over-estimated--the extent to which the enemy’s movable armament would
interfere with mine-sweeping was not realised, and the extent and
efficiency of the minefields were unknown and unheeded. Sir Charles
Caldwell says:
“The whole thing was a mistake, quite apart from the disastrous
influence which the premature and unsuccessful operation exerted
over the subsequent land campaign.”
It is also most true what Sir C. Caldwell says that “the idea at
the back of the sailors’ minds (who so reluctantly assented to the
_political_ desire of getting possession of the Straits) was that
it was an experiment which could always be instantly stopped if the
undertaking were to be found too difficult.” But alas! “_the view
of the War Council came to be that they could not now abandon the
adventure._”
* * * * *
Marshal Liman von Sanders, who had charge of the defence of the
Dardanelles, said:
“The attack on the Straits by the Navy alone I don’t think could
ever have succeeded. I proposed to flood the Straits broadcast with
mines, and it was my view that these were the main defences of the
Dardanelles, and that the function of the guns of the forts was
simply to protect the minefields from interference.”
The evidence given by Captain (now Rear-Admiral Sir) William Reginald
Hall, R.N., Director of Naval Intelligence, at the Dardanelles Inquiry,
conflicts with the facts as afterwards made known to us; and no doubt
this led to such official speeches as were made of our being so near
victory at the Dardanelles--speeches which caused the further great
sacrifice of life which took place after General Sir Charles Munro, the
present Commander-in-Chief in India, had definitely and without any
equivocation officially reported that the Evacuation of the Gallipoli
Peninsula should immediately take place.
Field Marshal Lord Nicholson asked Captain Hall, R.N., how far the
Gallipoli Peninsula was under German control; and his answer was that
it was known that the defences had been inspected by a German and that
many Germans were arriving there, whereas it is a matter of fact stated
by General Liman von Sanders and confirmed from other sources that the
Germans were in complete control; and it took the British Admiral many
weeks after the Armistice, helped by the Turks, to clear a way through
the mines for his Flagship to take him to Constantinople. At question
4930 Captain Hall stated his spies made him convinced that he could
have pushed through with only the loss of one or more ships and got to
Constantinople on March 18th.
AN EPISODE OF THE WAR.
A friend asking me yesterday (this was written in 1917) about the
replacement of Tonnage destroyed by the German Submarines, and telling
me how quite ineffectual had been the course pursued up to the present
when really we are in measurable distance of starvation or else an
ignoble peace, I ventured to send him the enclosed account (_written
at the time_) of how 612 Vessels were hustled! As in all other War
matters, it is Personality that is required, even more than Brains!
STATEMENT OF NEW SHIPBUILDING INAUGURATED BY LORD FISHER.
_Note._--The following Memoranda are inserted as vital to the
explanation of Lord Fisher’s reluctance to resign on the Dardanelles
question. It will be seen that Mr. Churchill had given him sole charge
of the creation of this armada of new ships, _intended for great
projects in the Baltic and North Sea_.
_Tuesday, November 3rd, 1914._
(_Note._--Lord Fisher had joined the Admiralty as First Sea Lord four
days before this meeting.)
The First Sea Lord (Lord Fisher) presided at a Conference this day at
the Admiralty.
_Present:_
Second Sea Lord.
Third Sea Lord.
Additional Civil Lord.
Parliamentary and Financial Secretary.
Secretary.
Naval Secretary to First Lord.
Engineer-in-Chief.
Assistant Director of Torpedoes and another representative of the
Director of Naval Ordnance.
Commodore (S) and Assistant.
Naval Assistant to First Sea Lord.
Director of Naval Construction and an Assistant.
Superintendent of Contract Work.
Superintending Electrical Engineer.
Director of Dockyard Work.
Director of Naval Contracts and an Assistant.
Lord Fisher explained to those present that this Conference had been
summoned with the approval of Mr. Churchill, primarily with the object
of expediting the delivery of 20 submarines which were to be at once
commenced,
_but in the second place a big further building programme for a
special purpose had been decided on_.
The question of placing orders for submarines had been under
consideration for some time past. The First Lord, however, had assented
to the cancellation of all existing papers on this subject, _and a
fresh start was to be made immediately on the lines of a special war
routine_. All red-tape methods--very proper in time of peace--were
now to be abandoned, and _everything must be entirely subordinated to
rapidity of construction_. It was desired to impress upon all present
the necessity of avoiding “paper” work, and of proceeding in the manner
indicated in the secret memorandum which would be circulated next day
in regard to the matter. Arrangements would be made in due course to
obtain additional vessels of other types in a similar manner.
_Note._--After this, a meeting of all the shipbuilding firms of the
United Kingdom took place at the Admiralty under the presidency of Lord
Fisher, and the programme mentioned above in italics was parcelled out
there and then.
BUILDING PROGRAMME.
_Meeting on November 3rd, 1914, four days after Lord Fisher became
First Sea Lord._
5 Battle Cruisers of 33 knots speed of light draught.
2 Light Cruisers.
5 Flotilla Leaders.
56 Destroyers.
64 Submarines.
37 Monitors.
24 River Light Gunboats.
19 Whaling Steamers.
24 Submarine Destroyers.
50 Seagoing Patrol Boats.
200 Motor Barges, oil engines.
90 Smaller Barges.
36 Sloops.
---
612 Total.
---
MEMORANDUM BY LORD FISHER, DATED NOVEMBER 3RD, 1914, ON LAYING DOWN
FURTHER NUMBERS OF SUBMARINES.
There is no doubt that at this moment the supply of additional
submarine boats in the shortest time possible is a matter of
urgent national importance. They will not be obtained unless the
whole engineering and shipbuilding resources of the country are
enlisted in the effort, and the whole of the peace paraphernalia of
red-tape routine and consequent delay are brushed on one side. I
have carefully studied the submarine question during my retirement
and have had many opportunities of keeping in touch with the
present position and future possibilities, and am convinced that
20 submarines can be commenced at once, and that the first batch
of these should be delivered in nine months, and the remainder at
short intervals, completing the lot in 11 or 12 months.
NOTE.--_A dozen more were actually delivered in five months, and
made the voyage alone from America to the Dardanelles._
To do this, however, cheapness must be entirely subordinated to
rapidity of construction, and the technical departments must have a
free hand to take whatever steps are necessary to secure this end
without any paper work whatever. Apparently this matter has been
under consideration at the Admiralty already for a considerable
time, but
_nothing has yet been ordered_,
and the First Lord has concurred that a fresh start be made
independently of former papers,
_and the matter placed under my sole supervision, without any other
officers or departments intervening between me and the professional
officers_.
I will give instructions as to the work, and direct that
_if any difficulties are met with, they be brought to me instantly
to be overcome_.
The professional officers’ reports as to acceptances of tenders or
allocation of work must be immediately carried out by the branches.
Only in this way can we get the boats we require. To ensure the
completion of the 20 boats, steps to be immediately taken to order
the parts for the engines for 25 boats. We know from experience
that it is in the machinery parts that defects and failures occur
in manufacture of castings, forgings, etc., causing great delay.
The parts for the extra five sets of engines will be available
for these replacements, and eventually the five extra sets can be
fitted in five further hulls. I propose to review the progress
being made once a fortnight in the hope that it may be feasible to
order still further submarines beyond these 20 now to be commenced
at once.
_The training of sufficient officers and men for manning these
extra boats must obviously be proceeded with forthwith, and those
responsible must see to it that the officers and crews are ready._
FISHER.
_November 3rd, 1914._
_NOTE by Lord Fisher._--I gave personal orders on this day to the
Director of Mobilization to enter officers, men, and boys to the
utmost limit regardless of present or supposed prospective wants,
so when he left the Admiralty last week to be Captain of the
_Renown_ he wrote me we wanted for nothing in the way of personnel!
FISHER.
_August 15th, 1916._
CHAPTER VI
ABDUL HAMID AND THE POPE
Be to my virtues very kind,
Be to my faults a little blind.
Two great Personalities came across my path when I commanded the
Mediterranean Fleet for three years--the Sultan Abdul Hamid and Pope
Leo XIII. They each greatly admired the astuteness of the other.
Wily as Abdul was, the Pope was the subtler of the two. I did not
have the interviews with the Pope which I might have had. There was
no real occasion for it, as was the case with Abdul Hamid; and also,
though by the accident of birth I was of the Church of England (nearly
everybody’s religion is the accident of his birth), yet by taste and
conviction I was a Covenanter, and therefore dead against the Pope. I
would have loved to participate in the fight against Claverhouse at the
battle of Drumclog.
I happen to be looking at the battlefield of Drumclog now, and I
hope to be buried in Drumclog Church--that is, if I die here; or in
the nearest Church to my death bed. I am particular to say this, as
it avoids so much trouble; and I don’t have any more feeling for a
cast-off body than for a cast-off suit of clothes. The body, after he’s
left it at death, is not the man himself, any more than his cast-off
clothes. The only thing I ask for is a white marble tablet made by Mr.
Bridgman of Lichfield (if he’s still alive), with the inscription on
it to be found in Croxall Church as written of herself by my sainted
Godmother, of whom Byron wrote so beautifully: “She walks in beauty
like the night.” She deserved his poem.
That was a big digression; but being dictated, as it is, this is a
conversation book and not a classic. Classics are dry. Conversation,
taking no account of grammar or sequence, is more interesting. However,
that’s a matter of opinion. To talk is easy, but to write is terrific.
Even Job thought so, that patient man.
To resume Abdul Hamid and the Pope.
Neither rats nor Jews can exist at Malta. The Maltese are too much for
either. A Maltese can’t get a living in the Levant. The Levantine is
too much for the Maltese. No Levantine has ever been seen in Armenia.
His late Majesty, Abdul Hamid, was an Armenian. He massacred more
Armenians than had ever been massacred before. I’ve no doubt that can
be explained. It is supposed that the Armenian coachman of the previous
Sultan was his father. He certainly was not a bit like his presumed
father, the Sultan. When I dined several times with the Sultan, his
father’s picture hung behind him and he used to ask people if they
traced the likeness--there wasn’t even a resemblance.
The Sultan paid me a very special honour in sending his most
distinguished Admiral with his Staff down to the British Fleet lying
at Lemnos, to escort me up to Constantinople. This Admiral was known
to me; and it afforded me an opportunity, in the passage up the
Dardanelles, of making a thorough inspection of the Forts and all the
particulars connected with the defence of the Dardanelles. Nothing was
kept back from me; and incidentally it was through this inspection I
became on such terms with the Pashas that a most amicable arrangement
was reached between us as to our ever having to work in common. A very
striking incident occurred illustrating Kiamil Pasha’s remark to me
of how every Turk in the Turkish Empire trusted the English when they
trusted no one else. Kiamil’s argument was that such trust was only
natural after the Crimean War, and after the war with Russia--when
Russia was at the gates of Constantinople, and the British Fleet,
coming up under Admiral Hornby in a blinding snowstorm, encountering
great risks and not knowing but what the Forts, bribed by Russia,
might open fire--that British Fleet, by its opportune arrival, hardly
a minute too soon, effectually banged, barred and bolted the gates of
Constantinople against the Russians and produced peace. And Kiamil’s
emphasis was that, notwithstanding all these wonderful things that
England had done for Turkey, England never asked for the very smallest
favour or concession in return, whereas other nations were all of
them notoriously always grabbing; and I told Kiamil Pasha that I
felt very proud indeed, as a British Admiral, that England had this
noble character and deserved it. The incident I referred to was this:
Upon an observation being made to the Turkish Commander-in-Chief
in the Dardanelles as to whether some written document wouldn’t
be satisfactory to him, he replied he wanted no such document--if
a British Midshipman brought him a message, the word of a British
Midshipman was enough for him.
The views I formed at that period of the impregnability of the
Dardanelles stood me in good stead when the Dogger Bank incident became
known on Trafalgar Day, 1904--the very day I assumed the position of
First Sea Lord of the Admiralty. We were within an ace of war with
Russia; the Prime Minister’s speech at Southampton, if consulted, will
show that to be the case; and I then drew up a secret memorandum with
respect to the Dardanelles, which I alluded to at the War Council when
the attack on the Dardanelles was being discussed, also in my official
memorandum to Lord Cromer, the Chairman of the Dardanelles Commission,
and in my evidence before the Commission.
Personally I had a great regard for Abdul Hamid. Our Ambassadors had
not. One who knew of these matters considered Abdul Hamid the greatest
diplomat in Europe. I have mentioned elsewhere how greatly he resented
Lord Salisbury throwing over the traditional English Alliance with
Turkey and Lord Salisbury saying in a memorable speech that in making
that alliance in past years we had backed the wrong horse. For were
not (was Abdul Hamid’s argument) England and Turkey the two greatest
Mahomedan nations on Earth--England being somewhat the greater?
Kiamil--the Grand Old Man of Turkey--told me the same. He had been many
times Grand Vizier, and I went especially with the Mediterranean Fleet
to Smyrna to do him honour. He was the Vali there. His nickname in
Turkey was “The Englishman”; he was so devoted to us. He lamented to me
that England had had only one diplomatist of ability at Constantinople
since the days of Sir Stratford Canning, whom he knew. His exception
was a Sir William White, who had been a Consul somewhere in the Balkan
States. No other English Ambassador had ever been able to cope with
the Germans. I remonstrated with Kiamil by saying that Ambassadors now
were only telegraph instruments--they only conveyed messages, and quite
probably from some quite young man at the Foreign Office who had charge
of that Department. I venture to remark here in passing what I have
very frequently urged to those in authority--that the United States
system is infinitely better than ours. Their diplomatic representatives
are all fresh from home, with each change of President; ours live all
their lives abroad and practically cease to be Englishmen, and very
often, like Solomon, marry foreign wives. Another thing I’ve urged on
Authority is that some Great Personage should annually make a tour
of inspection of all the Diplomatic and Consular Agents (exactly as
the big Banks have a travelling Inspector), who would ask how much he
had increased the trade of the great British Commonwealth of Nations;
and if it weren’t more than five per cent. would give him the sack.
This Great Travelling Personage must be a man independent in means
and station of any Government connexion and undertake the duty as Sir
Edward (now Lord) Grey goes to Washington. The German Ambassador at
Constantinople used to go round selling beetroot sugar by the pound!
The English Ambassador said to me at a Garden Party he gave by those
lovely sweet waters of the Bosphorus: “You see that fellow there with
a white hat on? He’s the President of the British Chamber of Commerce;
he’s an awful nuisance. He’s always bothering me about some peddling
commercial business!”
Abdul Hamid was exceeding kind to me and invited me to Constantinople,
and he descanted (the Boer War then being on) what a risk there was
of a big coalition against England. Curiously enough, his colleague
the Pope had the same feeling. It is very deplorable, not only in the
late War but also in the Boer War especially, how utterly our spies
and our Intelligence Departments failed us. I was so impressed with
what the Sultan told me that I set to work on my own account; and
through the patriotism of several magnificent Englishmen who occupied
high commercial positions on the shores of the Mediterranean, I got
a central forwarding station for information fixed up privately in
Switzerland; and it so happened, through a most Providential state of
circumstances, that I was thus able to obtain all the cypher messages
passing from the various Foreign Embassies, Consulates and Legations
through a certain central focus, and I also obtained a key to their
respective cyphers. The Chief man who did it for me was not in
Government employ; and I’m glad to think that he is now in a great
position--though not rewarded as he should have been. No one is. But
as to any information from an official source reaching me, who was so
vastly interested in the matter, in the event of war where the Fleet
should strike first--all our Diplomats and Consuls and Intelligence
Departments might have been dead and buried. And how striking the
case in the late War--the Prime Minister not knowing at the Guildhall
Banquet on November 9th, 1918, that the most humiliating armistice ever
known would be accepted by the Germans within thirty-six hours, and
one of our principal Cabinet Ministers saying the Sunday before that
the Allies were at their last gasp. And read now Ludendorff, Tirpitz,
Falkenhayn, Liman von Sanders, and others--they knew exactly what the
Allies’ condition was and what their own was. And if the Dardanelles
evidence is ever published, it will be found absolutely ludicrous how
the official spokesmen gravely give evidence that the Turks had come
to their last round of ammunition and that the roofs of the houses
in Constantinople were crowded with people looking for the advent
of the approaching British Fleet. Why! it took our Admiral, on the
conclusion of the Armistice, with the help of the Turks and all his own
Fleet, several weeks to clear a passage through the mines, on which
Marshal Liman von Sanders so accurately based his reliance against any
likelihood of the Dardanelles being forced.
[Illustration:
[_Photo Press Portrait Bureau_
ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET LORD FISHER, G.C.B., O.M., ETC., 1917.]
CHAPTER VII
A JEU D’ESPRIT
BOWS AND ARROWS--SNAILS AND TORTOISES--FACILE
DUPES AND SERVILE COPYISTS
“Not the wise find salvation.”--_St. Paul._
One of the charms of the Christian religion is that the Foolish
confound the Wise. The Atheists are all brainy men. Myself, I hate
a brainy man. All the brainy men said it was impossible to have
aeroplanes. No brainy man ever sees that speed is armour. Directly
the brainy men got a chance they clapped masses of armour on the
“Hush-Hush” ships. They couldn’t understand speed being armour, and
said to themselves: “Didn’t she draw so little water she could stand
having weight put on her? Shove on armour!” and so bang went the speed,
and the “Hush-Hush” ships, whose fabulous beauty was their forty
shore-going miles an hour, were slowed down by these brainy men. Don’t
jockeys have to carry weights? Isn’t it called handicapping? Isn’t it
the object to beat the favourite--the real winner? There really is
comfort in the 27th verse of the 1st chapter of I Corinthians, where
the Foolish are wiser than the Wise.
What!--A battle cruiser called the “Furious” going 40 shore-going miles
an hour with 18-inch guns reaching 26 miles! “Take the damn guns out
and make it into an aeroplane ship!” (And I’m not sure they could ever
get the aeroplanes to land on her, owing to the heat of the funnels
causing what they call “Air pockets” above the stern of the ship.)
Yes! and we still have ancient Admirals who believe in bows and arrows.
There’s a good deal to be said for bows and arrows. Our ancestors
insisted on all churchyards being planted with yew trees to make
bows. There you are! It’s a home product! Not like those damn fools
who get their oil from abroad! And I have now the Memorandum with me
delivered to me when I was Controller of the Navy by a member of the
Board of Admiralty desiring to build 16 sailing ships! Again, didn’t
the Board of Admiralty issue a solemn Board Minute that wood floated
and iron sank? So what a damnable thing to build iron ships! Wasn’t
there another solemn Board Minute that steam was damnable and fatal
to the supremacy of the British Navy? Haven’t we had Admirals writing
very brainy articles in magazines to prove that there was nothing like
a tortoise? You could stand on the tortoise’s back; you weren’t rushed
by the tortoise, whereas these “Hush-Hush” ships, they were flimsy, and
speed was worshipped as a god. One mighty man of valour (only “he was
a leper” as regards sea fighting) told me at his luncheon table that
when one of these “Hush-Hush” ships encountered at her full strength of
nearly a hundred thousand horse power a gale of wind in a mountainous
sea she was actually strained! It’s all really too lovely; but of
course the humour of it can’t be properly appreciated by the ordinary
shore-going person. Yes, the brainy men, as I said before, crabbed the
“Hush-Hush” ships; they couldn’t understand that speed was armour when
associated with big guns because the speed enabled you to put your
ship at such a distance that she couldn’t be hit by the enemy, so it
was the equivalent of impenetrable armour although you had none of it,
and you hit the enemy every round for the simple reason that your guns
reached him when his could not reach you. Q.E.D. as Euclid says. What
these splendid armour bearers say is “Give me a strong ship which no
silly ass of a Captain can hurt.” Of course this implies that if it’s
Buggins’s turn to be Captain of a ship he gets it; it’s his turn, even
if he is a silly ass. The phase of mind they have is this: “None of
your highly strung racehorses for me, give me a good old cart-horse!”
So we build huge costly warships which will last a hundred years, but
become obsolete in five.
It all really is very funny--if it wasn’t disastrous and ruinous!
And they are such a motley crew, these discontented ones who come
together in John Bright’s cave of Adullam; and the Poor Dear Public
read an interview in a newspaper with some Commander Knowall; and then
a magazine article by Admiral Retrograde; and some old “cup of tea”
writes to _The Times_ (wonderful paper _The Times_--“Equal Opportunity
for All”) and there you are! Lord Fisher is a damned fool; and if he
isn’t a damned fool he’s a maniac. Oh! very well then, if he isn’t a
maniac, then he’s a traitor. Wasn’t Sir Julian Corbett very seriously
asked if he (Sir John Fisher) hadn’t sold his country to Germany? Sir
Julian thought the report was exaggerated, and that satisfied the
Searcher after Truth. But I ask my listeners, however should we get on
without these people? How dull life would be without their dialectical
subtleties and “reasoned statements” (I think they call them) and
“considered judgments”!
My splendid dear old friend, who could hardly write his name, the
Chief Engineer of the first ironclad, the “Warrior,” told me, when I
was Gunnery Lieutenant of her in 1861, that he had arranged for his
monument at death being of “malleable” iron. No cast iron for him, he
said! It played you such pranks. So it is with these carbonised cranks
who wield the pen, actuated by the wrong kind of grey matter of their
brain, and, their tongues acidulated with lies, sway listening Senates
and control our wars. It requires a Mr. Disraeli to deal with these
victims of their own verbosity, who are the facile dupes of their
vacuous imaginations and the servile copyists of the Billingsgatean
line of argument!
CHAPTER VIII
NAVAL WAR STAFF AND ADMIRALTY CLERKS
“A wise old owl lived in an oak;
The more he heard, the less he spoke;
The less he spoke, the more he heard;
Why can’t we be like that wise old bird?”
Lord Haldane with his “art of clear thinking” elaborated the
Imperial War Staff to its present magnificent dimensions. If any man
wants a thing advertised, let him take it over there to the Secret
Department. Only Sir Arthur Wilson and myself, when I was First Sea
Lord of the Admiralty, knew the Naval plan of war. He was the man,
so head-and-shoulders above all his fellows, who in his time was our
undoubted, indeed our incomparable, Sea Leader. No one touched him; and
I am not sure that even now, though getting on for Dandolo’s age, he
would not still achieve old Dandolo’s great deeds. What splendid lines
they are from Byron:
“Oh for one hour of blind old Dandolo,
Th’ Octogenarian Chief, Byzantium’s Conquering Foe!”
I loved Sir Arthur Wilson’s reported reply to the maniacs who think
the Navy is the same as the Army. If it is not true it is _ben
trovato_. He said the Naval War Staff at the Admiralty consisted of
himself--assisted by every soul inside the Admiralty, and he added,
“including the charwomen”--they emptied the waste-paper baskets full of
the plans of the amateur strategists--Cabinet and otherwise.
No such rubbish has ever been talked as about the Navy War Staff and
also, in connexion therewith, the Admiralty clerks who are supposed to
have wrecked its first inception in the period long ago when my great
friend the late Admiral W. H. Hall was introduced into the Admiralty to
form a Department of Naval Intelligence. I give my experience. I have
been fifteen or more years in the Admiralty--Director of Ordnance and
Torpedoes, Controller of the Navy, Second Sea Lord and First Sea Lord.
Inside the Admiralty, for conducting administrative work, the Civil
Service clerk is incomparably superior to the Naval Officer. The Naval
Officer makes a very bad clerk. He hasn’t been brought up to it. He
can’t write a letter, and, as you can see from my dictation, he is both
verbose and diffuse. The Clerk is terse and incisive.
I’ll go to instances. My Secretary, W. F. Nicholson, C.B., was really
just as capable of being First Sea Lord as I was, when associated
with my Naval Assistant. I often used to say that the First Sea Lord
was in commission, and that I was the facile dupe of these two; and I
was blessed with a succession of Naval Assistants who knew so exactly
their limitations as regards Admiralty work as allowed the Admiralty
machine to be, as was officially stated, the best, most efficient, and
most effective of all the Government Departments of the State. I have
a note of this, made by the highest authority in the Civil Service.
I would like here to name my Naval Assistants, because they were out
and away without precedent the most able men in the Navy: Admirals Sir
Reginald Bacon, Sir Charles Madden, Sir Henry Oliver, Sir Horace Hood,
Sir Charles de Bartolomé, Captain Richmond and Captain Crease--I’ll
back that set of names against the world.
I was the originator of the Naval War College at Portsmouth--that’s
quite a different thing from an Imperial General Staff at the War
Office. The vulgar error of Lord Haldane and others, who are always
talking about “Clear thinking” and such-like twaddle, is that they
do not realise that the Army is so absolutely different from the
Navy. Every condition in them both is different. The Navy is always
at war, because it is always fighting winds and waves and fog. The
Navy is ready for an absolute instant blow; it has nothing to do with
strategic railways, lines of communication, or bridging rivers, or
crossing mountains, or the time of the year, when the Balkans may be
snowed under, and mountain passes may be impassable. No! the ocean is
limitless and unobstructed; and the fleet, each ship manned, gunned,
provisioned and fuelled, ready to fight within five minutes. The Army
not only has to mobilize, but--thank God! this being an island--it has
to be carried somewhere by the Navy, no matter where it acts. I observe
here that when Lord Kitchener went to Australia to inaugurate the
scheme of Defence, he forgot Australia was an island. What Australia
wants to make it impregnable is not Conscription--it’s Submarines.
However, I fancy Kitchener was sent there to get him out of the way.
They wanted me to go to Australia, but I didn’t.[11] Jellicoe has
gone there. But then, Jellicoe hasn’t always sufficient foresight;
_exempli gratia_, he was persuaded to take the deplorable step of
giving up command of the Grand Fleet and going as First Sea Lord of the
Admiralty. Never was anything so regrettable. I told the War Council
that I am very glad Nelson never went to the Admiralty, and that Nelson
would have made an awful hash of it. Nelson was a fighter, not an
administrator and a snake charmer--that’s what a First Sea Lord has to
be.
Gross von Schwartzhoff told me on the sands of Scheveningen:--
“Your Navy can strike in thirteen hours; Our Army can’t under
thirteen days.”
Frau von Pohl tells us the Germans did expect us so to strike, but
Nelson was in heaven (Dear Reader, look again at what Frau von Pohl
said, you’ll find it in Chapter III.). On one occasion I got into a
most unpleasant atmosphere. I arrived at a country house late at night,
and at breakfast in the morning, I not knowing who the guests were,
a Cabinet Minister enunciated the proposition that sea and land war
were both in principle and practice alike. At once getting up from
the breakfast table, in the heat of the moment, and not knowing that
distinguished military officers were there, I said, “Any silly ass
could be a General.” I graphically illustrated my meaning. I gave the
contrast between a sea and a land battle. The General is somewhere
behind the fighting line, or he ought to be. The Admiral has got to be
_in_ the fighting line, or he ought to be. The Admiral is indeed like
the young Subaltern, he is often the first “Over the top.” The General,
at a telescopic distance from the battle scene and surrounded by his
Kitcheners, and his Ludendorffs, and his Gross von Schwartzhoffs, has
plenty of time for the “Clear thinking” _à la_ Lord Haldane; and then,
acting on the advice of those surrounding him, he takes his measures.
So far as I can make out from the Ludendorff extracts in _The Times_,
Hindenburg, the Generalissimo, was clearly not in it. He was “the silly
ass”! Ludendorff did it all as Chief of the Staff.
Now what’s the corresponding case at sea? The smoke of the enemy,
not even the tops of his funnels, can be seen on the horizon. (I
proved this myself with the great Mediterranean fleet divided into
two portions.) Within twenty minutes the action is decided! Realise
this--it takes some minutes for the Admiral to get his breeches on, to
get on deck and take in the situation; and it takes a good many more
minutes to deploy the Fleet from its Cruising Disposition into its
Fighting Disposition. In the Cruising Disposition his guns are masked,
one ship interfering with the fire of another. The Fleet for Battle
has to be so disposed that all the guns, or as many as possible, can
concentrate on one or a portion of the enemy’s fleet. Each fleet pushes
on at its utmost speed _to meet the other_, hoping to catch the other
undeployed. Every telescope in the fleet (and there are myriads) is
looking at the Admiral as he goes to the topmost and best vantage spot
on board his flag ship to see the enemy, and sees him alone outlined
against the sky--neither time nor room for a staff around him, and if
there were they’d say, “It’s not the Admiral who is doing it,” and be
demoralized accordingly--fatal to victory. In the fleet the Admiral’s
got to be like Nelson--“the personal touch” so that “_any silly ass
can’t be an Admiral_”; and the people of the Fleet watch him with
unutterable suspense to see what signal goes up to alter the formation
of the fleet--a formation on which depends Victory or Defeat. So it
was that Togo won that second Trafalgar; he did what is technically
known as “crossing the T,” which means he got the guns of his fleet
all to bear, all free to fire, while those of the enemy were masked by
his own ships. One by one Rozhdestvensky’s ships went to the bottom,
under the concerted action of concentrated fire. What does it? Speed.
And what actuates it? One mind, and one mind only. Goschen was right
(when First Lord of the Admiralty); he quoted that old Athenian Admiral
who, when asked what governed a sea battle, replied, “Providence,” and
then with emphasis he added: “and a _good Admiral_.” Which reminds
me too of Cromwell--a pious man, we all know; when asked a somewhat
similar question as to what ruled the world, he replied “The Fear of
the Lord,” and he added with an emphasis equal to that of the Athenian
Admiral--“And a broomstick.” No one votes more for the Sermon on the
Mount than I do; but I say to a blithering fool “_Begone!_”
A Naval War Staff at the Admiralty is a very excellent organisation
for cutting out and arranging foreign newspaper clippings in such an
intelligent disposition as will enable the First Sea Lord to take in
at a glance who is likely amongst the foreigners to be the biggest
fool or the greatest poltroon, who will be opposed to his own trusted
and personally selected Nelson who commands the British Fleet. The
First Sea Lord and the Chief Admiral afloat have got to be Siamese
twins. And when the war comes, the Naval War Staff at the Admiralty,
listening every moment to the enemy’s wireless messages (if he dare use
it), enables the First Sea Lord to let his twin at sea know exactly
what is going on. He takes in the wireless, and not necessarily the
Admiral afloat, on account of the far greater power of reception in a
land installation as compared with that on a ship. When you see that
spider’s web of lines of wire on the top of the Admiralty, then thank
God this is more or less a free country, as it got put up by a cloud of
bluejackets before a rat was smelt! An intercepted German Naval letter
at the time gave me personally great delight, for it truly divined that
wireless was the weapon of the strong Navy. For the development of the
wireless has been such that now you can get the direction of one who
speaks and go for him; so the German daren’t open his mouth. But if he
does, of course the message is in cypher; and it’s the elucidation
of that cypher which is one of the crowning glories of the Admiralty
work in the late war. In my time they never failed once in that
elucidation. Yes, wireless is the weapon of the strong. So also is the
Submarine--that is if they are sufficiently developed and diversified
and properly applied, but you must have quantities and multiplicity of
species.
What you want to do is to fight the enemy’s fleet, make him come out
from under the shelter of his forts, where his ships are hiding like
rabbits in a hole--put in the ferrets and out come the rabbits, or they
kill ’em where they are. Nelson blockading Toulon, as he told the Lord
Mayor of London in one of his most characteristic letters, didn’t want
to keep the French fleet in; he wanted them to come out and fight. But
he kept close in for fear they should evade him in darkness or in fog.
But the mischief of a Naval War Staff is peculiar to the Navy. I
understand it is quite different in the Army--I don’t know. The
mischief to the Navy is that the very ablest of our Officers, both
young and old, get attracted by the brainy work and by the shore-going
appointment. I asked a splendid specimen once whatever made him go in
for being a Marine Officer. He said he wanted to be with his wife!
Well, it’s natural. I know a case of a Sea Officer whose long absence
caused his children not to recognise him when he came home from China
and, indeed, they were frightened of him. The land is a shocking
bad training ground for the sea. I once heard one bluejacket say to
another the reason _he_ believed in the Bible was that in heaven there
is “no more sea.” I didn’t realise it at the time, but I looked
up “Revelations” and found it was so. A shallower spirit observed:
“Britannia rules the waves, but the mistake was she didn’t rule them
straight.” A very distinguished soldier who came to see me when I was
Port Admiral at Portsmouth said that the Army, as compared with the
Navy, was at a great disadvantage. In the Army, or even in the country,
he said, anyone who had handled a rifle laid down the law as if he were
a General; but the Navy, he said, was “A huge mystery hedged in by
sea-sickness.”
So far as the Navy is concerned, the tendency of these “Thinking
Establishments” on shore is to convert splendid Sea Officers into very
indifferent Clerks. The Admiralty is filled with Sea Officers now who
ought to be afloat; and the splendid civilian element--incomparable in
its talent and in its efficiency--is swamped. Before the war, when I
was First Sea Lord, when I left the Admiralty at 8 p.m., prior to some
approaching Grand Manœuvres, I left it to my friend Flint, one of the
Higher Division Clerks, to mobilize the fleet by a wireless message
from the roof of the Admiralty; and the deciding circumstances having
arisen, he did it off his own bat at 2 a.m. A weaker vessel, knowing of
the telephone at my bedside, might have rung me up; but Flint didn’t.
Good old Flint! Always one of the Clerks was on watch, all the year
round, night and day; and that obtained in the Admiralty long before
any other Department adopted it.
Now for such work as I have described you don’t want sea art; you
want the Craven scholar, and I had him. A Sea Officer can never be
an efficient clerk--his life unfits him. He can’t be an orator; he’s
always had to hold his tongue. He can’t argue; he’s never been allowed.
Only a few great spirits like Nelson are gifted with the splendid
idiosyncrasy of insubordination; but it’s given to a few great souls. I
assure you that long study has convinced me that Nelson was nothing if
not insubordinate. This is hardly the place to describe his magnificent
lapses from discipline, which ever led to Victory. It’s only due
on my part, who have had more experience than anyone living of the
civilian clerks at the Admiralty, to vouch for the fact that Sir Evan
Macgregor, the ablest Secretary of the Admiralty since Samuel Pepys,
Sir Graham Greene, Sir Oswyn Murray, Sir Charles Walker and my friends
V. W. Baddeley, C.B., and J. W. S. Anderson, C.B., W. G. Perrin, J. F.
Phillips, and many others have done work which has never been exceeded
as regards its incomparable efficiency. I can’t recall a single lapse.
The outcome of this expanded Naval War Staff beyond its real
requirements, such as I have indicated, and which were provided for
while I was First Sea Lord, was that a Chief of the Staff, in imitation
of him at the War Office, was planked into the Admiralty and indirectly
supplanted the First Sea Lord. I won’t enlarge on this further. It’s
many years before another war can possibly take place, and it’s now
a waste of educated labour to discuss it further. All I would ask is
for anyone to take up the last issue of the Navy List and see the
endless pages of Naval Officers at the Admiralty or holding shore
appointments. There has never been anything approaching these numbers
in all our Sea History! It is deplorable!
The Naval War College, which I established at Portsmouth, is absolutely
a different affair. There it can be arranged that all the Officers
go to sea daily and work as if with the fleet, with flotillas of
Destroyers that are there available in quantities. These Destroyers
would represent all the items of the fleet; and the formations of war
and the meetings of hostile fleets could be practised and so constitute
the Naval War College a real gem in war efficiency.
[Illustration: AGED 14. MIDSHIPMAN.
H.M.S. “Highflyer,” China.]
CHAPTER IX
RECAPITULATION OF DEEDS AND IDEAS
“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears!”
We have arranged that in this book you (to whom I am dictating) are to
insert a _réchauffé_ of my fugitive writings and certain extracts from
the three bulky volumes of my letters to Lord Esher, which he has so
very kindly sent me.
All, then, that I have to say in this chapter will be a summing up
of all that is in my opinion worth saying, and you are going to be
responsible for the rest. My judgment is that the British Public will
be sick of it all long before you come to the end of your part. One can
have too much jam. Nor do you seem inclined to put in all the “bites.”
For instance, it was told King Edward, who warned me of what was being
said, that my moral character was shocking. No woman will ever appear
against me at the Day of Judgment. One dear friend of mine attributed
all his life’s disasters to kissing the wrong girl. I never even did
that. However, there is no credit in my morality and early piety. For
I ever had to work from 12 years old for my daily bread, and work
hard, so the Devil never had a “look in.” I love Dr. Watts, he is so
practical.
“And Satan finds some mischief still.
For idle hands to do.”
Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who wrote that Classic, “Holy Living and Dying,”
who had a nagging wife who made him flee from home and youthful lusts,
said “That no idle rich healthy man could possibly go to Heaven.” No
doubt it is difficult for such a one. You will remember the Saviour
told us that the Camel getting through the eye of a needle is more
likely. Usually, earthly judgments on heavenly subjects are wrong.
Observe Mary Magdalene, and the most beautiful Collect for her Saint’s
Day which was in our First Prayer Book of 1540. This was later expunged
by the sacerdotal, pharisaic, self-righteous mandarins of that period.
The judgments of this world are worse than the judgments of God. When
David was offered three forms of punishment--Famine or the Sword or
Pestilence--he chose the pestilence, saying, “Let us now fall into
the hands of the Lord; for his mercies are great; and let me not fall
into the hand of man.” At the moment of making this note of which I am
speaking I am looking at two very beautiful old engravings I rescued
from the room here allotted to the Presbyterian Minister! One of them
is the “Woman Taken in Adultery” and the other is “Potiphar’s Wife”! My
host tells me it was a pure accident that these pictures came to be in
the Minister’s room; but such events happen to Saints. Wasn’t there
“The Scarlet Letter”--that wonderful book by Hawthorne?
I observe in passing how wonderfully well these Presbyterians do
preach. Our hosts have a beautiful Chapel in the house, and they have
got a delightful custom of selecting one from the Divines of Scotland
to spend the week-end here. Their sermons so exemplify what I keep on
impressing on you--that the printed word is a lifeless corpse. Can
you compare the man who reads a sermon to the man who listens to one
saturated with holiness and enthusiasm speaking out of the abundance
of the heart? No doubt there is tautology, but there’s conviction.
Two qualities rule the world--_emotion and earnestness_. I have said
elsewhere, with them you can move far more than mountains; you can
move multitudes. It’s the personality of the soul of man that has this
immortal influence. Printed and written stuff is but an inanimate
picture--a very fine picture sometimes, no doubt, but you get no aroma
out of a picture. Fancy seeing the Queen of Sheba herself, instead of
only reading of her in Solomon’s print! And those Almug trees--“And
there came no such Almug trees, nor were seen until this day.”
To a friend I was once adoring St. Peter (I love his impetuosity)--I am
illustrating how earthly judgments are so inferior to heavenly wisdom.
St. John, who was a very much younger man, out-ran Peter. Up comes
Peter, and dashes at once into the Sepulchre. Those men in war who get
there and then don’t do anything--_Cui bono_? A fleet magnificent,
five times bigger than the enemy, and takes no risks! A man I heard
of--his wife, separated from him, died at Florence. He was on the Stock
Exchange. They telegraphed, “Shall we cremate, embalm, or bury?” “Do
all three,” he replied, “take no risks!” Some of our great warriors
want the bird so arranged as to be able to put the salt on its tail.
But I was speaking of my praising St. Peter. What did my friend retort
(the judgment of this world, mind you!)? “Peter, Sir! he would be
turned out of every Club in London!” So he would! Thank God, we have a
God, so that when our turn comes we shall be forgiven much because we
loved much.
From this Christian homily I return to what I rather vainly hope is my
concluding interview.
Before beginning--one of my critics writes to _The Times_ saying I am
not modest--I never said I was. However, next day, Sir Alfred Yarrow
mentions perhaps the most momentous thing I ever did--that is the
introduction of the Destroyer; and the day following Sir Marcus Samuel
writes that I am the God-father of Oil--and Oil is going to be the
fuel of the world. Sir George Beilby is going to turn coal into Oil.
He has done it. Thank God! we are going to have a smokeless England in
consequence, and no more fortified coaling stations and peripatetic
coal mines, or what coal mines were. And then, I was going to give some
more instances, but that’s enough “_to point the moral and adorn the
tale_.”
“SEEKEST THOU GREAT THINGS FOR THYSELF? SEEK THEM NOT!” (THE PROPHET
JEREMIAH.)
You have given me a list of subjects which you think require
elucidation in regard to my past years--a _résumé_ especially of the
incidents which claim peculiar notice between 1902 and 1910; and you
ask me to add thereto such episodes from the past as will enlighten the
reader as to how it came about that those big events between 1902 and
1910 were put in motion.
It’s a big order, in a life of some sixty years on actual service--with
but three weeks only unemployed, from the time of entry into the Navy
to the time of Admiral of the Fleet.
I begin by being heartfelt in my thankfulness to a benign Providence
for being capable yesterday, September 13th, 1919, of enjoying suet
pudding and treacle with a pleasure equal to that which I quite well
remember, of having suet pudding and treacle on July 4th, 1854, when I
went on board H.M.S. “Victory,” 101 guns, the flagship at Trafalgar of
Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson. Yes! my thankfulness, I hope, is equal
to but hardly as wonderful as that of the almost toothless old woman
who, being commiserated with, replied: “_Yes, I only ’as two left;
but thank God they meet!_” So I say, to express the same thankfulness
with all my heart for the years that remain to me, though I have all
my teeth--or nearly all--notwithstanding that I have not had even one
single “thank you” for anything that I have done since King Edward
died. Nevertheless, I thank that same God as the old woman thanked,
Who don’t let a sparrow fall without a purpose and without knowledge.
I have no doubt the slight has done me a lot of good!
I thought at the age of nineteen, when I was Acting Captain of H.M.S.
“Coromandel,” that I never could again be so great. Please look at my
picture then. It’s a very excellent one--rather pulled down at the
corners of the mouth even then. (The child is father to the man.) And
though now nearly as old as Dandolo I don’t feel any greater than at
19. Dandolo after an escapade at the Dardanelles similar to mine,
became conqueror of Byzantium at 80 years of age. And Justinian’s two
Generals, Belisarius and Narses, were over 70. Dolts don’t realise
that the brain improves while the body decays--provided of course that
the original brain is not that of a congenital idiot, or of an effete
poltroon who never will run risks.
“Risks and strife” are the bread of Life to a growing brain.
I beg the reader of this dictation to believe that, whatever he may
hear to the contrary (and he probably will), though swaggering as I did
just now at suet-puddening at 79 as efficiently as at nineteen, yet I
do daily realise what that ancient monk wrote in the year 800, when he
studied the words of Job--that “Man that is born of a woman hath but
a short time” compared to eternity, and death may be always near the
door; and no words are more beautiful in connection therewith than when
a parting friend at the moment of departure makes us say: “Teach us who
survive in this and other like daily spectacles of mortality to see
how frail and uncertain our own condition is.”
First of all in this Recapitulation comes back to me a prophecy I
ventured at that age of 19 I have just mentioned--that the next great
war that we should have at sea would be a war of young men. And how
beautifully this is illustrated by the letter received only a few days
ago from that boy in Russia (see Chapter IV) where two battleships
were sent to the bottom and the British sailors in command were only
Lieutenants. And in passing one cannot help paying a tribute to
the Subalterns on shore. General Sir Henry Rawlinson said lately:
“Those who really won the war were the young Company Leaders and the
Subalterns,” and pathetic was the usual Gazette notice of those killed:
“Second Lieutenants _unless otherwise mentioned_.”
There was little “otherwise!” So has it been in the Navy, at Zeebrugge
and elsewhere.
There is, however, a very splendid exception--when all hands, old and
young, went to the bottom; and that is in the magnificent Merchant
Navy of the British Nation. Seven million tons sank under these men,
and the record of so many I’ve seen who were saved was: “Three times
torpedoed.” And remember! for them no Peerage or Westminster Abbey.
They didn’t even get paid for the clothes they lost, and their pay
stopped the day the ship was sunk. Except in the rare cases where the
shipowner was the soul of generosity, like my friend Mr. Petersen,
who paid his men six months or a year to do nothing after such a
catastrophe. But we go with Mr. Havelock Wilson: “We hope to change
all that.” For who is going to deny, when we all stand up for them,
that the Merchant Navy shall be incorporated in the Navy of the Nation
and with all the rights and money and rank and uniform and widows’
pensions and pensions in old age? All this has to come; and I am Mr.
Havelock Wilson’s colleague in that matter, as he was mine in that
wonderful feeding and clothing of our thousands of British Merchant
sailor prisoners, who didn’t, for some damned red tape reason, come
within the scope of the millions of money in that enormous Prince of
Wales’s Fund, and the Red Cross.
Somebody will have to be a martyr, perhaps it’s me. And I expect I am
going to be burnt at the stake for saying these things; but in those
immortal words of the past “I shall light the candle!” Isn’t it just
too lovely--when Bishop Latimer, as the flames shot up around him at
the stake in Oxford in A.D. 1555, cried to his brother Bishop, equally
burning:
“Play the man, Master Ridley! We shall this day light such a candle
by God’s Grace in England as I trust shall never be put out.”
So may it be in our being burnt for the sake of the great Merchant Navy
that saved our country!
* * * * *
As regards the years 1902 to 1910, the first conceptions of these great
changes stole upon me when I perceived in that great Fleet in the
Mediterranean how vague were the views as to fighting essentials. For
instance, in one of the lectures to the Mediterranean Fleet Officers
I set forth a case of so dealing with a hostile fleet that we should
ourselves first of all deliberately and in cold blood sacrifice several
of our fastest cruisers. Why?
To delay the flying enemy by the wounding of his hindermost ships.
Possibly a ruthless German Admiral might leave a “Blücher” to her fate;
but not so our then probable and chivalrous foe! The most shocking
description I have ever read of the horrors of war was that detailed
by one of the crew of the “Blücher” as he describes Beatty’s salvoes
gradually approaching the “Blücher” and falling near in the water, and
then the hell when these salvoes arrived, immediately extinguishing the
electric light installation, till all below between decks was pitchy
darkness only lighted up by the bursting shells as they penetrated and
massacred the crew literally by hundreds, who, huddled up together in
the “Blücher’s” last moments, were hoping behind the thickest armour to
escape destruction.
I saw that the plan of sacrificing vessels in the pursuit of an enemy
seemed a new feature to my hearers; and yet it was as old as the hills.
And another “eye-opener” I had--in the inability to realise so obvious
a fact as, alas! was somewhat the case in the North Sea recently--that
you need not be afraid of a mine field; for where the enemy goes you
can go, if you keep in his wake, that is. In close regard with this
matter, I am an apostle of “End-on Fire,” for to my mind broadside
fire is peculiarly stupid. To be obliged to delay your pursuit by
turning even one atom from your straight course on to a flying enemy
is to me being the acme of an ass. And, strange to say, in connection
with this I, only yesterday, September 13th, 1919, got a letter from
Admiral Weymouth--a most excellent letter, delightfully elaborating
with exceptional acuteness this very idea, which came along so long
ago as 1900, when the first thought of the “Dreadnought” came into my
brain, when I was discussing with my excellent friend, Mr. Gard, Chief
Constructor of Malta Dockyard, the vision of the “Dreadnought.”
I greatly enjoyed years ago overhearing a lady describe to another
lady, when crossing over to Ryde, a passing Ryde passenger steamer
(just built and differing very greatly from the one we were on board
of) as a Battleship. And she wasn’t far out as to what a battleship
should be. The enterprise of the Ryde Steam Packet Company had just
produced that vessel, which went just as fast astern as she did ahead.
In fact, she had no stern. There was a bow at each end and a rudder at
each end and screws at each end; so they never had any bother to turn
round. Now when you go to Boulogne or Folkestone, I don’t know how much
time you don’t waste fooling around to go in stern first, so as to be
able to come out the right way; and having escaped sea-sickness so far,
I myself have found that the last straw. Let us hope every ship now
built after this Chapter will be a “Double-Ender.” But in this world
you are a lunatic if you go too fast.
Take now the submarines. They began by diving head first to get below
water; and in the beginning some stuck their noses in the mud and never
came up again, and in the shallow waters of the North Sea this limited
the dimension of the submarine. But now there’s no more diving. A
lunatic hit by accident on the idea of sinking the ship horizontally;
so there is no more bother about the metricentric problems, and all the
vagaries of Stabilities. No limit to size!
This sort of consideration brought into one’s mind that a great
“Education” was wanted; and that we wanted “Machinery Education,”
both with officers and men; and also that the education should be
the education of common sense. My full idea of Osborne was, alas!
emasculated by the schoolmasters of the Nation; but it is yet going
to spread. As sure as I am now dictating to you, the practical way of
teaching is “_Explanation, followed by Execution_.” Have a lecture on
Optics in the morning: make a telescope in the afternoon. Tell the boys
in the morning about the mariner’s compass and the use of the chart;
and in the afternoon go out and navigate a Ship.
Similarly, with the selection of boys for the Navy, I didn’t want any
examination whatsoever, except the boy and his parents being “vetted,”
and then an interview with the boy to examine his personality (his
_soul_, in fact); and not to have an article in the Navy stuffed by
patent cramming schoolmasters like a Strasburg goose. A goose’s liver
is not the desideratum in the candidate. The desideratum was: could we
put into him the four attributes of Nelson:--
I. Self reliance.
(If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will.)
II. Fearlessness of Responsibility.
(If you shiver on the brink you’ll catch cold, and possibly not
take the plunge.)
III. Fertility of Resource.
(If the traces break, don’t give it up, get some string.)
IV. Power of initiative.
(Disobey orders.)
AIRCRAFT.
Somewhere about January 15th, 1915, I submitted my resignation as First
Sea Lord to Mr. Churchill because of the supineness manifested by the
High Authorities as regards Aircraft; and I then prophesied the raids
over London in particular and all over England, that by and by caused
several millions sterling of damage and an infinite fright.
I refer to my resignation on the aircraft question with some fear and
trembling of denials; however, I have a copy of my letter, so it’s
all right. I withdrew my resignation at the request of Authority,
because Authority said that the War Office and not the Admiralty were
responsible and would be held responsible. The aircraft belonged to the
War Office; why on earth couldn’t I mind my own business? I didn’t want
the Admiralty building and our wireless on the roof of it to be bombed;
so it _was_ my business (the War Office was as safe as a church, the
Germans would never bomb that establishment!).
Recently I fortuned to meet Mr. Holt Thomas, and he brought to my
recollection what was quite a famous meeting at the Admiralty. Soon
after I became First Sea Lord on October 31st, 1914, I had called
together at the Admiralty a Great Company of all interested in the air;
for at that moment I had fully satisfied myself that small airships
with a speed of fifty miles an hour would be of inestimable value
against submarines and also for scouting purposes near the coast. _So
they proved._
Mr. Holt Thomas was a valued witness before the Royal Commission on
Oil and Oil Engines, of which I was Chairman (a sad business for
me financially--I only possessed a few hundred pounds and I put it
into Oil--I had to sell them out, of course, on becoming Chairman of
the Oil Commission, and what I put those few hundreds into caused a
disappearance of most of those hundreds, and when I emerged from the
Royal Commission the oil shares had more than quintupled in value and
gone up to twenty times what they were when I first put in).
Through Mr. Holt Thomas we obtained the very important evidence of
the French inventor of the Gnome engine--that wonderful engine that
really made aeroplanes what they now are. His evidence was of peculiar
value; and so also was that of Mr. Holt Thomas’s experience; and the
result of the Admiralty meeting on aircraft was that we obtained
from Mr. Holt Thomas an airship in a few weeks, when the experience
hitherto had been that it took years; and a great number of this type
of aircraft were used with immense advantage in the war. I remember
so well that the very least time that could be promised with every
effort and unstinted money, was three months (but Mr. Holt Thomas
gave a shorter time). In three _weeks_ an airship was flying over the
Admiralty at 50 miles an hour (“there’s nothing you can’t have if you
want it enough”), and now we’ve reached the Epoch--prodigious in its
advent--when positively the Air commands and dominates both Land and
Sea; and we shall witness quite shortly a combination in one Structure
of the Aeroplane, the Airship, the parachute, the common balloon, and
an Aerial Torpedo, which will both astound people by its simplicity
and by its extraordinary possibilities, both in War and Commerce (the
torpedo will become cargo in Commerce). The aeroplane has now to keep
moving to live--but why should it? The aerial gyroscopic locomotive
torpedo suspended by a parachute has a tremendous significance.
And let no one think like the ostrich that burying one’s head in the
sand will make Invention desist. At the first Hague Peace Conference in
1899, when I was one of the British Delegates, huge nonsense was talked
about the amenities of war. War has no amenities, although Mr. Norman
Angell attacked me in print for saying so. It’s like two Innocents
playing singlestick; they agree, when they begin, not to hit hard,
but it don’t last long! Like fighting using only one fist against the
other man with two; the other fist damn soon comes out! The Ancient who
formulated that “All’s fair in love and war” enunciated a great natural
principle
“_War is the essence of violence._”
“_Moderation in War is imbecility._”
“_HIT FIRST. HIT HARD. KEEP ON HITTING._”
The following Reports and letter will illustrate this history of my
efforts in this direction:--
Lord Fisher returned to the Admiralty on October 30th, 1914.
38 S.S. airships were at once ordered--single engine type. Six
improved type.
Before Lord Fisher left the Admiralty, a design of a double-engine
type was got out, and subsequently another 32 airships were ordered.
CIRCULAR LETTER issued by Lord Fisher in 1914 when First Sea Lord:--
Lord Fisher desires to express to all concerned his high
appreciation of the service rendered by those who carried out the
recent daring raid on Lake Constance.
He considers that the flight mentioned, made over 250 miles
of enemy country of the worst description, is a fine feat of
endurance, courage, and skill, and reflects great credit on all who
took part in the raid, and through them on the Air Service to which
they belong.
* * * * *
The following précis of correspondence is inserted because contributory
to Lord Fisher’s resignation. He had previously written to Mr.
Churchill, resigning on the ground of the disregard of his warnings
respecting the Aircraft menace:--
An Official Secret German Dispatch, obtained from a German Source,
dated December 26th, 1914:--
The General Staff of the German Army are sending aircraft to attack
French fortified places. Full use to be made of favourable weather
conditions for attack of Naval Zeppelins against the East Coast of
England with the exception of London. The attack on London will follow
later combined with the German Army Airships.
* * * * *
Précis of History of Rigid Airships of Zeppelin Type.--
Lord Fisher, when First Sea Lord, in December, 1908, instructed
Admiral Bacon to press for the construction of rigid airships for
naval purposes at the meetings of a Sub-Committee of the Committee of
Imperial Defence, which held its first meeting in December, 1908, after
many meetings at which Admiral Bacon presented the naval point of view
with much lucidity. The Committee recommended on January 28th, 1909,
the following:--
(_a_) The Committee are of opinion that the dangers to which we might
be exposed by developments in aerial navigation cannot be definitely
ascertained until we ourselves possess airships.
(_b_) _There are good grounds for assuming that airships will prove
of great value to the Navy for scouting and possibly for destructive
purposes._[12] From a military point of view they are also important.
(_c_) A sum of £35,000 should be included in the Naval Estimates for
the purpose of building an airship of a rigid type. The sum alluded to
should include the cost of all preliminary and incidental expenses.
(_d_) A sum of £10,000 should be included in Army Estimates for
continuing experiments with navigable balloons of a non-rigid type, and
for the purchase of complete non-rigid airships and their component
parts.
_January 28th, 1909._
Approved by Committee of Imperial Defence, _February 25th, 1909_.
And nothing more was done till I came back to Admiralty on October
30th, 1914!
Letter from Admiral Sir S. Eardley Wilmot, formerly Superintendent of
Ordnance Stores, Admiralty:--
THE OLD MALT HOUSE,
MARLOW,
_August 13th, 1916_.
DEAR LORD FISHER,
Having given us splendid craft to fight on and under the sea, I
wish you would take up the provision of an air fleet. There is
going to be a great development of air navigation in the future and
all nations will be at it. With our resources and wealth we can
take and keep the lead if we like.
As a modest programme to start with we might aim at 100 air
battleships and 400 air cruisers: all on the “lighter than air”
principle.
I met a young fellow who had been in the Jutland action and asked
him how the 15-inch guns did. “Splendidly,” he said--“They did
nearly all the real execution.” I hear the Germans have got 17-inch
guns which is what I anticipated, but they won’t get ahead of us in
that time tho’ we can’t yet snuff out their Zepps, thanks to you
know who.
Yours sincerely,
(Signed) S. EARDLEY WILMOT.
_Note._--More than a year before I got this letter I had got a
20-inch gun ready to be built for a new type of Battle Cruiser!
[Illustration: AGED 19. LIEUTENANT.
In temporary command of “Coromandel” in China.]
THE SUBMARINE MINE
As quite a young Lieutenant, with extraordinary impudence I told
the then First Sea Lord of the Admiralty that the Hertz German
Submarine Mine, which I had seen a few days before in Kiel
Harbour, would so far revolutionise sea warfare as possibly to
prevent one fleet pursuing another, by the Fleet that was flying
dropping submarine mines in its wake; and certainly that sudden sea
operations of the old Nelsonic type would seriously be interfered
with. He very good humouredly sent me away as a young desperado, as
he remembered that I had been a lunatic in prophesying the doom of
masts and sails, which were still then magnificently supreme, and
the despised engineer yet hiding his diminished head had to keep
the smell of oily oakum away from the noses of the Lords of the
ship.
That same Hertz mine in all its essentials remains still “The King
of Mines,” and if only in those years immediately preceding the war
we had manufactured none else, instead of trying to improve on it,
we should have bagged no end of big game. But as it was, our mines
were squibs; the enemy’s ship always steamed away and got into
harbour, while ours always went down plump.
The Policy of the Submarine Mine favoured us, but our authorities
couldn’t see it. I printed in three kinds of type:
(1) Huge capitals; (2) Italics; (3) big Roman block letters the
following words, submitted to the authorities very early in the
war--
“Sow the North Sea with Mines on such a huge scale that Naval
Operations in it become utterly impossible.”
_So you nip into the Baltic with the British Fleet._
That British Mining Policy blocked the North Sea entrance to the
Kiel Canal--that British Mining Policy dished the neutrals. When
the neutrals got blown up you swore it was a German mine--it was
the Germans who began laying mines; and a mine, when it blows
you up, don’t hand you a ticket like a passport, saying what
nationality it is. In fact, our mines were so damned bad they
couldn’t help believing it was a German mine. But I might add
I think they would have sunk any Merchant ship, squibs though
they were; and I may add in a parenthesis this British policy of
submarine mines for the North Sea would have played hell with the
German submarines, not so much blowing them up but entangling their
screws.
Well, at the last--_longo intervallo_--towards the close of the
war, being the fifteenth “Too Late” of Mr. Lloyd George’s ever
memorable and absolutely true speech, the British Foreign Office
did allow this policy, and the United States sent over mines in
thousands upon thousands, and we’re still trying to pick ’em up, in
such vast numbers were they laid down!
_We really are a very peculiar people.
Lions led by Asses!_
I bought a number of magnificent and fast vessels for laying down
these mines in masses--no sooner had I left the Admiralty in May, 1915,
they were so choice that they were diverted and perverted to other uses.
But perhaps the most sickening of all the events of the war was the
neglect of the Humber as the jumping-off place for our great fast
Battle Cruiser force, with all its attendant vessels--light Cruisers,
Destroyers, and Submarines, and mine-layers, and mine-sweepers--for
offensive action at any desired moment, and as a mighty and absolute
deterrent to the humiliating bombardment of our coasts by that same
fast German Battle Cruiser force. The Humber is the nearest spot to
Heligoland; and at enormous cost and greatly redounding to the credit
of the present Hydrographer of the Navy, Admiral Learmonth (then
Director of Fixed Defences), the Humber was made submarine-proof,
and batteries were placed in the sea protecting the obstructions,
and moorings laid down behind triple lines of defence against all
possibility of hostile successful attack.
However, I had to leave the Admiralty before it was completed and the
ships sent there; and then the _mot d’ordre_ was Passivity; and when
the Germans bombarded Scarborough and Yarmouth and so on, we said to
them _à la Chinois_, making great grimaces and beating tom-toms; “If
you come again, look out!” But the Germans weren’t Chinese, and they
came; and the soothing words spoken to the Mayors of the bombarded East
Coast towns were what Mark Twain specified as being “spoke ironical.”
I conclude this Chapter with the following words, printed in the early
autumn of 1914:--
“By the half-measures we have adopted hitherto in regard to
Open-Sea Mines we are enjoying neither the one advantage nor the
other.”
That is to say, when the Germans at the very first outbreak of war
departed from the rules of the Hague Conference against the type of
mine they used, we had two courses open to us: there was the moral
advantage of refusing to follow the bad lead, or we could seek a
physical advantage by forcing the enemies’ crime to its utmost
consequences. We were effete. We were pusillanimous, and we were like
Jelly-fish.
_And we “Waited and See’d.”_
CHAPTER X
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA
We started out on the compilation of this book on the understanding
that it was not to be an Autobiography, nor a Diary, nor Meditations
(_à la_ Marcus Aurelius), but simply “MEMORIES.” And now you drive me
to give you a Synopsis of my life (which is an artful periphrasis),
and request me to account for my past life being one continuous series
of fightings--Love and Hate alternating and Strife the thread running
through this mortal coil of mine. (When a coil of rope is made in a
Government Dockyard a coloured worsted thread is introduced; it runs
through the centre of the rope: if the rope breaks and sends a man
to “Kingdom Come,” you know the Dockyard that made it and you ask
questions; if it’s purloined the Detective bowls out the purloiner.) So
far my rope of life has not broken and the thread is there--Strife.
Greatly daring, and “storms of obloquy” having been my portion, I
produce now an _apologia pro vita mea_, though it may not pulverise as
that great Cardinal pulverised with his famous Apologia (“He looked
like Heaven and he fought like Hell”).
* * * * *
Here I would insert a note which I discovered this very afternoon sent
me by an unknown friend when Admiral von Spee and all his host went to
the bottom. Before that event there had been a series of disasters at
sea, and a grave uneasy feeling about our Navy was spreading over the
land. The three great Cruisers--“Hogue,” “Cressy” and “Aboukir”--had
been sunk near the German coast. What were they doing there? Did
they think they were Nelson blockading Toulon? The “Goeben” and
“Breslau” had escaped from our magnificent Battle Cruisers, then in
the Mediterranean, which had actually boxed them up in the Harbour
of Messina; and they had gone unharmed to Constantinople, and like
highwaymen had held a pistol at the head of the Sultan with the threat
of bombarding Constantinople and his Palace and thus converted Turkey,
our ancient ally, into the most formidable foe we had. For is not
England the greatest Mahomedan Power in the world? The escape of the
“Goeben” and “Breslau” was an irreparable disaster almost equalled by
our effete handling of Bulgaria, the key State of the Balkans; and we
didn’t give her what she asked. When we offered it and more next year,
she told us to go to hell. Then there was the “Pegasus,” that could
neither fight nor run away, massacred in cold blood at Zanzibar by a
German Cruiser as superior to her as our Battle Cruisers were to von
Spee. And last of all, as a climax, that sent the hearts of the British
people into their boots, poor Cradock and his brave ships were sunk
by Admiral von Spee. I became First Sea Lord within 24 hours of that
event, and without delay the Dreadnought Battle Cruisers, “Inflexible”
and “Invincible,” went 7,000 miles without a hitch in their water tube
boilers or their turbine machinery, and arrived at the Falkland Islands
almost simultaneously with Admiral von Spee and his eleven ships. That
night von Spee, like another Casablanca with his son on board, had
gone to the bottom and all his ships save one--and that one also soon
after--were sunk. I have to reiterate about von Spee, as to this day
the veil is upon the faces of our people, and they do not realise the
Salvation that came to them.
1. We should have had no munitions--our nitrate came from Chili.
2. We should have lost the Pacific--the Falkland Islands would have
been another Heligoland and a submarine base.
3. Von Spee had German reservists, picked up on the Pacific Coast, on
board, to man the fortifications to be erected on the Falkland Islands.
4. He would have proceeded to the Cape of Good Hope and massacred our
Squadron there, as he had massacred Cradock and his Squadron.
5. General Botha and his vast fleet of transports proceeding to the
conquest of German South-West Africa would have been destroyed.
6. Africa under Hertzog would have become German.
7. Von Spee, distributing his Squadron on every Ocean, would have
exterminated British Trade.
That’s not a bad _résumé_!
Now I give the note, for it really is first-rate. Who wrote it I don’t
know, and I don’t know the paper that it came from:--
“It is amusing to read the eulogies now showered on Lord Fisher. He
is the same man with the same methods, the same ideas, and the same
theories and practice which he had in 1905 when he was generally
abused as an unscrupulous rascal for whom the gallows were too
good. Lord Fisher’s silence under storms of obloquy while he was
building up Sea Power was a striking evidence of his title to fame.”
The writer of the paragraph quotes the above words from some other
paper; then he goes on with the following remark:--
“We cordially endorse these observations. At the same time, not all
of those who raised the ‘storms of obloquy’ in 1905 and for some
years subsequently are now indulging in eulogy. Many of them just
maintain a more or less discreet silence, varied by an occasional
insinuation either in public or in private that everything is not
quite as it should be at the Admiralty, or that Lord Fisher is too
old for his job, etc., etc., etc. As we have often remarked, many
of the vituperators of Lord Fisher hated him for this one simple
reason, that he had weighed them up and found them wanting. They
had imposed on the public, but they couldn’t impose on him. Some
of these vituperators are now discreetly silent, but we know for a
fact that their sentiments towards the First Sea Lord are not in
the slightest degree changed.”
To proceed with this synopsis:--
I entered the Navy, July 12th, 1854, on board Her Majesty’s Ship
“Victory,” after being medically examined by the Doctor on board of
her, and writing out from dictation The Lord’s Prayer; and I rather
think I did a Rule of Three sum. Before that time, for seven years
I had a hard life. My paternal grandfather--a splendid old parson of
the fox-hunting type--with whom I was to live, had died just before I
reached England; and no one else but my maternal grandfather was in a
position to give me a home. He was a simple-minded man and had been
fleeced out of a fortune by a foreign scoundrel--I remember him well,
as also I remember the Chartist Riots of 1848 when I saw a policeman
even to my little mind behaving, as I thought, brutally to passing
individuals. I remember seeing a tottering old man having his two
sticks taken away from him and broken across their knees by the police.
On the other hand, I have to bear witness to a little phalanx of 40
splendid police (who then wore tall hats and tail coats) charging a
multitude of what seemed to me to be thousands and sending them flying
for their lives. They only had their truncheons--but they knew how to
use them certainly. They seized the band and smashed the instruments
and tore up their flags.
I share Lord Rosebery’s delightful distaste; and wild horses won’t
make me say more about those early years. These are Lord Rosebery’s
delicious words:--
“There is one initial part of a biography which is skipped by every
judicious reader; that in which the pedigree of the hero is set
forth, often with warm fancy and sometimes at intolerable length.”
How can it possibly interest anyone to know that my simple-minded
maternal grandfather was driven through the artifices of a rogue to
take in lodgers, who of their charity gave me bread thickly spread
with butter--butter was a thing I otherwise never saw--and my staple
food was boiled rice with brown sugar--very brown?
Other vicissitudes of my early years--until I became Gunnery Lieutenant
of the first English Ironclad, the “Warrior,” at an extraordinarily
early age--may be told some day; and all that your desired synopsis
demands is a filling in of dates and a few details, till I became
the Captain of the “Inflexible”--the “Dreadnought” of her day. I was
promoted from Commander to Captain largely through a Lord of the
Admiralty by chance hearing me hold forth in a Lecture to a bevy of
Admirals.
H.M.S. “VIGILANT,” PORTSMOUTH.
_October 3rd, 1873._
Mr. Goschen and Milne left at 10 a.m. I stayed and went on board
“Vernon,” Torpedo School Ship, at 11. Had a most interesting
lecture from Commander Fisher, a promising young officer, and
witnessed several experiments. The result of my observations was
that in my opinion the Torpedo has a great future before it _and
that mechanical training will in the near future be essential for
officers_. Made a note to speak to Goschen about young Fisher.
That was in 1873. More than thirty years after, “Young Fisher” was
instrumental in making this principle the basis of the new system of
education of all naval cadets at Osborne.
I remember so well taking a “rise” out of my exalted company of
Admirals and others. The voltaic element, which all lecturers then
produced with gusto as the elementary galvanic cell, was known as the
“Daniell Cell.” A bit of zinc, and a bit of copper stuck in sawdust
saturated with diluted sulphuric acid, and there you were! A bit of
wire from the zinc to one side of a galvanometer and a bit of wire from
the copper to the other side and round went the needle as if pursued by
the devil.
There were endless varieties of this “Daniell Cell,” which it was
always considered right and proper to describe. “Now,” I said, “Sirs,
I will give you without any doubt whatsoever the original Daniell
Cell”--at that moment disclosing to their rapt and enquiring gaze
a huge drawing (occupying the whole side of the lecture room and
previously shrouded by a table cloth)--the Lions with their mouths
firmly shut and Daniel apparently biting his nails waiting for
daylight! Anyhow, that’s how Rubens represents him.
I very nearly got into trouble over that “Sell.” Admirals don’t like
being “sold.”
I should have mentioned that antecedent to this I had been Commander
of the China Flagship. I wished very much for the Mediterranean
Flagship; but my life-long and good friend Lord Walter Kerr was justly
preferred before me. The Pacific Flagship was also vacant; and I
think the Admiral wanted me there, but I had a wonderful good friend
at the Admiralty, Sir Beauchamp Seymour, afterwards Lord Alcester,
who was determined I should go to China. So to China I went; and, as
it happened, it turned out trumps, for the Admiral got softening of
the brain, and I was told that when he got home and attended at the
Admiralty I was the only thing in his mind; the only thing he could
say was “Fisher!” And this luckily helped me in my promotion to Post
Captain.
After starting the “Vernon” as Torpedo School of the Navy and
partaking in a mission to Fiume to arrange for the purchase of the
Whitehead Torpedo, I was sent at an hour’s notice overland to Malta,
where on entering the harbour I noticed an old tramp picking up her
anchor, and on enquiry found she was going to Constantinople, where the
ship I was to command was with the Fleet under Sir Geoffrey Hornby. I
went alongside, got up a rope ladder that was hanging over the side
and pulled up my luggage with a rope’s end, when the Captain of the
Tramp came up to me and said: “Hullo!” I said “Hullo!” He said “What
is it you want?” He didn’t know who I was, and I was in plain clothes,
just as I had travelled over the Continent, and I replied: “I’m going
with you to Constantinople to join my ship”; and he said “There ain’t
room; there’s only one bunk, and when I ain’t in it the mate is.” I
said “All right, I don’t want a bunk.” And he said “Well, we ain’t got
no cook.” And I said “That don’t matter either.” That man and I till
he died were like Jonathan and David. He was a magnificent specimen
of those splendid men who command our merchant ships--I worshipped
the ground he trod on. His mate was just as good. They kept watch and
watch, and it was a hard life. I said to him one day “Captain, I never
see you take sights.” “Well,” he said, “Why should I? When I leaves
one lamp-post I steers for the other” (meaning lighthouses); “and,”
he says, “I trusts my engineer. He gives me the revolutions what the
engine has made, and I know exactly where I am. And,” he says, “when
you have been going twenty years on the same road and no other road,
you gets to know exactly how to do it.” “Well,” I said, “what do you do
about your compass? are you sure it’s correct? In the Navy, you know,
we’re constantly looking at the sun when it sets, and that’s an easy
way of seeing that the compass is right.” “Well,” he said, “what I does
is this. I throws a cask overboard, and when it’s as far off as ever
I can see it, I turns the ship round on her axis. I takes the bearing
of the cask at every point of the compass, I adds ’em all up, divides
the total by the number of bearings, which gives me the average, and
then I subtracts each point of the compass from it, and that’s what
the compass is wrong on each point. But,” he says, “I seldom does it,
because provided I make the lamp-post all right I think the compass is
all right.”
I found Admiral Hornby’s fleet at Ismid near Constantinople, and
Admiral Hornby sent a vessel to meet me at Constantinople. He had
heard from Malta that I was on board the tramp. That great man was the
finest Admiral afloat since Nelson. At the Admiralty he was a failure.
So would Nelson have been! With both of them their Perfection was on
the Sea, not at an office desk. Admiral Hornby I simply adored. I had
known him many years; and while my cabins on board my ship were being
painted, he asked me to come and live with him aboard his Flagship,
which I did, and I was next ship to him always when at sea. He was
astounding. He would tell you what you were going to do wrong before
you did it; and you couldn’t say you weren’t going to do it because
you had put your helm over and the ship had begun to move the wrong
way. Many years afterwards, when he was the Port Admiral at Portsmouth,
I was head of the Gunnery School at Portsmouth, and, some war scare
arising, he was ordered to take command of the whole Fleet at home
collected at Portland. He took me with him as a sort of Captain of the
Fleet, and we went to Bantry Bay, where we had exercises of inestimable
value. He couldn’t bear a fool, so of course he had many enemies.
There never lived a more noble character or a greater seaman. He was
incomparable.
* * * * *
After commanding the “Pallas” in the Mediterranean under Sir Geoffrey
Hornby, I was selected by Admiral Sir Cooper Key as his Flag Captain
in North America in command of the “Bellerophon”; and I again followed
Sir Cooper Key as his Flag Captain in the “Hercules” when he also was
put in command of a large fleet on another war scare arising. It was in
that year I began the agitation for the introduction of Lord Kelvin’s
compass into the Navy, and I continued that agitation with the utmost
vehemence till the compass was adopted. After that I was chosen by
Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock, the great Arctic Explorer, to be his
Flag Captain on the North American Station, in the “Northampton,” then
a brand new ship. He again was a splendid man and his kindness to me is
unforgettable. He had gone through great hardships in the Arctic--once
he hadn’t washed for 179 days. He was like a rare old bit of mahogany;
and I was told by an admirer of his that when the thermometer was 70
degrees below zero he found the ship so stuffy that he slept outside on
the ice in his sleeping bag.
[Illustration: 1885. AGED 41. POST CAPTAIN.
In command of Gunnery School at Portsmouth.]
I was suddenly recalled to England and left him with very deep regret
in the West Indies to become Captain of the “Inflexible.” I had the
most trying parting from that ship’s company of the “Northampton”;
and not being able to stand the good-bye, I crept unseen into a shore
boat and got on board the mail steamer before the crew found out that
the Captain had left the ship. And the fine old Captain of the Mail
Steamer--Robert Woolward by name--caught the microbe and steamed me
round and round my late ship. He was a great character. Every Captain
of a merchant ship I meet I seem to think better than the last (I hope
I shan’t forget later on to describe Commodore Haddock of the White
Star Line, for if ever there was a Nelson of the Merchant Service he
was). But I return to Woolward. He had been all his life in the same
line of steamers, and he showed me some of his correspondence, which
was lovely. He was invariably in the right and his Board of Directors
were invariably in the wrong. I saw a lovely letter he had written that
very day that I went on board, to his Board of Directors. He signed
himself in the letter as follows:--
“Gentlemen, I am your obedient humble servant” (he was neither),
“ROBERT WOOLWARD--Forty years in your employ and never did right
yet.”
I must, while I have the chance, say a few words about my friend
Haddock. It was a splendid Captain in the White Star steamer in
which I crossed to America in 1910, and I remarked this to my Cabin
Steward, as a matter of conversation. “Ah!” he said, “you should see
’addick.” Then he added “We knows him as ’addick of the ‘Oceanic.’
Yes,” he said, “and Mr. Ismay (the Head of the White Star Line) knows
him too!” The “Oceanic” was Mr. Ismay’s last feat in narrowness and
length and consequent speed for crossing the Atlantic. I have heard
that when he was dying he went to see her. This conversation never left
my mind, although it was only the cabin steward that told me; but he
was an uncommon good steward. So when I came back to the Admiralty as
First Sea Lord on October 31st, 1914, I at once got hold of Haddock,
made him into a Commodore, and he commanded the finest fleet of dummy
wooden “Dreadnoughts” and Battle Cruisers the world had ever looked on,
and they agitated the Atlantic, and the “Queen Elizabeth” in wood got
blown up by the Germans at the Dardanelles instead of the real one.
The Germans left the other battleships alone chasing the “Elizabeth.”
If this should meet the eye of Haddock, I want to tell him that, had I
remained, he would have been Sir Herbert Haddock, K.C.B., or I’d have
died in the attempt.
* * * * *
Now you have got perhaps not all you want, but sufficient for the Notes
to follow here.
THE “WARRIOR”
I was appointed Gunnery Lieutenant of the “Warrior” our First Ironclad
in 1863, when I was a little over 22 years old. I had just won the
Beaufort Testimonial (Senior Wrangler), and that, with a transcendental
Certificate from Commodore Oliver Jones, who was at that time the demon
of the Navy, gave me a “leg up.”
The “Warrior” was then, like the “Inflexible” in 1882 and the
“Dreadnought” in 1905, the cynosure of all eyes. She had a very famous
Captain, the son of that great seaman Lord Dundonald, and a still
more famous Commander, Sir George Tryon, who afterwards went down in
the “Victoria.” She had a picked crew of officers and men, so I was
wonderfully fortunate to be the Gunnery Lieutenant, and at so young an
age I got on very well, except for sky-larking in the ward-room, for
which I got into trouble. There was a dear old grey-headed Paymaster,
and a mature Doctor, and a still more mature Chaplain, quite a dear
old Saint. These, with other willing spirits, of a younger phase, I
organised into a peripatetic band. The Parson used to play the coal
scuttle, the Doctor the tongs and shovel, the dear old Paymaster used
to do the cymbals with an old tin kettle. The other instruments we made
ourselves out of brown paper, and we perambulated, doing our best. The
Captain came out of his cabin door and asked the sentry what that noise
was? We were all struck dumb by his voice, the skylight being open,
and we were silent. The Sentry said: “It’s only Mr. Fisher, Sir!” so
he shut the door! The Commander, Sir George Tryon, wasn’t so nice! He
sent down a message to say the Gunnery Lieutenant was “to stop that
fooling!” (However, this only drove us into another kind of sport!) We
were all very happy messmates; they kindly spoilt me as if I was the
Baby. I never went ashore by any chance, so all the other Lieutenants
liked me because I took their duty for them. One of them was like
Nelson’s signal--he expected every man to do his duty! I was his bosom
friend, which reminds me of another messmate I had who, the witty First
Lieutenant said, always reminded him of Nelson! Not seeing the faintest
resemblance, I asked him why. “Well,” he said, “the last thing Nelson
did was to die for his country, and that is the last thing this fellow
would do!” It may be an old joke, but I’d never heard it before, and it
was true.
I got on very well with the sailors, and our gunnery was supposed to be
A 1. They certainly did rush the guns about, so I was sent in charge
of the bluejackets to a banquet given them ashore. I imagined that
on our return they might have had a good lot of beer, so I appealed
to their honour and affection, when we marched back to the ship in
fours, to take each other’s arms. They nobly did it! And I got highly
complimented for the magnificent way they marched back through the
streets!! And this is the episode! The galleries at the banquet were
a mass of ladies, and very nice-looking ones. When the banquet was
over, the Captain of the Maintop of the “Warrior,” John Kiernan by
name, unsolicited, stood up in his chair and said: “On behalf of his
top-mates he wished to thank the Mayor and Corporation for a jolly
good dinner and the best beer he’d ever tasted.” He stopped there and
said: “Bill, hand me up that beer again.” Bill said there was no more!
A pledge had been given by the Mayor that they should have only two
bottles of beer each. But this episode was too much for the Mayor, and
instantly in came beer by the dozen, and my beloved friend, the Captain
of the Maintop, had another glass. This is how he went on (and it was
a very eloquent speech in my opinion. I remember every word of it to
this day) He said: “This is joy,” and he looked round the galleries
crowded with the lovely ladies, and said: “Here we are, British Sailors
entirely surrounded by females!!” They waved their handkerchiefs and
kissed their hands, and that urged the Captain of the Maintop into a
fresh flight of eloquence. “Now,” he said, “Shipmates, what was it like
now coming into this ’ere harbour of Liverpool” (we had come in under
sail); “why,” he said, “this is what it was like, sailing into a haven
of joy before a gale of pleasure.” I then told him to shut up, because
he would spoil it by anything more, and Abraham Johnson, Chief Gunner’s
Mate, my First Lieutenant, gave him more beer! and so we returned.
Abraham Johnson was a wonder! When the Admiral inspected the “Warrior,”
Abraham Johnson came to me and said he knew his Admiral, and would
I let him have a free hand? I said: “All right!” When the ship was
prepared for battle, the Admiral suddenly said: “I’ll go down in the
Magazine,” and began going down the steps of the Magazine with his
sword on! Abraham was just underneath down below, and called up to the
Admiral: “Beg pardon, Sir! you can’t come down here!” “D--n the fellow!
what does he mean?” Abraham reiterated: “You can’t come down here.” The
Admiral said: “Why not?” “Because no iron instrument is allowed in the
Magazine,” said Abraham. “Ah!” said the Admiral, unbuckling his sword,
“that fellow knows his duty. This is a properly organised ship!”
It is seldom appreciated--it certainly was not then appreciated on
board the “Warrior” when I was her Gunnery Lieutenant--that this, our
first armour-clad ship-of-war, the “Warrior,” would cause a fundamental
change in what had been in vogue for something like a thousand years!
For the Navy that had been founded by Alfred the Great had lasted till
then without any fundamental change till came this first Ironclad
Battleship. There is absolutely nothing in common between the fleets
of Nelson and the Jutland Battle! Sails have given way to steam. Oak
to steel. Lofty four-decked ships with 144 guns like the “Santissima
Trinidad,” to low-lying hulls like that of the first “Dreadnought.”
Guns of one hundred tons instead of one ton! And Torpedoes, Mines,
Submarines, Aircraft. And then even coal being obsolete! And, unlike
Nelson’s day, no human valour can now compensate for mechanical
inferiority.
I rescue these few words by a survivor of the German Battle Cruiser
“Blücher,” sunk on January 24th, 1915, by the British Battle Cruisers
“Lion” and “Tiger.” The German Officer says:
“The British ships started to fire at us at 15 kilometres distant”
(as a matter of fact it was about 11 to 12 miles). “The deadly
water spouts came nearer and nearer! The men on deck watched them
with a strange fascination!
“Soon one pitched close to the ship, and a vast watery billow, a
hundred yards high, fell lashing on the deck!
“The range had been found!
“The shells came thick and fast. The electric plant was destroyed,
and the ship plunged into a darkness that could be felt! You could
not see your hand before your nose! Below decks were horror and
confusion, mingled with gasping shouts and moans! At first the
shells came dropping from the sky, and they bored their way even to
the stokeholds!
“The coal in the bunkers was set on fire, and as the bunkers were
half empty the fire burnt fiercely. In the engine-room a shell
licked up the oil and sprayed it around in flames of blue and
green, scarring its victims and blazing where it fell. Men huddled
together in dark compartments, but the shells sought them out, and
there Death had a rich harvest.”
I forgot to say we had a surprise visit from Garibaldi on board the
“Warrior”--Garibaldi, then at the zenith of his glory. The whole crew
marched past him singing the Garibaldi Hymn. He was greatly affected.
It was very fine indeed; for we had a picked stalwart crew, and their
sword bayonets glistening in the sun, and in their white hats and
gaiters they looked, as they were, real fighting men! And then, in a
moment, they stripped themselves of their accoutrements and swarmed up
aloft and spread every sail on the ship, including studding sails, in a
few minutes. It was a dead calm, and so was feasible.
From the “Warrior” I went to the gunnery school ship, the “Excellent”;
and it was during these years that some of my “manias” began to display
themselves, the result being that three times I lost my promotion
through them.
It had fortuned that in 1868, when starting the Science of Under-Water
Warfare as applied to the Ocean, I met a humble-minded armourer
whose name was Isaac Tall, and for many years we worked together. He
devised, amongst other inventions, an electrically-steered steam vessel
that could tow barges laden with 500 lb. mines which were dropped
automatically at such a distance apart as absolutely to destroy all
hostile mines in a sufficient area to give a passage for Battleships.
Small buoys were automatically dropped as the countermines were dropped
to mark the cleared passage. That invention, simplicity itself, still
holds the field for clearing a passage, say, into the Baltic. Not one
single man was on board the steam vessel of the Barges carrying the
counter mines.
Before leaving the Admiralty, in January, 1910, I introduced the use of
Trawlers, and we employed them in experimental trials, clearing away
hostile mines. Our mines in those days were very inferior to the Hertz
German Mine, which really remains still the efficient German Mine we
have to contend with. In 1868 I took out a provisional patent for a
Sympathetic Exploder, and, strange to say, it is now coming into play
in a peculiar form as a most effective weapon for our use.
I have remarked elsewhere how the First Lord of that date did not
believe in mines or torpedoes, and I left for China as Commander of the
China flagship.
Archbishop Magee, that wonderful Prelate who asked some layman to
interpret his feelings when the footman spilt the onion sauce over him,
said of “Exaggerations” that they were needful! He said you wanted
a big brush to produce scenic effects! A camel’s-hair brush was, no
doubt, the inestimable weapon of Memling in those masterpieces of his
minute detail that were at Bruges when I was a young Post Captain, and
that so entranced me there. Ah! that wonderful Madame Polsonare where
we lodged! How she did so well care for us! The peas I used to watch
her shelling! The three repositories:
First--the old ones to be stewed.
Second--those for the Polsonare Family.
Thirdly--the youngest and sweetest of the peas for us--her lodgers!
And how most delicious they were! And how delightful was old “Papa”
Polsonare! and the daughters so plump and opulent in their charm!
And their only son the “brave Belge!” He was a soldier! What has become
of them now? They cared for us as their very own, and charged us the
very minimum for our board and lodging! And having nothing but my pay
then I was grateful! And the Kindergarten so delightful! The little
children all tied together by a rope when they went out walking. Pamela
was my youngest daughter. “The last straw” was her nickname! And it was
written up over the mantelpiece that it was “défendu” to kiss Pamela!
She was about three years old, I think, and went to school with a bun
and her books strapped to her back, and when the Burgomaster gave away
the prizes she was put on a Throne to hand them out (dressed as a
Ballet Dancer!). But alas! when the moment came she was found to be
fast asleep!
I am always so surprised that so little notice is taken of Satan’s
dramatic appearance before the Almighty with reference to the Patriarch
Job. It’s so seldom that Satan in person comes before us. He usually
uses someone else, and in this case of Job it’s quite the most subtle
innuendo I ever came across! It so accentuates what occurs in common
life!
“_Doth Job fear God for nought?_” Well may one be thankful and
prayerful when prosperity is showered on one! Can you be so in
adversity and affliction--undeserved and unexplainable? However, Job
got through all right! But Prayer is as much misunderstood as Charity.
A splendid Parson in Norfolk replied to his congregation who asked him
to pray for rain that really it was useless while the wind was east!
Also it appears to me that one farmer, wanting rain for his turnips,
doesn’t have any feeling for the other man who is against rain because
of carrying his crop of something else. Indeed the pith and marrow of
prayer is that it must be absolutely unselfish, and so Dr. Chalmers
accordingly acutely said the finest prayer he knew was: “Almighty God,
the Fountain of all Wisdom, who knowest our necessities,” etc. (_see_
Collects at end of Communion Service).
Coming home from the China Station in 1872, I was Commander of the
old Battleship “Ocean.” She was an old wooden Line of Battleship that
had armour bolted on her sides. When we got into heavy weather, the
timbers of the ship would open when she heeled over one way, and shut
together when she heeled the other, and squirted the water inboard! And
always we had many fountains playing in the bottom of the ship from
leaks, some quite high. At Singapore the Chaplain left us; he couldn’t
face it, as we were going home round the Cape of Good Hope at the
stormy season. So I did chaplain! When we put into Zanzibar on the East
Coast of Africa, I heard there was a sick Bishop ashore from Central
Africa who had been carried down on a shutter with fever. I went to
see him, to ask whether he could take on next day, Sunday, and give
the crew a change! He turned out to be a splendid specimen, and had
given up a fat living in Lincolnshire to be a Missionary. I found him
eating boiled rice and a hard boiled egg on a broken plate--we gave him
a good feed when he came on board--but I am telling the story because
his Sermon was on Prayer. He gave us no text, but began by saying he
had been wondering for the last half-hour what on earth that thing was
overhead between the beams on the main deck where we were assembled!
Of course we knew it was one of the long pump handles for pumping the
ship out with the chain pumps (a thing of past ages)--all the crew
had to take continually to the pumps, she was leaking so badly--and
“There!” he said, “I’m a Bishop, and instead of saying my prayers I’ve
been letting my thoughts wander,” and he gave us a beautiful extempore
sermon on wandering thoughts on Prayer that hit everyone in the eye!
I believe he died there in Central Africa, a polished English
gentleman, with refined tastes and delighting in the delicacies of a
cultured life! A missionary had come preaching at his Country Church
and had made him ashamed of his life of ease, so he told me!
We got into a fierce gale off the Cape, and I began to envy the
Chaplain we had left behind at Singapore, especially when the Captain
said he thought there was nothing for it but for me, the Commander, to
go aloft about the close reefed fore topsail as the men would follow no
one of lower rank. My monkey jacket was literally “blown into ribbons!”
I had heard the expression before, but never had realised it could be
exact!
Sir Thomas Troubridge foundered with all hands in the exact place in
an old two-decker--I think it was the “Blenheim.” He was Nelson’s
favourite, and got ashore in the “Culloden” at the Nile; but that’s
another story as Mr. Kipling says!
HOW I BECAME CAPTAIN OF THE “INFLEXIBLE”
The “Inflexible” in 1882 was a wonder. She had the thickest armour,
the biggest guns, and the largest of everything beyond any ship in
the world. A man could crawl up inside the bore of one of her guns.
Controversy had raged round her. The greatest Naval Architects of the
time quarrelled with each other. Endless inventions were on board her,
accumulated there by cranks in the long years she took building. A
German put a new type of gas into the engine room, which was lovely,
and no smell, so bright, so simple! But when it chanced to escape from
a leaky joint, it descended and did not rise, so it got into all the
double bottoms and nearly polished off a goodly number of the crew.
There were whistles in my cabin that yelled when the boiler was going
to burst, or the ship was not properly steered, and so on. So to be
Captain of the “Inflexible” was much sought after. As each name was
discussed by the Board of Admiralty it got “butted,” that is to say, it
would be remarked: “Yes, he’s a splendid officer and quite fit for it,
but----” and then some reason was adduced why he should not be selected
(he had murdered his father, or he had kissed the wrong girl!).
Lord Northbrook, who was First Lord, got sick of these interminable
discussions as to who should be Captain of the “Inflexible,” so he
unexpectedly said one morning: “Do any of you know a young Captain
called Fisher?” And they all--having no notion of what was in Lord
Northbrook’s mind, and I being well known to each of them--had no
“buts”! So he got up and said: “Well, that settles it. I’ll appoint
him Captain of the “Inflexible.” I was about the Junior Captain in the
biggest ship!
However, the “Inflexible” brought me to death’s door, as I was suddenly
struck down by dysentery when ashore in charge of Alexandria after
the bombardment. I had arranged an armoured train, with which we used
to reconnoitre the enemy, who were in great strength and only a few
miles off. The Officer who took my place in the armoured train the
day after I was disabled by dysentery was knocked over by one of the
enemy shells, and so it was telegraphed home that I was killed, and
Queen Victoria telegraphed back for details, and very interesting
leading articles appeared as to what I might have been had I lived.
Lord Northbrook telegraphed for me to be sent home immediately, kindly
adding that the Admiralty could build another “Inflexible” but not
another Fisher.
As I was being carried on board, in a brief moment’s consciousness I
heard the Doctor say: “He’ll never reach Gibraltar!” and then and there
I determined I would live. When I got home, Lord Northbrook appointed
me Head of the Gunnery School of the Navy. Queen Victoria asked me to
stay at Osborne, and did so every year till she died; and this in spite
of the fact that she hated the Admiralty, and didn’t much care for the
Navy.
I kept on being ill from the effects of the dysentery for a long time,
but Lord Northbrook never let go my hand. When all the doctors failed
to cure me, I accidentally came across a lovely partner I used to waltz
with, who begged me to go to Marienbad, in Bohemia. I did so, and in
three weeks I was in robust health. It was the Pool of Bethesda, and
this waltzing angel put me into it, for it really was a miracle, and I
never again had a recurrence of my illness.
CHAPTER XI
NELSON
Lord Rosebery may have forgotten it, but in one of our perigrinations
round and round Berkeley Square (I lived next door to him) he made a
remark to me which made a deep and ineffaceable impression on me--that
he felt sure one of the great reasons of Nelson being so in the hearts
of his countrymen was the conviction that he had been slighted by
Authority and even so after his death. Unquestionably his brother
Admirals were envious. He was kept kicking his heels at Merton on half
pay in momentous times, and so poor as to necessitate his getting
advances from his Banker. He was cavalierly treated when he was told
to haul down his flag and come home after the Battle of the Nile. I
know all about the Queen of Naples and Lady Hamilton; but what was that
in comparison with his astounding genius for war and his hold on the
Fleet? And I want to draw attention to this delightful trait in his
glorious character. Supposing (what I don’t admit) that there was any
irregularity in his attachment to Lady Hamilton, he never disguised
his feeling for her, or his gratitude to her for all she did for his
grievously wounded and frail body after the Nile and her splendid
conduct in getting his Fleet revictualled and stored by the Neapolitans
through her influence with the King and Queen, when all the Authorities
were against it. He used to ask his Captains to drink her health, and
said (in my opinion quite truly), that if there were more Emmas there
would be more Nelsons.
Then look at the Battle of the Nile! It was an incomparable battle--but
it only made Nelson into a Common or Garden Lord; when the Battle of
Cape St. Vincent, which was practically won by Nelson, made Sir John
Jervis into an Earl. History is so written that no end of literary
gentlemen will endeavour to confute all I am saying by extracts (or, as
they will call them, facts) from Contemporary Documents and Newspapers.
Well now, to-day, read the _Morning Post_ and _Daily News_ on the same
incident! (For myself I prefer the _Daily News_.) Again, Nelson died
poor. That appeals. What Prize Money might he not have accumulated, had
he chased dollars as he chased the enemy! Then with his dying breath,
mortally wounded in the hour of the greatest of sea victories, he asks
his country to provide for his friend as he could do nothing for her
himself; and, whatever may have been her faults, she had nursed and
tended him, not only when sorely wounded after the Nile, but afterwards
when his frail body was almost continuously racked with pain. She died
in penury and found a pauper’s grave in a foreign land. A passing
Englishman paid her funeral expenses. It makes one rise up and say
“Damn!”
That vivid immortal spirit, whose life was his country’s, who never
flogged a man; whose heart was tender and “worn on his sleeve for daws
to peck at,” has to suffer even now for miscreants who published his
letters to this friend of his that only her eye was meant to see. Also,
Prudes nowadays forget how very different was the standard of morals
at that time. Does not history tell us that Dukes were the honoured
results of illicit relationships? And we don’t think any the worse of
Abraham because he was the husband of more than one wife. But let that
pass. I heard yesterday that a distinguished Bishop said he loved my
sentiments but not my words. But fancy! Nelson left on half-pay in War!
It’s unbelievable, but yet it so happened. It was envy; and he was no
sycophant, so he couldn’t be a courtier. It was so with him as with
our great Exemplar: “The Common People heard him gladly.” And what a
“Send-off” it was on Southsea beach at Portsmouth when he embarked for
Trafalgar! What a scene it was, with these Common People surging round
him--none else were there, and neither the King nor the Admiralty sent
a dummy, as is customary, to represent them. But isn’t it always the
way? General Booth and Doctor Barnardo weren’t buried in Westminster
Abbey; but they had a more glorious funeral--millions of the “Common
People” followed them to their graves, unmarshalled and unsolicited.
Give me the Common People, and a fig for your State ceremonial!
[Illustration: 1904. AGED 63. ADMIRAL.
Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth.]
Perhaps in this cursory view of Nelson one may be permitted to
seize on what appears to me the central incident of his life, which so
peculiarly illustrates his extraordinary genius for War. His audacity!
His imagination! His considered rashness! I think myself the Battle of
the Nile is that incident--for this reason: that it has been recorded
in writing what actually occurred to Lord Nelson and to the French
Admiral at the very same instant of time--each having at his side the
very same officer in each Fleet. It was sunset. Nelson was walking
the deck with the Navigating Officer of the Fleet--the “Master of the
Fleet” was his technical title. The look-out man at the mast-head
reports seeing on the horizon the mast-heads of a mass of ships at
anchor--it was the French Fleet in Aboukir Bay. Nelson instantly stops
in his walk and orders the signal to the Fleet to make all possible
sail and steer for the enemy. He is remonstrated with, both by his own
officers on board and by his favourite Captain of the Fleet at going in
to fight the French Fleet without any charts. If he waited till the sun
rose, they would be able to see from aloft the shoal water and so steer
with safety alongside the enemy. Nelson answers his favourite Captain
that if that Captain’s ship does get on shore, as he fears, then she’ll
be a buoy to show him where anyhow one shoal is. Troubridge _did_ get
on shore, and he _was_ a buoy. Nelson went in. The French Admiral
blew up at midnight in his flagship the “Orient” and Casabianca, his
Captain, and his son are the theme of a great poem: “The boy stood on
the burning deck.”
The French Admiral was walking up and down the deck with _his_ Master
of the Fleet, when _his_ look-out man at the mast-head reported on the
horizon the topmast sails of a number of ships. The French Admiral
stopped in his walk as abruptly as Nelson and at the very same instant
that Nelson stopped in his walk; but he said “It’s the English Fleet,
but they won’t come in to-night. They have no charts!” So he did
not recall his men from the shore--and in the result his fleet was
destroyed, and the one or two ships that did escape under Admiral
Dumanoir were captured. And Napoleon wrote, “But for Nelson at the Nile
I would have been Conqueror of the World”--or words to that effect.
And yet Nelson was only made a common or garden Lord for this great
battle, and spent two years on the Continent kicking his heels about to
pass the time before returning to England. Imagine! he wasn’t wanted!
I think Lord Rosebery was right--Nelson being slighted has led to his
greater appreciation.
Again--even a greater slight, a slight he feels more--when he looks
down from his monument in Trafalgar Square, does he see anywhere those
splendid Captains of his? But let alone those Captains of his--does
he see anywhere a single Admiral? _Not one._ And yet who made England
what she is? Those splendid Sea Heroes are in very deed “_England’s
forgotten worthies_”! Yes! Nelson looks down from his isolated column,
and looks in vain for Hawke, Dundonald, Howe, Hood, Rodney, Cornwallis,
Benbow, “_and a great multitude which no man can number_”--all Seamen
of Deathless Fame, fighting single frigate actions, cutting out the
enemy’s ships from under the guns of forts, sending in fire ships and
burning the enemy’s vessels thought to be safe in harbour under the
guns of their forts--Doers of Imperishable Deeds![13] Death found them
fighting. We have heaps of statues to everybody else. Indeed such a lot
of them that they reach down as far off as Knightsbridge. But who knows
about Quiberon--one of the greatest of sea fights? And if you mention
Hawke, your friend probably thinks only of his worthy descendant--the
cricketer.
An old woman eating a penny bun asked a friend of mine called Buggins,
when she was passing through Trafalgar Square, “_What are them lions
a-guarding of?_” Buggins told her that her penny bun would have cost
her threepence if it hadn’t been for the man them lions were a-guarding
of.
When I see the Duke of York’s Column still allowed to rear its futile
head, and scores of other fifth-rate nonentities glorified by statues,
I thank God I’m a sailor--we don’t want to be in that galley!
I began my sea life with the last of Nelson’s Captains, through
Nelson’s own niece; and I fitly, I think, among my last words may ask
the Nation to do justice to Nelson’s Trade! This country owes all she
has to the sea, it was the sea that won the late war, and if we’d stuck
to the sea we should not now be thinking of bankruptcy and some of
us imagining Carthage! We were led away by Militarist folly to be a
conscript Nation and it will take us all we know to recover from it. We
shall recover, _for England never succumbs!_
CHAPTER XII
LETTERS TO LORD ESHER
Lord Esher has kindly sent me three bulky volumes of letters I wrote
him from 1903 onwards--I have others also. Many of them are unquotable,
so blasting are they in their truth to existing reputations. It’s not
my business to blast reputations--so the real gems are missing.
Somebody felt in 1903 that the War Office was wrong, and so a Committee
was set up with Lord Esher as President, Sir George Clarke and myself
the other two members; and that very able and not sufficiently
recognised man, now General Sir C. Ellison, was Secretary. How I got
there is still a mystery; but it was a great enjoyment as Generals came
to stay with me at Admiralty House, Portsmouth--I was the Port Admiral.
I always explained to them I was Lord Esher’s facile dupe and Sir
George Clarke’s servile copyist, and thereby avoided odium personally
(I was getting all the odium I wanted from the Admirals!).
As usual, when we reported, the Government didn’t appreciate those
inestimable words “_Totus Porcus_” (No Government--anyhow no English
Government--ever yet went “the whole hog”--“Compromise” is the British
God!).[14]
1903 [_Sir John Fisher, Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth_].
... My humble idea is that “_men are everything and material
nothing_” whether it’s working the War Office or fighting a fleet!
So some day I am going to try and entice you to read my lectures
to the Officers of the Mediterranean Fleet because the spirit
intended to be diffused by them is what I think is the one great
want in the British Army, and without it 50,000 Lord Eshers would
be no good in producing “Angel Gabriel” organisations! The Military
system is rotten to the very core! You want to begin _ab ovo_! The
best of the Generals are even worse than the subalterns because
they are more hardened sinners! I fear I shocked Ellison, but he
is simply first class and I most heartily congratulate you on your
selection.... I really begin to feel I never ought to have joined
you as I have some very big jobs on now which require incessant
personal attention and this must be my excuse for not coming up to
see Girouard this week. I have the new Civil Lord staying with me
and I have got to prevent him joining with a lot of asses at the
Admiralty, who want to throw half a million of money in the gutter.
* * * * *
_Nov. 19th, 1903._
On my return I found the first proofs of your three papers. I have
studied them with close care and interest. There are some points of
detail which puzzle me, but it seems you are absolutely convincing
on the main lines. What I venture to emphasise is this:--We cannot
reform the Army Administration until it is laid down what it is
the Administration is going to Administer! For instance, the
Citizen Army for Home Defence! Are we going to have it? If so,
then you will certainly want a Member of the Board or Council to
superintend it! Again, I say, the _Regular Army_ (as distinguished
from the Home Army and the _Indian Army_) should be regarded as a
projectile to be fired by the Navy! The Navy embarks it and lands
it where it can do most mischief!--Thus, the Germans are ready
to land a large Military Force on the Cotentin Peninsula in case
of War with France and my German Military Colleague at the Hague
Conference told me this comparatively small Military Force would
have the effect of demobilising half a million of men who would
thus be taken away from the German Frontier--they never know where
the devil the brutes are going to land! Consequently instead of
our Military Manœuvres being on Salisbury Plain and its vicinity
(ineffectually aping the vast Continental Armies!) we should be
employing ourselves in joint Naval and Military Manœuvres embarking
50,000 men at Portsmouth and landing them at Milford Haven or
Bantry Bay!--This would make the Foreigners sit up! Fancy! in the
Mediterranean Fleet we disembarked 12,000 men with guns in _19
minutes_! What do you think of that! and we should hurry up the
soldiers! No doubt there would be good-natured chaff! Once we
embarked 7,000 soldiers at Malta and took them round and landed
them elsewhere for practice, and I remember having a complaint
that the Bluejackets said “Come on, you bloody lobsters! Wake up!”
However all the above _en passant_. I expect the Prime Minister
must have pretty good ideas now crystallised as to how the Army
should be constituted--let us ask him for this at once--if he
hasn’t got it, let us tell him we must have it, because as I said
at starting, you can’t organise an administration without clearly
knowing what you are going to administer. This is a hasty bit of
writing but not a hasty thought.
* * * * *
1903.
_Nov. 25th._
I send you two books--a more portly volume I hesitate to
send!--Also I fear without some verbal explanation you may not
see the application to Military matters of these purely Naval
Notes, but they do apply in the spirit if not in the letter! For
instance I had an overwhelming confidence that every Officer and
man in the Mediterranean Fleet had also an overwhelming confidence
that we thoroughly knew all we had to do in case of war in every
conceivable eventuality! Well! that is the confidence you also want
in an Army! Have you got it!
* * * * *
_Dec. 2nd._
Here is a letter just come from Prince Louis of Battenberg
illustrating what I was saying to you this morning as to a Member
of the Board of Admiralty however junior in rank being accepted
as a superior controlling authority by all in rank above him. An
Officer actually at the moment serving under Prince Louis in the
Admiralty itself being put over Prince Louis in the Admiralty
itself, and sending for him and giving him orders! I don’t know
that it would be possible to have a stronger case to quote when
by and by we have to defend or rather have to lay down and define
the status of the Members of the New War Office Board. Inglefield,
the new Naval Lord, being a Junior Captain, will be sending for
_Admiral_ Boys, Director of Transports, who is specially under him
and who I rather think entered the service before Inglefield was
born.
* * * * *
_Dec. 4th._
... You are right about the Submarines!
“_We strain at the gnat of perfection and swallow the camel of
unreadiness_,” and that permeates every branch of Naval and
Military Administration, forgetting the homely proverb that “half
a loaf is better than no bread!” but please God! “_the dauntless
three_” [Sir Geo. Clarke, Lord Esher and Sir John Fisher] (as I see
we are now called) will change all that! “We’ll stagger humanity”
as old Kruger said!
* * * * *
_Dec. 7th._
Arnold-Forster [Secretary for War] has been here three days and
he is most cordially with us. I wish you had been here with him.
He places implicit trust in us. He has shown me an outline of an
excellent memorandum proposing an immediate reduction of 300,000
men and he will let me have a copy as soon as printed, also a
memorandum of his difficulties in the War Office.... This is
another proof of the value of the advice of my Military Nicodemus
(he is one of the Sanhedrin!) that there must be an active
“clear-out” of the present military gang, root and branch, lock,
stock, and gunbarrel! Sir John French and General Smith-Dorrien
(lately Adjutant-General in India) are names I have suggested to
Arnold-Forster as members of his new Board.
* * * * *
_Dec. 11th._
... Don’t forget your phrase “_the biennial fortnightly picnic”!
it’s splendid!_ That will fetch the mothers of families and
reconcile them to the Swiss system! I hope you won’t lose any
time in talking to the Prime Minister and showing him the immense
advantages that will accrue from his turning over further matters
to us instead of dear Arnold-Forster “raising Cain” as he surely
will do! It would be so easy to associate Sir John French, Hildyard
and Smith-Dorrien (very curious that all these three Generals were
first in the Navy and got their early education there) with us for
the further matters.
* * * * *
_Dec. 17th._
Another Military Nicodemus came to see me yesterday. I had never
met him before! He occupies a high official position. He highly
approved of you and me, “but he had never heard of the third member
of the Committee. What a pity they had not put a soldier on the
Committee!” (How these Christians hate one another!) But the point
of his remarks was the present system of Army Promotions, which he
said was as iniquitous and baleful in its influence as could be
possibly conceived, and then he illustrated by cases of certain
officers made Generals. My only object in writing this to you is
Selborne having spoken of the Admiralty method where the first Lord
has the Naval Members of the Board in consultation, but he and his
Private Secretary (who is always a Naval Officer of note) have the
real responsibility.
* * * * *
_Dec. 20th._
---- is and always has been drastic in his ideas of military
reform, and I cordially agree with him and Stead agrees with me
that the British Public loves a root and branch reform. One remnant
left of the old gang or the organisations and you taint the whole
new scheme!
Don’t fear about Arnold-Forster. He will come with us all
right--you are absolutely sound on the Patronage question, but I
would have the soldiers precisely on the same footing as Tyrwhitt
at the Admiralty [Private Secretary. He was my Flag Captain] for
detailed reasons I will give you when we meet. It is an ideal
arrangement (the Private Secretary at Admiralty). He has the power,
he pulls the strings, he has no position, he causes no jealousy, he
talks to all the Lords as their servant, and he manipulates them
all and oils the machine for his special master, the First Lord,
to perpetrate a job when necessary! Make him a big-wig like an
Official Military Secretary, and all this goes--he becomes too big
for his boots!
* * * * *
_Dec. 21st._
... I’ve been bombarded by Stead. I tried to boom him off but the
scoundrel said if I didn’t see him, he would have to invent! I
pointed out to him my _métier_ was that of the mole! Trace me by
upheavals! When you see the Admirals rise it’s that d--d fellow
Jack Fisher taking the rise out of them! So I implored Stead to
keep me out of the _Magazine Rifle_ [this was my name for _The
Review of Reviews_] or he will interfere with my professional
career of crime. So please use your influence with him in the same
direction. You and Clarke are the two legitimate members of the
Committee to be trotted out, as you are both so well known. No
sailor is ever known. The King was awfully good about this. He said
“Sailors went all round the world but never went in it”! Stead is
a very keen observer, as you know. He said our Committee could do
anything, and that neither the Press nor Parliament nor the Public
would tolerate any Military opposition to us because the whole
Military hierarchy was utterly discredited from top to bottom; but
he doubted _The Times_--_I don’t_. Further he expressed his firm
belief there would be a change of Government possibly at Easter but
certainly soon--if so we ought on that ground alone to “dig out”
with our Report.
* * * * *
1903.
(No date.)
Knollys was very much impressed by the possibilities of the
Submarine when he was down here. He saw them to better advantage
than you did as it was blowing half a gale of wind with a good sea
on when he saw the evolutionising! and it was very striking. I am
working subterraneously about the Submarines and there are already
“upheavals” in consequence.
* * * * *
1904.
_Jan. 5th._
... I yesterday sent all my plans to French for embarking the
whole of his First Army Corps on Monday, June 27th (Full Moon) at
Portsmouth, and he is coming here with his Chief Staff Officer,
Sir F. Stopford, next week, and we’ll land him like Hoche’s Army
in Bantry Bay! [Sir John French commanded at Aldershot. _The War
Office stopped this._]
* * * * *
1904.
_Jan. 17th._
... For the reason I have given you at length in another letter I
am convinced that French should be 1st Military Member and under
him there should be 3 _Directors_ (not Hieroglyphics such as
A.Q.M.G., D.A.Q.M.G., A.Q.M.G. 2, etc., etc.).
Sir F. Stopford--Director of Intelligence and Mobilisation.
Gen. Grierson--Director of Training.
Gen. Maxwell--Director of Home Defence.
Also I still maintain that Smith-Dorrien and Plumer should be the
2nd and 3rd Military Members, and perhaps one young distinguished
Indian Officer as 4th Military Lord. Haig, Inspector-General of
Cavalry in India, should be brought home as the principal Director
under _2nd Military Lord_. We must have youth and enthusiasm,
because it is only by the agency of young and enthusiastic
believers in the immense revolution which must be carried out, that
our scheme can bear fruit. The first thing of all is that every one
of the “old gang” must be cleared out! “lock, stock, and gunbarrel,
bob and sinker!” The next is that every one of the new men _must
be successful men_, and must be young and enthusiastic and cordial
supporters of the new policy--over every fellow’s door at the
War Office under the new régime has got to be written in large
letters:--
“No looking back. Remember Lot’s wife!”
* * * * *
1904.
(No date.)
The next pressing and important matter we have to deal with is _to
get the right men as Members of the new Army Council_. Either you
or Clarke have made a splendid observation that a rotten system
may be run effectively by good men but duffers would spoil the
work of the Angel Gabriel!... _If we don’t get in men who will
enthusiastically adopt our scheme and work with us_, LET US THROW
UP AT ONCE! as we shall only have an awful fiasco and I (for one)
don’t want to go down with my grey hairs to the grave sorrowing
and discredited! Therefore I suggest to you that we should agree
on our men and _run them at once!_ Like fighting the French Fleet!
it’s half the battle gained to take the offensive, propose our men,
give their advantages and ask them (our enemies) what they have to
say against them and suggest every beastly thing we can against any
likely competitors--Selection by Disparagement! I put forward names
in enclosed paper simply as a basis.
1st Military Member--_Sir John French_, because he never failed
in Africa (the grave of Military Reputations). He is _young_
and _energetic_, has commanded the 1st Army Corps so far with
conspicuous success and has the _splendid gift_ of choosing the
right men to work with him (_vide_ his Staff in S. Africa, the
best Staff out there) and as 1st Military Lord it would be his
special function to prepare the Army in the Field for fighting,
and who therefore better to command it when war breaks out, as his
functions then at the War Office would disappear and be transferred
to the Commander-in-Chief at the seat of war--Further, he is an
enthusiastic and out-and-out believer in joint Naval and Military
operations as the proper species of manœuvres for this Nation.
In this belief he is almost solitary amongst all the Generals,
who all want to play at the German Army. “_Plump for French and
Efficiency!” Any vote given against French is a vote given for
Kelly-Kenny instead!_
2nd Military Member.--SMITH-DORRIEN. Has been with great success in
every campaign for the last 20 years, has been _Adjutant-General_
in India (a much bigger billet than _Adjutant-General_ in London!).
He is _young and energetic_ and is an extremely conciliatory and
accomplished gentleman and would work the personnel of the Army
(which would be his chief function as the Second Military Member)
far better than some “safe” old man because he is in touch with the
young generation. He took a Marine Officer of the Mediterranean
Fleet as his A.D.C. when appointed a Brigadier in South Africa,
because he considered him the ablest young officer in the Malta
Garrison! Utterly shocking all the Military Mandarins. “_Vote for
Smith-Dorrien and Progress!_”
“_Every vote given against Smith-Dorrien is a vote for ----_” [_A
lady who then “ran” the War Office!_]
3rd Military Member. Supplies and Transport.--_General Plumer_. The
only man besides French that _never failed in anything he undertook
in Africa_! They say he has “the luck of the Devil,” but the fact
is that “the luck of the Devil” is wholly attributable to a minute
attention to anything that will ensure the success of his (Satanic
Majesty’s) designs, and he leaves nothing to chance! Such is
Plumer! He also is young, energetic and enthusiastic.
“_Vote for Plumer and a full belly!_”
“_Every vote given against Plumer is a vote given for paper boots
and no ammunition!_”
4th Military Member--_General F. G. Slade_, now Inspector General
of Garrison Artillery--has served in six campaigns and always
come out top: has been in the Horse, Field and Garrison Artillery
and commanded at Gibraltar. He is _young and energetic and
enthusiastic_ and will blow the trumpet of the Board (_as well as
his own!_).
“_Vote for Slade and hitting the Target!_”
“_Every vote given against Slade will be a vote given in favour of
some d--d old woman._”...
* * * * *
1904.
_Jan. 31st._
Post Office Telegraphs. Government Despatch No.... “Await Arrival.”
Lord Esher Windsor Castle.
In reply to your telegram just received our committee manœuvres
commenced at Portsmouth on December 30 beating Moses by nine days
as he took 40 days before he got down from the Mount with his
report but if you refer to submarine manœuvres I have last night
put them off to February twenty third to last three weeks from
that date stop I see we are accused of not giving credit to the
good motives that have always actuated the War Office stop Why
is the War Office like hell answer because it is paved with good
intentions Sir John Fisher Portsmouth.
[Not bad for an official telegram!]
* * * * *
1904.
_Feb. 1st._
... I really think it is of extreme importance that you should be
on the spot daily just now as without doubt “wire-pulling” of the
“Eve” order will be going on. When the other day I met those three
ladies on the back stairs of the War Office all in picture hats and
smelling of White Rose or some other beastly thing, I thought to
myself “How about Capua?” for really they were very nice looking
indeed. You know the story about them having the entrée to the War
Office!
* * * * *
1904.
_Feb. 28th._
Best of Chairmen! Snatch a moment to look through enclosed ... as
I am dead gone on starting the idea of a general list of officers,
and general uniform and early entry and they will all go to sea,
but I don’t want to mention that yet awhile; it will come of itself
when ⅗ths of every man-of-war’s crew are soldiers; that’s not
many years hence and will bring the income tax down to 3 pence in
the pound! Mark my words! this will come, but it’s no use giving
people premature shocks, so let me keep it quiet now. My idea is to
acclimatise the chosen few to it first of all and then gradually
spread it about, and when Kitchener comes home he will see it
through. (He shares my view, I know.)
* * * * *
1904.
_(?) March._
... Campbell-Bannerman told me last night he intended to make a
special point of the Secretary of State’s responsibility and power
being unduly lessened, and he would not admit that the new order of
things makes him the same as the First Lord of the Admiralty!...
To avoid the slightest misconception that may arise as to the
lessening of the parliamentary responsibility of the Secretary
of State for War by the formation of the Army Council or of his
supreme authority as the Cabinet Minister responsible for the
Army, it’s only necessary to reiterate and emphasise the statement
that he is absolutely in the same position as the First Lord of
the Admiralty, the patent constituting the Army Council being
absolutely similar to the Admiralty Patent and no question has
ever been raised nor is there any doubt whatever of the reform and
present responsibility of the First Lord of the Admiralty as the
Cabinet Minister responsible for the Navy.
* * * * *
1904.
_March 10th._
Just back from the English Channel with the Submarines and am very
enthusiastic!... We really must arrange to get the British Army
to Sea somehow or other! Yesterday all the mice died in their
cages and two of the crew fainted, but the young Lieutenant of the
Submarine didn’t seem to care a d--n whether they all died so long
as he bagged the Battleship he was after, and he practically got
her and then he came up in his Submarine to breathe! Depend on it
we shall have more “Niles” and “Trafalgars” so long as we continue
to propagate such “young bloods” as this! But see how splendid if
we could shove the same “ginger” into the young Military aspirants,
and they all came from the same schools! but the whole secret is to
catch them very young and mould them while they are then so plastic
and receptive to be just what you want them. Another submarine had
an explosion which made the interior “_Hell_” for some seconds
(as the Submarine was bottled up and diving to evade a Destroyer
who had caught her with a hook) but the Submarine Lieutenant saw
them all d--d first before he would rise up and be caught. Another
young fire-eater had his periscope smashed but bagged a battleship
nevertheless by coming up stealthily to blow just like a beaver,
and look round. _It really is all lovely!_ but what I am writing
about is--_you must embark an Army Corps every year and give them
sea training_.
[“THE ARMY AND NAVY CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY.”
I must here interpose a few words to explain that I had submitted
an elaborate method of increasing the military efficiency of
officers--first by very early entry as in the Navy--having free or
State education for them--hence “Equal opportunity for all”: Officers’
pay of all ranks to be sufficient for them to live on--and the
regimental system abolished--and the same system as in the Navy by
which military officers would serve in all arms--Engineers, Artillery,
Cavalry and Infantry, instead of being familiar with but one part of
their profession. When the Sea Lords sit round the Board of Admiralty
they can talk about anything, because they’ve been in every type
of vessel and every branch of their Profession. Again, in a good
regiment the promotion is slow because the officers stick to it. In a
bad regiment the promotion is rapid because everyone wants to leave
it. Then, finally, I submitted the idea of the Army and Navy being
incorporated in one great Service. There is no going aloft now--a ship
can be manned by soldiers with equal efficiency as by sailors. You want
nucleus crews thoroughly used to the ship and always in her, knowing
all her foibles. Brains--the Beef needn’t be equally clever! The
military officers in the Peninsular War only 16 years old were splendid
and they were numerous.]
1904.
_March 20th. Telegram._
Suggest if Prime Minister takes no immediate action he may be
asked that the Committee in self-defence be allowed to make
correspondence public as already I am hearing from influential
friends that we are discredited by having made exaggerated and
unjustifiable statements and that besides the scandalous and
disparaging words of the Secretary of State in the House of Commons
that the Prime Minister has more or less disavowed us by the tenour
of his remarks.... I venture to suggest to you that it is a great
mistake for our Committee to be made a catspaw to suit Cabinet
susceptibilities or parliamentary wirepulling and that we press
for a full and complete publication.
* * * * *
1904.
_May 26th._
... Arnold-Forster spent several hours here with me yesterday and
he is coming again to-day discussing his difficulties. I tell him
he can’t expect his Council all at once to possess the attributes
of the Board of Admiralty (which he so intensely admires) which
began in 1619! They want to be educated. The individual Members are
far too subservient now and do not realise they are administrative
members and _not_ Army Officers. They must go about in plain
clothes and a tall hat, and order Field Marshals about like
schoolboys!...
* * * * *
1904.
_June 17th._
... It would have been simply disastrous to have had an increased
Army Vote. Has Clarke ever come to close quarters with you as to
his project for getting the Army Estimates down to 23 millions? for
that is really the figure which represents the proportionate part
of the total sum which I make out to be available for the fighting
services, and unless some such figure can be arrived at for the
Army, I do not think the British Public will face the reduction in
the Navy Estimates _which I see to be possible with the increased
efficiency_; because they will rightly argue that the Navy is
the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th _ad infinitum_ line of defence, and it is
simply monstrous therefore that the bloated Army should starve the
essential Navy.... It is this Army Vote that absolutely blocks me,
because I am perfectly certain it will wreck us unless it can be
brought down to some such figure as 23 millions at the outside.
That N.-W. Frontier of India is the bug-bear which has possessed
the whole lot of our present rulers! and there is no “advocate of
the devil” to plead the other side. So I hope you will put that
mind of yours to work to make the Prime Minister see his mission
to cut down the Army Vote to 23 millions and _then_ we can go ahead
and get that threepenny income tax we all so long for _and which we
can get if we like_!
* * * * *
1904.
I was with the Prime Minister from 12.30 to 4 p.m. He was most
pleasant and delightful but evidently didn’t see his way to making
the reduction in the Army Vote which is imperative.... He and all
the rest appear stupefied by the Indian Frontier Bogey and the
100,000 men wanted. I gave him figures to show the Army had been
increased 60,000 odd men in 10 years. If he would reduce them
at once he would get nearly threepence off the income tax and
get rid of his recruiting difficulties. The Auxiliary Forces 4½
millions--absurd--the Volunteers 2 millions--still more absurd!
* * * * *
1904.
_July 16th._
A.-F.’s scheme rotten! You have hit the nail on the head about
expense. He had the remedy in the palm of his hand! He simply
had to reduce what the Army had _unnecessarily_ increased in 10
years--the 60,000 officers and men--and he got 6 millions sterling
(including the accessories) and solved the recruiting question!...
3,700 Royal Engineers put on in 10 years and only ⅓ of them went to
the war in S.A.! the rest enjoying themselves in civilian work! and
was there ever such ineptitude as trying to make them into railway
men, electric engineers and sailors for submarine mines when you
have the real thing in abundance in the railway and telegraph
workmen of the country and fishermen for any water work? This is
only one sample. Every blessed item of the military organisation
is similarly rotten! Why? Because the military system of entry and
education is rotten.
* * * * *
1904.
_July 28th._
... We have a new scheme for a reorganisation of the whole
Admiralty and have got the Order in Council for it! _The new scheme
gives the First Sea Lord nothing to do_, except think and send for
Idlers! It also resuscitates the old titles of _Sea Lords_ dating
from A.D. 1613, but which some silly ass 100 years ago altered to
_Naval Lords_.
* * * * *
1904.
_August 17th._
... I have got 60 sheets of foolscap written with all the new Naval
proposals and am pretty well prepared for the fray on October 21st.
[Sir John Fisher became First Sea Lord of the Admiralty on October 21st
(Trafalgar Day), 1904; and the correspondence is scanty between that
date and the autumn of 1907.]
1907.
_Sept 12th._
... I really can’t understand Mr. Buckle giving ---- his head in
this way in the columns of _The Times_! but I suppose it “catches
on” and makes the flesh creep of the “_old women of both sexes_”
(as Lord St. Vincent called the “Invasion lot” in his day!) and his
memorable saying so infinitely more true now than then. When asked
his opinion of the possibility of an invasion, he replied “that if
considered as a purely military operation he was loth to offer an
opinion but he certainly could positively state it could never take
place by sea!”
* * * * *
1907.
_Oct. 7th._ MOLVENO.
... My unalterable conviction is that the Committee of Imperial
Defence is tending rapidly to become a sort of Aulic Council
and the man who talks glibly, utterly irresponsible, will usurp
the functions of the _two_ men who _must_ be the “Masters of the
War”--the First Sea Lord and the Chief of the General Staff. Make
no mistake--I don’t mean those two men are to be Dictators, but
the Government says: “Do so and so!” _These are the two executive
Officers_.... In regard to the “Invasion Bogey” about which I am
now writing to you, how curious it is that from the German Emperor
downwards their hearts were stricken with fear that _we_ were going
to attack _them_.... Here is an interview between Beit and the
German Emperor given me at first hand, immediately on Beit’s return
from Berlin.
_Beit_: “Your Majesty is very greatly mistaken in supposing that
any feeling exists in England for war with Germany. I know both Mr.
Balfour and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman are absolutely averse to
any such action. I know this of my own personal knowledge.”
_The Emperor_: “Yes, yes, but it doesn’t matter whether either of
them is Prime Minister or what party is in power. _Fisher remains!
that’s the vital fact!_ I admire Fisher. I say nothing against
him. If I were in his place I should do all that he has done (in
concentrating the British Navy against Germany) and I should do all
that _I know_ he has it in his mind to do. Isvolsky, the Russian
Minister of Foreign Affairs, holds the same opinion.”
And yet Mr. Leo Maxse gibbets Sir John Fisher every month in the
_National Review_ as a traitor to his country and a panderer to
Germany, who “ought to be hung at his own yard arm!”
* * * * *
1907.
_Nov. 28th._
Can you manage to be at my room at Admiralty at 11.30 sharp to-day
(Saturday) to see arrangements for swallowing the German Mercantile
Marine, and other War Apparatus? [_i.e._ “The Spider’s Web”].
* * * * *
1907.
_Dec. 12th._
... I hope the Admiralty memorandum is to your satisfaction--of
course it is only the first instalment. What fascinates me is that
the Committee as a whole don’t seem to take the point that the
whole case of Roberts rests on an absolute Naval surprise, which is
really a sheer impossibility in view of our organised information.
* * * * *
1908.
_Jan. 1st._
... I had a _tête-à-tête_ lunch with Winston Churchill; he
unexpectedly came to the Admiralty and I was whirled off with him
to the Ritz. I had two hours with him. He is very keen to fight on
my behalf and is simply kicking with fury at ---- & Co., but I’ve
told him the watchword is “Silence.” He is an enthusiastic friend
certainly! He told me he would get six men on both sides to join
in _con amore_, F. E. Smith, &c., &c. I forget the other names. It
was rather sweet: he said his penchant for me was that I painted
with a big brush! and was violent!--I reminded him that even “The
Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by
force”--_vide_ yesterday’s Second Lesson.
* * * * *
1908.
_Jan. 17th._
_Secret._... I rather want to keep clear of Defence Committee till
Morocco is settled, as I don’t want to disclose my plan of campaign
to _anyone_, not even C.-B. himself. The only man who knows is Sir
Arthur Wilson, and he’s as close as wax! The whole success will
depend upon _suddenness and unexpectedness_, and the moment I tell
anyone there’s an end of both!!! So just please keep me clear of
any Conference and personally I would sooner the Defence Committee
kept _still_. I’m seeing about the Transports. I started it about
7 weeks ago and got 3 of my best satellites on it.... So you’ll
think me a villain of the deepest dye!
* * * * *
1908.
_(?) Feb. 9th._
... We want both a _re-distribution_ as well as a _re-organisation_
of the Army--and the (comparatively) small Regular Army should be
based on the system of “Nucleus Crews”--that is to say the _whole
body of Officers_ are provided and ⅖ths (or the expert) part of the
crew, and the other ⅗ths of the Army you get from the outside Army
by whatever name you like to call it--National Army, or Citizen
Army, or Lord Lieutenant’s Army.
* * * * *
1908.
_Feb. 21st._
... _Secret._ Tirpitz asked a mutual civilian friend living in
Berlin to enquire very privately of me whether I would agree to
limiting size of guns and size of ships, as this is _vital_ to the
Germans, who _can’t_ go bigger than the Dreadnought in guns or
size. I wrote back by return of post yesterday morning “Tell him
I’ll see him d--d first!” (_Them’s the very words!_) I wonder what
Wilhelm will say to that if Tirpitz shows him the letter!
* * * * *
1908.
APR. 19TH.
... I got a note to say the King wanted to see me this afternoon at
3 p.m. ... _Private._ I got 3 letters from the King at Biarritz,
all extremely cordial and communicative and unsought by me. I
mention this to prove to you his kindly feelings and support....
When I met the King on arrival he said I was to be sure and see him
as he had something serious to say to me. I suppose I was with him
more than an hour, and he was as cordial and friendly as ever; and
this was the serious thing--“that I was Jekyll and Hyde! _Jekyll_
in being successful at my work at the Admiralty--but _Hyde_ as
a failure in Society! That I talked too freely and was reported
to say (which of course is a lie) that the King would see me
through anything! That it was bad for me and bad for him as being
a Constitutional Monarch; if the Prime Minister gave me my congé,
he couldn’t resist it, &c., &c.”... I told the King that if I had
never mentioned His Majesty’s name in my life, precisely the same
thing would be said out of sheer envy of His Majesty being kindly
disposed, and it could not be hid that the King had backed up the
First Sea Lord against all kinds of opposition--As a matter of fact
I _never_ do go into Society, and only dine out when I’m worried to
meet the King, and I’m not such a born idiot as to have said any
such thing as has been reported to the King (it is quite likely
_someone else has said it!_). Well he left that (having unburdened
his mind) and smoked a cigar as big as a capstan bar for really a
good hour afterwards, talking of everything from China to Peru, not
excluding _The Times_ article on himself.... Oh! he said something
of how I worked the Press, but I didn’t follow that up. No one
knows, except perhaps yourself, that unless I had arranged to get
the whole force of public opinion to back up the Naval Revolution
it would have been simply impossible to have carried it through
successfully, for the vested interests against me were enormous and
the whole force of Naval opinion was _dead_ against me. But I did
venture one humble remark to the King: “Has anyone ever been able
to mention to Your Majesty one single little item that has failed
in the whole multitude of reforms introduced in the last 3½ years?”
No! he said. No one had! So I left it there.... If the Angel
Gabriel were in my place he would be falsely accused. I’m only
surprised that the King hasn’t been told worse things--perhaps he
has! “_Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall._”
I always have that thought, and hope the King will have a cottage
somewhere in Windsor Forest or elsewhere which he will kindly give
me when it happens, so that I can come over and have a yarn with
you!
* * * * *
1908.
_May 5th._
4.15 a.m. The _Early_ Bird!!... Yesterday, with all Sea Lords
present, McKenna formally agreed to 4 Dreadnoughts _and if
necessary_ 6 Dreadnoughts next year (perhaps the greatest triumph
ever known!)... He tells me Harcourt for certain will resign on it
... and he is paring down the money with a view to Supplementary
Estimates.... This is what I suggest to you to impress on Lloyd
George: _Let there he no mistake about the two Keels to one in
Dreadnoughts!_ Let Lloyd George reassure McKenna and tell him to
have no fear--it doesn’t affect next year, as McKenna consents to
4 or even 6; but it does affect the year after, and the Admiralty
Finance should be arranged accordingly and not deplete next year at
expense of year after. I wonder if this is all clear to you--that
McKenna is going to give us the _numbers_ for next year all right.
Shove in again the great fact--The Navy and Army Estimates not far
different in magnitude, and yet the Army not big enough to fight
Bulgaria, and the Navy can take on all the Navies of the world put
together.--“_Ut veniant omnes!!!_”--“Let ’em all come!” You might
tell Lloyd George he can rely on my parsimony.
* * * * *
1908.
_Sept. 8th._
... “The heart untravelled fondly turns to home.”--We have no
poets nowadays like Pope, Goldsmith and Gay--only damned mystical
idiots like Browning and Tennyson that want a dictionary and the
Differential-Calculus sort of mind to understand what they are
driving at!
... I sat several times [on a recent visit abroad] between
Stolypin, the Russian Prime Minister, and Isvolsky, the Foreign
Secretary. I didn’t begin it, but Stolypin said to me “What do
you think we want most?” He fancied I should answer “So many
battleships, so many cruisers, &c., &c.,” but instead I said:
“Your Western Frontier is denuded of troops and your magazines
are depleted. _Fill them up_, and then talk of Fleets!” Please
see enclosure from Kuropatkin’s secret report: “_The foundation
of Russia’s safety is her Western boundary!!!_”... Have you seen
Monsieur Rousseau (I think is his name) in _Le Temps_? I had an
extract of it, and put it aside to send you, but alas! it has gone.
“Procrastination is the thief of good intentions”--which is not
so good as “Punctuality is the curse of comfort.” But the good
Frenchman (like Monsieur Hanotaux before him) is lost in admiration
of what moved Mahan to his pungent saying that Garvin seized on
with the inspiration of genius--“that 88 per cent. of the English
guns were trained on Germany!”... By the way, I’ve got Sir Philip
Watts into a new _Indomitable_ that will make your mouth water when
you see it! (and the Germans gnash their teeth!)
* * * * *
1908.
_Dec._
The King has sent me a dear letter, and adds “_Don’t print this!_”
Isn’t he a sweet? _What wonderful friends I have!_ It’s a marvel!
All I do is to kick their shins.
* * * * *
1908.
(No date.)
... I am going to ask you to reconsider your supplementary paper
herewith. I can’t find that the Admiralty have admitted that
24,000 men would ever start off together as two raids of 12,000
each. I personally have expressed my decided opinion (I think
at the 7th meeting) [of the Committee of Imperial Defence] to
the contrary. Indeed, I am emphatically of opinion that no raid
of any kind [that is, _landing of troops_] is feasible with all
our late developments, which are developing further every day
(_e.g._ we have our wireless on top of Admiralty Building and
are communicating with the Scilly Islands now and shortly I hope
Gibraltar and so certainly to every point of the German coast where
we shall have Wireless Cruisers all over the place. (_Not a dog
will wag its tail without being reported._) So don’t let us get a
scare over 24,000 men coming unobserved. _One lot of 12,000_ can
be put in as the limit; but my suggestion is--_leave out numbers_,
and simply say as a precautionary measure for the confidence of the
country, _it’s a good safe arbitrary standard to lay down that two
Divisions of Regular Troops_ are always to be left in the Country
just in the same way as laid down at the Admiralty that the Home
Fleet is not for Service abroad.
* * * * *
1909.
_Jan. 26th._
... The Admiralty hear (by wireless every moment) what all the
Admirals and Captains are saying to each other anywhere in Europe
and even over to the coasts of America.
* * * * *
1909.
_March 15th._
Private & Secret & _Personal_. I have just finished in these early
hours a careful re-study of your paper E. 5 (which I love) and
the criticisms thereon by French and the General Staff. I dismiss
French’s criticism as being that of a pure correct Cavalry expert
and not dealing with the big questions. The General Staff criticism
is on the other hand _the thin end of the insidious wedge of our
taking part in Continental War as apart absolutely from Coastal
Military Expeditions in pure concert with the Navy_--expeditions
involving hell to the enemy because backed by an invincible Navy
(the citadel of the Military force). I don’t desire to mention
these expeditions and never will, as our military organisation
is so damnably leaky! but it so happens for two solid hours
this morning I have been studying one of these of inestimable
value only involving 5,000 men, and some guns, and horses about
500--a mere fleabite! but a collection of these fleabites would
make Wilhelm scratch himself with fury! However, the point of my
letter is this--Ain’t we d--d fools to go on wasting our very
precious moments in these abstruse disquisitions on this line
and that or the passage of the Dutch German Frontier River and
whether the bloody fight is to be at Rheims or Amiens, until the
Cabinet have decided the great big question raised in your E. 5:
_Are we or are we not going to send a British Army to fight on
the Continent as quite distinct and apart from Coastal Raids and
seizures of Islands, etcetera, which the Navy dominate?_ Had not
the Prime Minister better get this fixed up before we have any more
discussions such as foreshadowed to-morrow?
* * * * *
1909.
_March 21st._
... It won’t do to resign on a _hypothesis_ but on a fact! All is
in train for the _8_ Dreadnoughts! and as Grey says when the day
is reached to sign the contracts and _then_ a veto--_then_ is the
day to go in a great company and not one alone!... I am vehemently
urged to squash my “malignant stabbers-in-the-back” by making a
speech somewhere and saying as follows--but I won’t--it would be an
effectual cold douche to the 8 Dreadnoughts a year! I might say
“The unswerving intention of 4 years has _now_ culminated in _two_
complete Fleets in Home Waters, _each of which_ is incomparably
superior to the whole German Fleet mobilised for war. Don’t take
my word! Count them, see them for yourselves! You _will_ see them
next June. This can’t alter for years, even were we supinely
passive in our building; but it won’t alter because we will have 8
Dreadnoughts a year. _So sleep quiet in your beds!_”
And I might also add:--
“The Germans are not building in this feverish haste to fight you!
_No!_ it’s the daily dread they have of a second Copenhagen, which
they know a Pitt or a Bismarck would execute on them!
“Cease building or I strike!”
* * * * *
1909.
_March 30th._
... Grey rubbed in two great points yesterday:--
(i) Lack of information as to German acceleration will be acted on
as if acceleration were a fact.
(ii) The _8_ this year won’t affect next year.
* * * * *
1909.
_June 15th._
... Yes, we made a good job of Saturday; but the two most
noticeable things of all were never noticed:--
(i) The swarm of Destroyers going 20 knots past the Dreadnought
found themselves suddenly confronted by a lot of passenger steamers
and yachts, which at the last moment got right in their way--the
accidents might have been intense--but the young Destroyer
commanders kept their nerve and their speed and scootled through
the eye of the needle just grazing them all. It was splendid to
see and made my heart warm! (N.B.--A Press delegate--the _Toronto
Globe_, I think, seized me by the arm and said, “_Sir, I see the
glint of battle in your eye!_”)
(ii) I saw the Speaker of the House of Commons being bundled into a
“char-à-banc” holding 24 other promiscuous persons by a bluejacket.
Truly a democratic sight!
* * * * *
1909.
_July 3rd._
... The latest development is that somebody has a pile of my
private letters to various people--not printed or typewritten but
_the original letters_, so he says, which he is going to produce
unless I agree to resign in October! Some of the letters stolen
and some given (so I am told!). However “hot” they may be I don’t
regret a word I ever wrote, and I believe my countrymen will
forgive me. _Anyhow I won’t be blackmailed!_ There was murder in
the King’s eye when I told him (but I didn’t tell him all!)... _I
am going to fight to the finish! Heaven bless you for your help._
* * * * *
1909.
_August 3rd._
... The Mouse was able to help the Lion yesterday as the King got
on to you in regard to vile attempts of jealousy as to your being
on the Defence Committee. The King is certainly A 1 in sticking to
his friends! but you have always said this yourself to me when I
have been down on my luck! All has gone most splendidly in all ways
and the King is enormously gratified at the magnificent show of
the Fleet to put before the Emperor of Russia. I told the Emperor
it was a fine avenue!--18 miles of ships--the most powerful in the
world and none of them more than 10 years old!
* * * * *
1909.
_August 27th._
[A letter on the Beresford Report speaks of two “base innuendoes,”
of which the second is]
(ii) The “_suggestio falsi_” that the Admiralty had been wanting in
Strategical Thought--whereas we had effected the immense advance of
establishing the Naval War College and gave evidence of practical
strategy in effecting the concentration of our Fleets instead
of the previous state of dispersion. No such redistribution of
strategical force since the days of Noah!
But worse still--Not one word of commendation for the Admiralty
for its unparalleled work in gaining fighting efficiency and
instant readiness for war by the institution of the Nucleus Crew
system--the introduction of Battle practice--the unexampled advance
in Gunnery (the “Invincible” with her 12-inch guns hitting the
target 1/14th her own size _15 times out of 18 at 5 miles_, she
herself going 20 knots and the target also moving at an unknown
speed and unknown course) and getting rid of 160 vessels that
could neither fight nor run away--_Not one word of appreciation of
all this by the Committee!_ and yet they had the practical result
before them in the manœuvres of 374 vessels manœuvring in fogs and
shoals without a single mishap or a single defect and 96 Submarines
and Torpedo Craft on the East Coast making Invasion ridiculous!
No--it has been a bitter disappointment--more bitter because each
of the five members of the Committee so expressive to me and to
others of the complete victory of the Admiralty. _Cowards all!_ It
is the one redeeming feature that _The Times_ came down decidedly
on the right side of the fence! the one and only paper that got at
the kernel of the matter. _Discipline!_ where art thou now after
this Report?
[Illustration: THE FUNERAL OF KING EDWARD VII.
Lord Fisher as Principal Aide-de-Camp.]
* * * * *
1909.
_Sept. 13th._
... What pleases me most is the King having sent for you, and your
1½ hours’ breakfast and afterwards driving with him, because as no
doubt you know, ---- (and some others) started a propaganda against
you which fell absolutely flat and it’s a rattling good thing the
King making much of you in this way as it gets _about and without
any question the King now largely moulds the public will!_ As to
your letter in regard to myself, it of course gives me great
joy that the King gives me his blessing and also dear Knollys’s
wonderful fidelity to me is a miracle! (I always think of an
incident long ago when he calmly ignored a furious effusion of mine
to the King and put the letter in the fire without saying a word to
me till long afterwards! I all the time joyful--thinking I had done
splendidly!)
[After a forecast of a coming change in the Government the letter goes
on]
You will at once say: What is the First Sea Lord going to do?
Answer--Nothing! It is the ONLY course to follow! I have thought it
all out most carefully and decided to keep absolutely dumb. When
a new Admiralty patent appears in the _London Gazette_ without my
name in it, I pack up and walk out and settle down in the Tyrol.
Temperature 70° in the shade and figs ten a penny and wear out
all my white tunics and white trowsers! McKenna, to whom I am
absolutely devoted, may force my hand to help him. In view of all
he has risked for me (he was practically out of the Cabinet for
24 hours at one time! This is a fact) I am ready to go to the
stake for him; but if he is well advised he also will be dumb....
I am so surprised how utterly both the Cabinet and the Press have
failed to see the “inwardness” of the new “Pacific Fleet”! I had
a few momentous words in private with Sir Joseph Ward (the Prime
Minister of New Zealand). _He saw it!_ It means _eventually_
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Cape (that is South Africa)
and India _running a complete Navy!_ We manage the job in Europe.
They’ll manage the job ... as occasion requires out there! The very
wonderful thing is that only dear old Lord Kelvin and the First Sea
Lord at the first wanted the Battle Cruiser type alone and _not
“Dreadnoughts”_; but we had a compromise, as you know, and got 3
_Indomitables_ with the Dreadnoughts; and all the world now has
got “Indomitables” on the brain! Hip! Hip! Hurrah!
* * * * *
1909.
_Dec. 25th._
... Wilson and I have talked a lot about our War plan for the Navy.
You know he told the Defence Committee that only he and I knew of
the War Plan, which is quite true and it was the same when his
fleet was joined with mine when South African War was in progress.
He would sooner die than disclose it. (God bless Sir Arthur Wilson!)
* * * * *
1910.
_Jan. 23rd._
Of course no question as to strategic merits of a Canal, and it
ought originally to have been the scheme instead of Rosyth, but now
is it possible to make the _volte-face_? _I fear not!_ I got Rosyth
delayed 4 years as NOT being the right thing or the right place and
hoping for our Kiel Canal; but though I succeeded in the delay,
alas! I did not in the substitution. However, I will see Hankey as
you suggest. Yes, I’m quite happy, and my cry is NOT “à Berlin!”...
I’ve got some war charts that would make your mouth water!
[Sir John Fisher left the Admiralty on his birthday, Jan. 25th, 1910,
and was raised to the Peerage.]
* * * * *
1910. KILVERSTONE HALL,
_February 2nd._ THETFORD.
... I’ve just got here from Cheshire, where for days running I’ve
had Paradise. 3 lovely girls in the house, a _splendid_ ball room
and music always on hand! 3 young Guardsmen there, but I held my
own!
Dancing till 4 a.m. took it out of me a bit, but it revivified me
and I renewed my strength like the Eagle!... I hope the King talked
politics with McKenna, who is very acute and would sacrifice
himself for the King. Didn’t you think McKenna excellent, the night
he dined with me, as to the course the King should pursue? You see
he knows so exactly how the Cabinet will be actuated....
There are great risks. Both political sides unscrupulous....
P.S.--Wasn’t it the Emperor Diocletian who doffed the Imperial
Purple to plant cabbages? and d--d fine cabbages, no doubt! So
don’t blackguard me for leaving the Admiralty of my own free will,
to plant roses!
* * * * *
1910.
_Feb. 18th._
... Things look ugly.... However, I’m a pure outsider! There will
be desperate efforts to supplant Wilson, so I hear from trustworthy
quarters. But McKenna will be the real loss to the Navy. The sacred
fire of efficiency burns brightly in him! and he’s a born fighter
and a good hater, which I love (as Dr. Johnson did) with all my
heart. You really _must_ come here when the weather is nicer--it’s
lovely! I’ve never known till now what joy there is in Nature. Even
beauteous woman fades in the comparison! I’ve just seen the wild
swans flying over the Lake! “The world forgetting--By the world
forgot!” is appropriate to me now!... I’ve just thought of a lovely
Preamble for my approaching “Midshipman’s Vade-Mecum” ... I rather
think it’s Blackie, though perhaps not his words:
“Four Things for a Big Life
I. A great Inspiration
II. A great Cause
III. A great Battle
IV. A great Victory
Having got those 4 things then you can preach the Gospel of Rest
and Build an Altar to Repose.”
* * * * *
1910.
_March 14th._
... I lunched with Asquith, he was _more than cordial!_ How funny
it is that I did _infinitely more_ for the Conservatives than for
the _Radicals_, and yet the Radicals have given me all I have got
and the Conservatives have only given me abuse and calumny!
The Radicals gave me my Pension and a Peerage, and yet I increased
the Radical estimates nearly ten millions! I decreased the
estimates 9 millions and reduced prospective charges by nineteen
millions sterling for the Conservatives, and they never lifted
even a little finger to help me, _but on the contrary_ have heaped
dunghill abuse on me! _How do you explain this?_
McKenna, whose life has been a burden on my account, gives me a
thing that would do for an Ascot Gold Cup with the inscription I
enclose--luckily it’s in Latin or I dare not let it be seen! (The
Craven Scholar writes to me it’s the best Latin he ever read in
his life!) I wouldn’t write all this to anyone else, but _is it
not all of it phenomenally curious?_ Well, _longo intervallo_ I
took your advice and seized an opportunity which called for my
communicating with Winston, and he sent me _by return of post_ a
most affectionate letter and says I am the one man in the world
he really loves! (Well! I really love him because he’s a great
Fighter.) What a joke if you, I and George Clarke were put on to
reform the House of Lords!
* * * * *
1910.
_March 24th._
I sent you a telegram from Ely on my way down (I caught my train by
½ a minute!) as my cogitations impelled me to suggest to you that
Asquith obviously does not see the fallacy of ----’s reasoning,
which as you very acutely observed would kill the Defence
Committee as a whole in its _guiding_, but not its administrative
or executive power, which are non-existent and inimical to its
existence. But its “_guiding_” power is England’s all-in-all, if
only its sufficiency and efficiency could be digested.
I had an immense talk with McKenna.... He was “dead on” for your
Committee. Of course the Ideal was your being President, but I
suppose the “Shifting Man” as President, according to the subject
and the Department concerned, has its merits and advantages.
* * * * *
1910.
APRIL 8TH.
Old Stead’s letter in _Standard_ on 2 keels to 1 is unsurpassable!
_It ought to be circulated in millions as a leaflet!_... What d--d
fools the Tories are not to swallow it whole--the 2 keels to 1!...
I told “the Islanders” secretly I could do more as the “mole,”
so not to put my name down--(The Mole is my _métier_! only to be
traced by upheavals!) Get Stead’s letter sent all over the Nation
as a leaflet.
I am to meet you on April 19th, Suez Canal.
I don’t know Wilson’s views. These are mine:--
General principle: The Admiralty should _never_ engage itself
to lock up a single vessel even--not even a torpedo-boat, or
submarine--anywhere _on any consideration whatever. The whole
principle of Sea fighting is to be free to go anywhere with every
d--d thing the Navy possesses._ The Admiralty should engage
to do their best but to reserve entire freedom of action. The
responsibility of the Suez Canal therefore cannot be theirs. If
this clashes with your views you had better cancel me on Committee,
for I’ll fight like Hell for the above vital War Principle!
* * * * *
1910.
_April 25th._
I congratulate you on the latest by “Historicus”; but do you
sufficiently intensify the intolerable tyranny of the permanent
Tory majority in the Lords that has meant a real single chamber
government for so many years? The Radicals are on the win and
no one can stop it. We exaggerate the consequences. The silly
thing is to have a General Election. Who gains? Everybody loses!
Certainly the Tories won’t win. Tariff Reform dead. Winston’s last
speeches have been very high class, especially where he shows how
far greater issues are settled by the Government than anything
appertaining to legislation without the House of Lords having a
voice and we have always taken those risks in the past without a
thought!
What is this about Kitchener hoisting out French as Inspector
General? Anything to get Kitchener out of England!
[King Edward VII. died on May 6th, 1910.]
1910.
_May._
_(Saturday.)_
What an _inexpressible_ sorrow!. How we both know the loss! What
a great National Calamity! And _personally_ what can I say? _What
a splendid and steadfast friend!_ No use saying any more to each
other--is it? _I really feel heart broken!_
* * * * *
1910.
_May 24th._ KILVERSTONE HALL.
... I really can’t get over the irreparable loss. _I think of
nothing else!_ Treves gave me a wonderful account of the King’s
last day. I rather think the King was coming to see me here, had
he remained at Sandringham. The Queen [Queen Alexandra] has been
very sweet to me. She stopped to notice me going up the steps of
St. George’s Chapel and so did her Sister [the Empress Marie]. I
appreciated it very much--but most of all my interview with her....
She told me she would come here to see me and how the King had
told her about me being disappointed at her not having been to
Kilverstone before. You’ll think me morbid writing like this.
I dined with Asquith, McKenna and George Murray last week in
London. If the Tories weren’t such d--d stupid idiots I should
rejoice at things being certain to go well.... My day is past. I
have no illusions. You will enjoy the roses I’ve planted when you
come here. How one’s life does change!
* * * * *
1910.
_May 27th._
... The Commonwealth Government [of Australia] have just sent a
confidential telegram to Sir George Reid to ask me to go as their
Guest to advise on the Navy. I’ve declined. I’d go as Dictator
but not as Adviser. Also they have commenced all wrong and it
would involve me in a campaign I intend to keep clear of with the
soldiers. By the wording of the telegram I expect further pressure.
Besides what a d--d fine thing to get me planted in the Antipodes!
[Kitchener and the Australians, in drawing up their scheme of
defence, forgot that Australia was an island. So do we here in
England.]
* * * * *
1910.
_June 7th._
... I can’t shake off my sense of loss in the King’s death. Though
personally it practically makes no difference of course--yet I feel
so curious a sense of isolation--which I can’t get over--and no
longer seem to care a d--n for anything!...
As you told me, it was miraculous I left the Admiralty when I did!
It was the nick of time! A. K. Wilson is doing splendidly and is
unassailable. I had much pressure to emerge the other day, but I
won’t, nor have I the heart now.
* * * * *
1910.
_August 5th._ KILVERSTONE HALL.
McKenna has just been here on his second visit (so he liked the
first, I suppose! I mention this as an inducement to you to come!)
He has shewn me various secret papers. HE IS A REAL FIGHTER, and
the Navy Haters will pass over his dead body! If our late Blessed
Master was alive I should know what to do; but I feel my hands tied
now. Perhaps a kindly Providence put us both on the Beach at the
right moment! Who knows?
“_The lights begin to twinkle on the rocks_”! I’ve told ---- and
others that the 2 keels to 1 policy is of inestimable value because
it eliminates the United States Navy, _which never ought to be
mentioned--criminal folly to do so_--Also it gives us such an ample
margin as to allow for discount!
The insidious game is to have an enquiry into Ship Designs, which
means delay and no money!
Two immense episodes are doing Damocles over the Navy just now. I
had settled to shove my colleagues over the precipice about both
of them, but as you know I left hurriedly to get in Wilson--so
incomparably good! We pushed them over the precipice about Water
Tube Boilers, the Turbine, the Dreadnought, the Scrapping [of ships
that could neither fight nor run away], the Nucleus Crews--the
Redistribution of the Fleet, &c., &c. In each and all it was
_Athanasius contra mundum_, but each and all a magnificent success;
so also these two waiting portents full of immense developments.
1. Oil Engines and internal combustion, about which I so dilated
at our dinner and bored you. Since that night (July 11th) Bloom &
Voss in Germany have received an order to build a Motor Liner for
the Atlantic Trade. _No engineers, no stokers, and no funnels,
no boilers! Only a d--d chauffeur! The economy prodigious!_ as
the Germans say “_Kolossal billig_”! But what will it be for War?
_Why! all the past pales before the prospect!!!_ I say to McKenna:
“Shove ’em over the precipice! _Shove!_” But he’s all alone, poor
devil!
The Second is that this Democratic Country won’t stand 99 per cent.
_at least_ of her Naval Officers being drawn from the “Upper Ten.”
It’s amazing to me that anyone should persuade himself that an
aristocratic Service can be maintained in a Democratic State. The
true democratic principle is Napoleon’s: “_La carrière ouverte aux
talents!_” The Democracy will shortly realise this, and there will
be a dangerous and mischievous agitation. The secret of successful
administration is the intelligent anticipation of agitation. Again
I say to McKenna “_Shove!!! Shove them over the precipice._” I have
the plan all cut and dried.
The pressure won’t come from inside the Navy but from outside--an
avalanche like A.D. 1788 (the French Revolution)--and will sweep
away a lot more than desirable! It is essentially a political
question rather than a Naval question proper. _It is all so easy_,
only the d--d Tory prejudices stand in the way! But I gave you a
paper about all this printed at Portsmouth, so won’t bore you with
more. I am greatly inclined to leave the Defence Committee and move
out in the open on these two vital questions on the Navy. The one
affects its fighting efficiency as much as the other. I am doing
the mole, and certain upheavals will appear shortly, but it wants a
Leader in the open!
* * * * *
1911.
_May 1st._
... I want you to think over getting the Prime Minister to
originate an enquiry for a great British Governmental Wireless
Monopoly, or rather I would say “English Speaking” Monopoly! No
one at the Admiralty or elsewhere has as yet any _the least idea_
of the _immense_ revolution both for Peace and War purposes which
will be brought about by the future development of wireless!... The
point is that this scheme wants to be engineered by the Biggest
Boss, i.e. the Prime Minister.... _Believe me_ the wireless in the
future is the soul and spirit of Peace and War, and therefore must
be in the hands of the Committee of Defence! _You can’t cut the
air!_ You can cut a telegraph cable!
* * * * *
1911.
_June 25th._ BAD NAUHEIM.
... You will see in the _Standard_ of May 29th the London
Correspondent of the _Irish Times_ lets out about Lord Fisher and
war arrangements, but as the _Standard_ in the very same issue
makes this announcement in big type: “We (Great Britain) are in the
satisfactory position of having _twice as many Dreadnoughts_ in
commission as _Germany and a number greater by one unit than the
whole of the rest of the world put together_!” I don’t think there
is the very faintest fear of war! How wonderfully Providence guides
England! Just when there is a quite natural tendency to ease down
our Naval endeavours comes AGADIR!
“Time and the Ocean and some Guiding Star
In High Cabal have made us what we are!”
“The Greatest Power on ’Airth,’” as Mr. Champ Clarke would say!
(You ought to meet Champ Clarke.) He is likely to succeed Taft as
President, _but I put my money on Woodrow Wilson_. He is Bismarck
and Moltke rolled into one!... I need not say that I remain in the
closest bonds with the Admiralty. I never did a wiser thing than
coming abroad and remaining abroad and working like a mole. _I
shall not return till July, 1912._ Most damnable efforts against
me continue in full swing: nevertheless like Gideon--“Faint
yet pursuing” is my motto.... And yet because in 1909 at the
Guildhall when our Naval supremacy had been arranged for in the
Navy Estimates of the year I said to my countrymen “Sleep quiet in
your beds!” I was vehemently vilified with malignant truculence,
and only yesterday I got a letter from an Aristocrat of the
Aristocrats, saying he had heard it stated by a Man of Eminence the
day before that I was in the pay of Germany! It is curious that I
can’t get over the personal great blank I feel in the death of our
late blessed Friend King Edward! There was something in the charm
of his heart that still chains one to his memory--some magnetic
touch!
* * * * *
1911.
_Sept. 20th._ LUCERNE.
Through dancing with a sweet American (and indeed they are truly
delightful, especially if you have the same partner all the
evening!) I hear via a Bremen multi-millionaire that though the
most optimistic official assurances of peace emanate from Berlin
yet there is the most extreme nervousness amongst the German
business men because of the revelation to them of the French power
both financially and fightingly, so unexpected by them. I suppose
if a Pitt or a Palmerston had now been guiding our destinies we
should have war. They would say any Peace would be a bad Peace
because of the latent damnable feeling in Germany against England.
It won’t be France any more, it will be England that will be the
red rag for the German Bull! And as we _never_ were so strong as
at present, then Pitt & Co. would say the present is the time to
fight. Personally I am confident of Peace. I happen to know in a
curious way (but quite certainly) that the Germans are in a blue
funk of the British Navy and are quite assured that 942 German
merchant steamers would be “gobbled up” in the first 48 hours of
war, and also the d--d uncertainty of _when_ and _where_ a hundred
thousand troops embarked in transports and kept “in the air” might
land! N.B.--There’s a lovely spot only 90 miles from Berlin! Anyhow
they would demobilize about a million German soldiers! But I am
getting “off the line” now! I really sat down to write and tell
you of a two days’ visit paid to me here by the new American
Ambassador to Berlin. _He is a faithful friend._ He is _very,
very_ PRO-English (he has such a lovely daughter whom I have been
dancing with, A PERFECT GEM! if she don’t turn Wilhelm’s head I’ll
eat my hat!). My friend was American Ambassador at Constantinople
when I was Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet--you know
it was a ticklish time then, at the worst of the Boer War and the
British Navy kept the Peace! That old Sultan [Abdul Hamid] told
me so, and gave me a 500-guinea diamond star, bless him! and he
called Lord Salisbury a d--d fool for having left him in the lurch
and for having said that “England had put her money on the wrong
horse” in backing Turkey. The Turks being the _one_ people in the
whole world to be England’s fast (and if put to it) _only_ friend!
Well, my dear Friend! Leishman saw this _then_ in 1899, and sees
it _now_, and hence we were locked up for hours in a secret room
here! It all bears immensely on the present Franco-German Crisis!
That “_greater-than-Bismarck_” who is now German Ambassador at
Constantinople (Marschall von Bieberstein), and who is the real
director of German policy (Waechter is only his factotum! as I
will prove to you presently!) sees his rear and flanks quite safe
by having the Turks in the palm of his hand (as Leishman describes
it!) and so has been led to bluff at Agadir--but those choice
words of Lloyd George upset the German apple-cart in a way it was
never upset before! (I suppose they were “written out” words and
Cabinet words, and they were d--d fine words!) Before I go on with
the next bit of my letter I must explain to you that Leishman is a
very great friend and admirer of Marschall von Bieberstein and also
of Kiderlen-Waechter, the present German Foreign Minister. When
Marschall went on his annual 4 months’ leave from Constantinople
he always had Waechter to take his place while away, who was then
the German Minister at Bucharest! Leishman is also an ardent
admirer of the German Emperor, and he is also the most intimate
friend possessed by Mr. Philander Knox, the American Secretary of
State, who has forced Leishman to Berlin when he was in Paradise
at Rome (at all events his family were!) Well! dear Friend, it’s
a good thing that Leishman loves England. I couldn’t possibly
write to Sir E. Grey what I am writing to you (I shouldn’t write
to you except that this letter goes through France only!) and it
would be simply fatal to Leishman if it ever leaked out about his
conversations with me, but his heart is with us. I knew this when
I spent many weeks at Constantinople (and we had no friends then,
1899 and 1900!). He says _our Turkish policy is the laughing stock
of Diplomacy_! “Every schoolboy knows” that we have a Mahomedan
Existence and the Turks love us, but all we do is to kick their
----! As Leishman truly says, the Germans were in the dust by the
deposition of Abdul Hamid and England was “all” to the New Turks,
but slowly Marschall has worked his way up again, and the Germans
again possess the Turks, instead of England. The Turkish Army, the
very finest fighting army in the world, was ours for the asking,
and “_Peace--perfect Peace_” in India, Egypt and Persia; but
we’ve chucked it all away because we have had d--d fools as our
Ambassadors! But how can it be otherwise unless you put in men from
outside, like for instance Bryce at Washington? Our strength is
Mahomedan, but we are too d--d Christian to see it! and fool about
Armenian atrocities and Bulgarian horrors! Tories and Radicals are
both the same. Isn’t it wonderful how we get along! I repeat again
to you my copyright lines:--
“Time and the Ocean and some Guiding Star
In High Cabal have made us what we are!”
Look at Delagoa Bay, that might have been ours--indeed _was_ ours
only we “fooled” it away! Look at Lord Granville and the Cameroons!
Well! I haven’t given Leishman away, I don’t think! The real
German _bonne bouche_ was the complete belt across Africa, but
this only if the right of pre-emption as regards the Belgian Congo
could have been acquired. I simply tremble at the consequences
if the British Redcoats are to be planted on the Vosges Frontier
[meaning the dread of Conscription and a huge Army for Continental
Warfare].
* * * * *
1911.
_October 10th._ LUCERNE.
... I yesterday had a long letter from McKenna begging me to return
and “put the gloves on again,” and in view of his arguments I am
going to do so when A. K. Wilson vanishes early next year! It is,
however, distasteful to me. I’ve had a lovely time here.
* * * * *
1911.
_October 29th._ REIGATE PRIORY, SURREY.
... I am here 3 days with Winston and many of the Cabinet. I got
a very urgent letter to come here, and I think my advice has been
fully and completely digested, but don’t say a word, please, to a
soul! I am returning direct to Lucerne on Wednesday, after Tuesday
at Kilverstone.
* * * * *
1911.
_November 9th._ LUCERNE.
These are very ticklish times indeed! I have got to be extremely
careful. I must not get between Winston and A. K. W. in any way--it
would not only be very wrong but fatal to any smooth working. So I
begged Winston not to write to me. With extreme reluctance I went
to Reigate as I did, but McKenna urged me on the grounds of the
good of the Navy, and from what Winston has since said to a friend
of mine I think I did right in going.
* * * * *
1911.
_December._ LUCERNE.
... I shouldn’t have written again so soon except for just now
seeing in a Paris paper that Sir John French, accompanied by
four Officers, had landed at Calais _en route_ to the French
Head Quarters, and expatiating on the evident intention of joint
military action! Do you remember the classic interview we had with
the late King in his Cabin? If this is on the tapis again then we
have another deep regret for the loss of that sagacious intuition!
King Edward may not have been clever, but he never failed in his
judgment on whose opinion to rely.... Of course there may be
nothing in it! Nor do I think there is the least likelihood of war.
ENGLAND IS FAR TOO STRONG! Yet I daily get letters anticipating my
early return....
I enclose you a letter from ----, received a little time ago. He
is a very eminent Civil Engineer. There is a “dead set” being
made to get the Midshipmen under the new scheme to rebel against
“engineering”! ----, ---- & Co. are persistently at it through
their friends in the Fleet, and calling those Midshipmen who go in
for engineering--“Greasers.” The inevitable result of the present
young officers of the Navy disparaging and slighting this chief
necessary qualification of engineering in these engineering days
will be to force the throwing open of entry as officers in the
Navy _to all classes of the population_ and adopting State paid
Education and support till the pay is sufficient to support!
* * * * *
1911.
_December 24th._
... I have had a hectic time with four hurricanes crossing the
Channel and balancing on the tight-rope with one end held by
Winston and the other by McKenna, but they both held tight and I am
all right. Without doubt McKenna is a patriot to have encouraged
ME to help Winston as he has done! I have not heard what the
War Staff is doing. It does not trouble me. My sole object was
to ensure Jellicoe being Commander-in-Chief of the Home Fleet on
December 19th, 1913, and that is being done by his being appointed
Second-in-Command of the Home Fleet, and he will automatically
be C.-in-C. in two years from that date. All the recent changes
revolved round Jellicoe, and NO ONE sees it!
* * * * *
1912.
_Jan. 3rd._ NAPLES.
... I fully agree with you about the Navy want of first-class
Intellects. Concentration and Discipline combine to cramp the Sea
Officer.... Great views don’t get grasped. Winston urges me to
come back, but he forgets the greatest of all the great Napoleonic
sayings: “_J’ordonne, ou je me tais._” Besides, you see, I was the
First Violin. However, Winston is splendidly receptive. I can’t
possibly write what has happened, _but he is a brave man_. And as
16 Admirals have been scrapped I am more popular than ever!!! A
lovely woman two days ago sent me this riddle: “Why are you like
Holland?” “Because you lie low and are dammed all round.” But there
it is. Jellicoe will be Admiralissimo when Armageddon comes along,
and _everything that was done revolved round that_, and _no one has
seen it_. He has all the attributes of Nelson, and his age.
[Illustration:
[_By kind permission of “The Daily Express.”_
THE ANNIVERSARY OF TRAFALGAR.
NELSON (_in Trafalgar Square_):--“I was on my way down to lend
them a hand myself, but if Jacky Fisher’s taking on the job there’s
no need for me to be nervous, I’ll get back on my pedestal.”
Nelson looking up Sir John Fisher on his first day as First Sea
Lord, Trafalgar Day, 1904.]
* * * * *
1912.
_March 7th._ NAPLES.
You nearly saw me to-day, as a King’s Messenger roused me out the
day before yesterday with papers I really thought I could not
cope with by letter; but as obviously the object was to avoid the
gossip my appearance in London would cause I did my best with
my pen. But I see clearly I am in the middle of the whirlpool
again and must force what I feel a great disinclination for and
participate once more in the fight. I have had strangely intimate
opportunities of learning the very inside of German feeling
towards England. _It is bitterly intense and widespread._ Without
any doubt whatever the Germans thought they were going to squeeze
France out of Morocco. You can take that as a fact, no matter what
lies are told by the German Foreign Minister; and Clemenceau’s
unpublished speech would have proved it, but he said enough. And
how treacherous to England was M. Caillaux.--What a dirty business!
Anyhow, as a German Admiral of _high repute_ wrote confidentially
and privately a few days since: “German public opinion is roused
in a way I had not before thought possible.” And as far as I can
make out, the very worst possible thing was Haldane’s visit--a
British Cabinet Minister crawling up the back stairs of the German
Foreign Office in carpet slippers! and judging from all that is
told me, it has made the Germans worse than ever, and for a variety
of quite opposite reasons, all producing the same result. Any more
Heligolands would mean certain war. It’s very peculiar how we have
left our impregnable position we occupied before Haldane’s visit,
to take up a most humiliating, weak and dangerous one.
* * * * *
1912.
_April 2nd._
... As you say, Winston has done splendidly. He and I last
November discussed every brick of his speech in Devonport Dockyard
while visiting the 33-knot _Lion_-Dreadnought by night alone
together, and don’t accuse me of too much egotism, but he stopped
dramatically on the Dockyard stones and said to me “You’re a
Great Man!”... We are lagging behind in out-Dreadnoughting the
Dreadnought! A plunge of course--a huge plunge--but so was the
Dreadnought--so was the Turbine--so was the water-tube boiler, and
last of all so was the 13½-inch gun which now holds the field, and
the whole Board of Admiralty (bar Jellicoe) and all the experts
dead against it--but we plunged! So it is now--we want more
speed--less armour--a 15-inch gun--more sub-division--oil only--and
chauffeurs instead of Engineers and Stokers, and a Dreadnought
that will go round the world without requiring to replenish fuel!
The _Non-Pareil_! Winston says he’ll call her the “Fisher!” _I owe
more than I can say to McKenna._ I owe nearly as much to Winston
for scrapping a dozen Admirals on December 5th last so as to get
Jellicoe 2nd in Command of the Home Fleet. If war comes before
1914, then Jellicoe will be Nelson at the Battle of St. Vincent: if
it comes in 1914 then he’ll be Nelson at Trafalgar!...
Again, I’ve had quite affectionate letters from three important
Admirals. Why should I come home and filch their credit? All this
is to explain to you why I keep abroad, as you ask me what are my
future plans. Your letter in _The Times_ on the German Book quite
excellent. Bernstorff’s book is even more popular in Germany:
“The War Between England and Germany”--with the picture of the
“Dreadnought” with all her guns trained for action! Every little
petty German newspaper is dead-on for war with England! _that I can
assure you of!_ So _anything_ would kindle a war!... The banner
unfurled on October 21st, 1904, by the d--d scoundrel who on that
day became First Sea Lord had inscribed on it:
“_The fighting efficiency of the Fleet_”
and
“_Its instant readiness for War_.”
and, as Winston bravely said, that is now the case and no credit to
himself, but he ought to have gone further back than McKenna for the
credit. _It was Balfour!_ He saw me through--no one else would allow
160 ships to be scrapped, &c., &c., &c. But you’ve had enough!
* * * * *
1912.
_April 25th._
... When I was a Delegate at the Hague Conference of 1899--the
first Conference--I had very animated conversations, which,
however, to my lasting regret it was deemed inexpedient to place
on record (on account of their violence, I believe!), regarding
“Trading with the Enemy.” I stated the primordial fact that “_The
Essence of War is Violence; Moderation in War is Imbecility_.”
And then in my remarks I went on to observe, as is stated by Mr.
Norman Angell in the “Great Illusion,” where he holds me up as a
Terror! and as misguided--perhaps I went a little too far when I
said I would boil the prisoners in oil and murder the innocent in
cold blood, &c., &c., &c. ... but it’s quite silly not to make
War damnable to the whole mass of your enemy’s population, which
of course is the secret of maintaining the right of Capture of
Private Property at Sea. As you say, it must be proclaimed in the
most public and most authoritative manner that direct and indirect
trade between Great Britain, _including every part of the British
Empire_, and Germany must cease in time of war.... When war does
come _“Might is Right!” and the Admiralty will know what to do!_
Nevertheless, it is a most serious drawback not making public
to the world beforehand what we mean by War! It is astounding
how even very great men don’t understand War! You must go to the
Foreigner to appreciate our Surpassing Predominance as a Nation.
I was closeted for two hours lately--in a locked room--with a
great Foreign Ambassador, who quoted great names to me as being in
agreement with him that never in the History of the World was the
British Nation (as at the present moment) surpassed in power! And
therefore we could do what we liked!... I fully agree with you that
the schemes of the General Staff of the British Army are grotesque.
Their projects last August, had we gone to war, were wild in the
extreme. You will remember a famous interview we two had with
King Edward in his Cabin on board the Royal Yacht--how he stamped
on the idea (that then enthused the War Office mind) of England
once more engaged in a great Continental War! “Marlboroughs Cheap
To-day!” was the kettle of fish advertised by the Militarists!
I walked the sands of Scheveningen with General Gross von
Schwartzhoff in June, 1899. The German Emperor said he
(Schwartzhoff) was a greater than Moltke. He was the Military
German Delegate at the Hague Conference; he was designated as
Chief of the General Staff at Berlin, but he was burnt to death
in China instead. I had done him a very good turn indeed, so he
opened his heart to me. There was no German Navy then. We were
doing Fashoda; and he expatiated on the _rôle_ of the British
Army--how the absolute supremacy of the British Navy gave it such
inordinate power far beyond its numerical strength, because 200,000
men embarked in transports, and God only knowing where they might
be put ashore, was a weapon of enormous influence, and capable
of deadly blows--occupying perhaps Antwerp, Flushing, &c. (but,
of course, he only was thinking of the Cotentin Peninsula), or
landing 90 miles from Berlin on that 14 miles of sandy beach [in
Pomerania], impossible of defence against a battle fleet sweeping
with devastating shells the flat country for miles, like a mower’s
scythe--no fortifications able to withstand projectiles of 1,450 lb.
Yes! you are _so_ right! the average man is incapable of a _wide_
survey! he looks through a pinhole and only sees just a little bit
much magnified! Napoleon and Cromwell! Where are they?
* * * * *
1912.
_April 29th._ NAPLES.
... You say to me--“Come home!”--you remind me of “_personal
influence_.” I KNOW IT! Three days ago I was invited to name one
of three week-ends in June to meet two very great men at a country
house--no one else. Day before yesterday Winston Churchill asks
me. Hardly a week passes without such similar pressure from most
influential quarters--“_Why don’t I come home and smash and
pulverize?_” Of course, they one and all exaggerate--that in ten
minutes I could “_sweep the board_” and so on! I know exactly what
I can do. I’ve been fighting 50 years! _But I don’t want a personal
victory!_
... I am going to take my body and what little money I have ... to
the United States in the near future. It would be no use my coming
home. _The mischief is done!_... From patriotic motives I’ve given
Winston of my very best in the replies going to him this day from
Brindisi by King’s Messenger, as regards designs and policy and
fighting measures.
* * * * *
1912.
_May 15th._
... Well! as you say, every blessed thing at Weymouth [the Fleet
Inspection] _absolutely_ dates from 1909, except the aviation, and
even that I pressed to its present condition dead against great
opposition, but I wrote so strongly that ---- took the bit between
his teeth on that subject! And you ask me the question “How goes it
for the future!”
Well! Lloyd George is the real man, and so far judging from his
most intimate conversation with me, _all is well!_... A propos
of all this I’ve been specially invited to meet four people of
importance at a week-end meeting--_no others_. I was asked twice
before--and again now repeated; but I think it best to abstain. I
think you will approve of my not going. I have declined to go with
W. C. in the Admiralty Yacht.
* * * * *
1912.
_May 19th._ NAPLES.
I have a letter from W. C. this morning that he and the Prime
Minister have decided to come direct here to Naples to spend a
few days, and a telegram has just come saying they arrive on May
23rd.... I suppose the coming Supplementary Estimates and also
types of new ships about which I am in deadly antagonism with every
living soul at the Admiralty, and one of the consequences has been
that a great Admiralty official has got the boot!!! So Winston is
right when he writes to me this morning that in all vital points
I have had my way! He adds: “The Future of the Navy rests in the
hands of men in whom your confidence is as strong as mine ... and
no change of Government would carry with it any change of policy in
this respect.”
* * * * *
1912. KILVERSTONE HALL,
_June 30th._ THETFORD.
My plot is working exactly as forecast. By and by you’ll say it’s
the best thing I ever did. The Prime Minister and Winston would not
listen at Naples to my urgent cry “Increase your margin!” They have
got to recruit without stint and build 8 “Mastodons” instead of 4.
Wait and see!
The recruiting HAS begun. The 8 will follow.
We want 8
We won’t wait.
No other course but that now in progress would have done it. I
don’t mind personal obloquy, but it’s a bit hard to undergo my
friends’ doubts of me; but the clouds will roll by.... I’ve got all
my “working bees” round me here of the Royal Commission [on Oil and
the Internal Combustion engine]. We shall stagger humanity!
1912.
_July 6th._ KILVERSTONE HALL.
... Really all my thoughts are with my Royal Commission. I expect
you will see that the course of action will inevitably result
in what I ventured to indicate _if only_ the Admiralty will keep
their backs to the wall of the irreducible margin required in
Home Waters. The only pity was that dear old ---- said we were
sufficiently strong for two years or more, which of course is quite
true, but his saying so may prevent Lloyd George being hustled (_as
he otherwise would have been_). Luckily I prevented ---- saying
even more of our present great preponderance--but let us hope
“All’s well that ends well.” Ian Hamilton came in most effectively
with his witnessing the armoured Cruiser “Suffolk” laden with
a Battalion of the Malta Garrison being twice torpedoed by a
submarine.
* * * * *
1912.
_July 15th._
... This instant the news has come to me that there are
750 eligible and selected candidates for 60 vacancies for
Boy-Artificers in the Navy at the approaching examination! When I
introduced this scheme 8 years ago every man’s hand was against me,
and the whole weight of Trades Unionism inside the House of Commons
and out of it was organised against me.... We were dominated by the
Engineers! We had to accept Engine Room artificers for the Navy
who had been brought up on making bicycles! _Now_, these boys are
suckled on the marine engine! and they have knocked out the old lot
completely. Our very best Engine Room artificers now in the Navy
are these boys! Not one of my colleagues or anyone else supported
me! _Do you wonder that I don’t care a d--n what anyone says?_
The man you are going to see on Wednesday--how has he recognised
that we are at this moment stronger than the Triple Alliance? The
leaders of both political parties--how have they recognised that
19 millions sterling of public money _actually allocated_ was
saved and the re-arrangement of British Sea Power so stealthily
carried out that not a sign appeared of any remark by either our
own or by any Foreign Diplomatists, until an obscure article in
the _Scientific American_ by Admiral Mahan stated that of a sudden
he (Mahan) had discovered that 88 per cent. of the Sea Power of
England was concentrated on Germany? But the most ludicrous thing
of all is that up to this very moment no one has really recognised
that the Dreadnought caused such a deepening and dredging of German
harbours and their approaches, and a new Kiel Canal, as to cripple
Germany up to A.D. 1915, and make their coasts accessible, which
were previously denied to our ships because of their heavy draught
for service in all the world!
* * * * *
1912.
_August 2nd._
At the Defence Committee yesterday ... we had a regular set-to with
Lloyd George (supported by Harcourt and Morley chiefly) against
the provision of defence for Cromarty as a shelter anchorage for
the Fleet, and the Prime Minister adjourned the discussion to
the Cabinet as the temperature got hot! As you know, I’ve always
been “dead on” for Cromarty and hated Rosyth, which is an unsafe
anchorage--the whole Fleet in jeopardy the other day--and there’s
that beastly bridge which, if blown up, makes the egress very risky
without examination.... Also Cromarty is strategically better than
Rosyth.... Also Lloyd George had a row about the airships--Seely’s
Sub-Committee. We _must_ have airships.
* * * * *
1912.
_August 7th._
I still hate Rosyth and fortifications and East Coast Docks and
said so the other day! but what we devise at Cromarty is for
another purpose--to fend off German Cruisers possibly by an
accident of fog or stupidity getting loose on our small craft
taking their ease or re-fuelling in Cromarty (Oil will change all
this in time, but as yet we have for years coal-fed vessels to deal
with).... I’ve got enthusiastic colleagues on the oil business!
They’re all bitten! Internal Combustion Engine Rabies!
* * * * *
1912.
_September._
... What an ass I was to come home! but it was next door to
impossible to resist the pressure put on me, and then can you think
it was wise of me to plunge once more into so vast a business as
future motor Battleships? Changing the face of the Navy, and, as
Lloyd George said to me last Friday, getting the Coal of England as
my mortal enemy!
* * * * *
1912.
_Sept. 14th._
_This Royal Commission_ [on oil] is a wonder! We have our first
meeting on September 24th, and practically it is finished though it
will go on for years and years and never submit a Report! You will
love the _modus operandi_ when some day I expound it to you!... In
the second week of December we have an illustration on the scale
of 12 inches to a foot of producing oil from coal. Twenty-five
tons a day will be produced as an example. All that is required
is to treble the retorting plant of all gas works in the United
Kingdom where there is a Mayor and Corporation, and to treble their
“through put” of coal! We get two million tons of oil that way! We
only want one million.
I addressed the Directors of the S.E. & Chatham Railway last
Tuesday, and hope I persuaded them to build a motor vessel of 24
knots between Calais and Dover, and proved to them they could save
an hour between Paris and London--the whole side of the vessel
falls down and makes a gangway on to a huge pontoon at Calais
and Dover and all the passengers march straight out (“Every man
straight before him,” like the Israelites did at Jericho, and the
walls fell down before them!) No more climbing up Mont Blanc up a
narrow precipitous gangway from the steamer to the jetty in the
rain, and an old woman blocking you with her parcels and umbrella
jammed by the stanchions, and they ask her for her ticket and she
don’t know which pocket it’s in! and the rain going down your
neck all the time! A glass roof goes over the motor vessel--she
has no funnels, and her telescopic wireless masts wind down by a
2 h.p. motor so as not to go through the glass roof. But all this
is nothing to H.M.S. “Incomparable”--a 25 knot battleship that
will go round the whole earth without refuelling!... The plans of
her will be finished next Monday, and I wrote last night to say I
proposed in my capacity as a private British Citizen to go over in
three weeks’ time in the White Star “Adriatic” to get Borden [the
Canadian Prime Minister] to build her at Quebec. The Building Yard
put up there by Vickers is under a guarantee to build a Dreadnought
in Canada in May and the great Dreadnought Dock left Barrow for
Quebec on August 31st. No English Government would ever make this
plunge, which is why I propose going to Canada--to that great man,
Borden--and take the Vickers people to make their bargain for
building.
* * * * *
1912.
_Sept. 20th._
... My idea now is to raise a syndicate to build the “Non-Pareil”!
A few millionaires would suffice, and I know sufficient of them
to do it. All the drawings and designs quite ready. The one _all
pervading, all absorbing_ thought is to get in first with motor
ships before the Germans! Owing to our apathy during the last two
years they are ahead with internal combustion engines! _They have
killed 15 men in experiments with oil engines and we have not
killed one!_ And a d--d fool of an English politician told me the
other day that he thinks this creditable to us!
Without any doubt (I have it from an eye-witness of part of the
machinery for her at Nuremberg) a big German oil engine Cruiser
is under weigh! We must press forward.... These d--d politics are
barring the way.... “_What!_” (say these trembling idiots) “ANOTHER
_Dreadnought Revolution!_” and these boneless fools chatter with
fear like apes when they see an elephant! The imagination cannot
picture that “_a greater than the Dreadnought is here!_” Imagine a
silhouette presenting a target 33 per cent. less than any living
or projected Battleship! No funnels--no masts--no smoke--she
carries over 5,000 tons of oil, enough to take her round the world
without refuelling! Imagine what that means! Ten motor boats
carried on board in an armoured pit in the middle of her, where
the funnels and the boilers used to be. Two of these motor boats
are over 60 feet long and go 45 knots! and carry 21-inch Torpedoes
that go five miles! Imagine these let loose in a sea fight![15]
Imagine projectiles far over a ton weight! going over a mile or
more further than even the 13½-inch gun can carry, and that gun
has rightly staggered humanity!--Yes! that 13½-inch gun that all
my colleagues (bar one! and he is our future Nelson! [Jellicoe])
thought me mad to force through against unanimous disapproval! _and
see where we are now in consequence!_ We shall have 16 British
Dreadnoughts with the 13½-inch gun before the Germans _have one!!!_
So it will be with the “Non-Pareil”! WE HAVE GOT TO HAVE HER ...
_I’ve worked harder over this job than in all my life before!_[16]
* * * * *
1912.
DEC. 29TH.
... I’m getting sick of England and want to get back to Naples and
the sun! and the “_dolce far niente_!” What fools we all are to
work like we do! Till we drop!
CHAPTER XIII
AMERICANS
My very best friends are Americans. I was the Admiral in North America,
and saw “American Beauties” at Bermuda. (Those American roses and the
American women are equal!) And without question they are the very best
dancers in the world! (I suppose it’s from so much skating!) My only
son married an American lady (which rejoiced me), and an American
gentleman on the steamer complimented me that she had come over and
vanquished him instead of his going, as the usual way is, to America
to capture her! I had such a time in America when I went over to the
wedding! I never can forget the hospitality so boundless and sincere!
I really might have spent three years in America (so I calculated) in
paying visits earnestly desired. The Reporters (25 of them) asked me
when I left what I thought of their country (I tried to dodge them, but
found them all in my cabin when I went on board!) I summed it up in
the one word I greatly admire--“HUSTLE!” and I got an adhesive label
in America which I also loved! Great Black Block letters on a crimson
ground--
+------------+
| |
| RUSH |
| |
+------------+
You stick it on a letter or the back of a slow fool. Mr. McCrea, the
President of the Pennsylvania Railway, had his private car to take me
to Philadelphia from New York. We went 90 miles in 90 minutes, and such
a dinner! Two black gentlemen did it all. And I found my luggage in my
room when I arrived labelled:
“MR. LORD FISHER”
(How it got there so quick I can’t imagine.) I was bombed by a
photographer as we arrived late at night, and an excellent photograph
he took, but it gave me a shock! I had never been done like that! I had
the great pleasure of dining with Mr. Woodrow Wilson. I predicted to
the reporters he would be the next President for sure! I was told I was
about the first to say so--anyhow, the 25 reporters put it down as my
news!
I met several great Americans during my visit; but the loveliest
meeting I ever had was when, long before, a charming company of
American gentlemen came on July 4th to Admiralty House at Bermuda to
celebrate “Independence Day!” I got my speech in before theirs! I said
George Washington was the greatest Englishman who ever lived! England
had never been so prosperous, thanks _solely_ to him, as since _his
time and now!_ because he taught us how to associate with our fellow
countrymen when they went abroad and set up house for themselves! And
that George Washington was the precursor of that magnificent conception
of John Bright in his speech of the ages when he foretold a great
Commonwealth--yes a great Federation--of all those speaking the same
tongue--that tongue which is the “_business_” tongue of the world--as
it expresses in fewer words than any other language what one desires
to convey! And I suppose now we have got Palestine that this Federal
House of Commons of the future will meet at Jerusalem, the capital
of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel, whom we are without doubt, for how
otherwise could ever we have so prospered when we have had such idiots
to guide us and rule us as those who gave up Heligoland, Tangier,
Curaçoa, Corfu, Delagoa Bay, Java, Sumatra, Minorca, etc., etc.? I
have been at all the places named, so am able to state from personal
knowledge that only congenital idiots could have been guilty of such
inconceivable folly as the surrender of them, and again I say: “Let us
thank God that we are the lost ten tribes of Israel!” Mr. Lloyd George,
in a famous speech long ago in the War, showed how we had been 14 times
“too late!” How many more “too lates” since he made that memorable
speech? Especially what about our shipbuilding and the German submarine
menace and Rationing? (The only favoured trades seem to be Brewing and
Racing! Both so flourishing!)
The American barber on board the “Baltic” told me a good story. He was
a quaint man, clean shaved and wore black alpaca throughout. Halfway
across the Atlantic I was waiting to have my hair cut, when a gentleman
bounced in on him, kicking up a devil of a fuss about wanting something
at once! The barber, without moving a muscle, calmed him by saying:
“Are you leaving to-day, Sir?” But this was his story. He was barber in
the train from Chicago to New York that never stops “even for a death”
(so he told me) when the train suddenly stopped at a small village and
a lady got out. Mr. Thompson, the President of the Railway, was in the
train, and asked why? The conductor showed an order signed by a great
man of the Railway to stop there. When Mr. Thompson got to New York he
asked this great man “What excuse?” and added: “I wouldn’t have done it
for my wife!” and the answer he got was: “No more would I!”
But the sequel of the story is that I told this tale at an
international cosmopolitan lunch party at Lucerne and said: “The
curious thing is I knew the man!” when Mr. Chauncey Depew wiped me out
by saying that “he knew the woman!”
This American Barber quaintly praised the Engine Driver of this Chicago
train by telling me that “_he was always looking for what he didn’t
want!_” and so had avoided the train going into a River by noticing
something wrong with the points!
[Illustration:
_By kind Permission of “London Opinion.”_
AMERICA AND THE BLOCKADE.
“Why Mr. Wilson should expect this country to refrain from
exercising a right in return for Germany’s refraining
from committing wrongs is not very clear to the ordinary
intelligence.”--_Daily Paper_.
DAME WILSON (_to P. C. Fisher_):--“Oh, Constable! Don’t hurt him. I’m
sure he won’t murder anyone else!”]
Admiral Sampson brought his Squadron of the United States Navy to
visit me at Bermuda. I was then the Admiral in North America. At the
banquet I gave in his honour I proposed his health, and that of the
United States. He never said a word. Presently one of his Officers went
up and whispered something in his ear. I sent the wine round, and the
Admiral then got up, and made the best speech I ever heard. All he said
was: “It was a d--d fine old hen that hatched the American Eagle!” His
chaplain, after dinner, complimented me on the Officers of my Flagship,
the “Renown.” He said: “He had not heard a single ‘swear’ from ‘Soup to
Pea-nuts’”!
_Lord Fisher on John Bright_
(FROM “BRIGHT’S HOUSE JOURNAL”)
At a dinner held in London the other day to Mr. Josephus Daniels,
Secretary to the United States Navy, Lord Fisher made the following
speech in which he referred to a speech by Mr. John Bright:--
“Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher, who was called upon also to
respond, was received with cheers, the whole company standing
up and drinking his health. He said he had no doubt it would be
pleasing to them if he spoke about America. He was there one week.
Mr. Daniels had been here about one week. He was in America one
week because his only son was married there to the only daughter of
a great Philadelphian.
* * * * *
“‘King Edward who was a kind friend to me--in fact he was my only
friend at one time’--remarked Lord Fisher,’ said to me, “You are
the best hated man in the British Empire,” and I replied, “Yes,
perhaps I am.” The King then said, “Do you know I am the only
friend you have?” I said, “Perhaps your Majesty is right, but you
have backed the winner.” Afterwards I came out on top when I said,
“Do you remember you backed the winner and now everyone is saying
what a sagacious King you are? The betting was a thousand to one.”’
* * * * *
“But he was going to tell them about America, and some of them
would hear things they had never before heard about their own
country. When he was at Bermuda a deputation of American citizens
waited upon him on July 4th. To tell the honest truth he had
forgotten about it. He told the deputation he knew what they
had come there for. ‘You know,’ he said to them, ‘the greatest
Englishman that ever lived was George Washington. He taught us how
to rule our Colonies. He told us that freedom was the thing to
give them. Why, if it had not been for George Washington America
might have been Ireland.’ ‘I shook hands with them,’ continued
Lord Fisher, ‘and they went away and said nothing they had come to
say....
“‘Now I will talk about the League of Nations. In A.D. 1910 an
American citizen wished to see me; and he said to me, taking a
paper out of his pocket, “Have you read that?” I looked at it
and saw it was a speech by John Bright, mostly in words of one
syllable--simplicity is, of course, the great thing. That speech
is really very little known on this side of the Atlantic or on the
other, but it so impressed me at the time that I have been thinking
of it ever since. John Bright said he looked forward to the time
when there would be a compulsory peace--when those who spoke with
the same tongue would form a great federation of free nations
joined together.’”
The following is an extract from the speech by Mr. John Bright. It was
delivered at Edinburgh in 1868:--
“I do not know whether it is a dream or a vision, or the foresight
of a future reality that sometimes passes across my mind--I like
to dwell upon it--but I frequently think the time may come when
the maritime nations of Europe--this renowned country of which we
are citizens, France, Prussia, resuscitated Spain, Italy, and the
United States of America--may see that vast fleets are of no use;
that they are merely menaces offered from one country to another;
and that they may come to this wise conclusion--that they will
combine at their joint expense, and under some joint management,
to supply the sea with a sufficient sailing and armed police which
may be necessary to keep the peace on all parts of the watery
surface of the globe, and that those great instruments of war and
oppression shall no longer be upheld. This, of course, by many will
be thought to be a dream or a vision, not the foresight of what
they call a statesman.”
SIR HIRAM MAXIM
When Sir Hiram Maxim--that great American--was very little known, he
came to see me when I was Captain of the Gunnery ship at Portsmouth,
bringing with him his ever-famous Maxim gun, to be tried by me. So we
went to Whale Island to practise with the gun; and when he was ready to
fire I adopted the usual practice in trying all new guns and ordered
the experimental party to get under cover; and at that order they were
supposed to go into a sort of dug-out. Evidently old Maxim considered
this an insult to his gun, and he roared out at the top of his voice:
“Britishers under cover, Yankees out in the open!” The gun didn’t
burst and it was all right; but it might have, all the same.
Admiral Hornby the bravest of the brave, was one of the Britishers;
and he came to lunch with me, being extremely fascinated with Hiram’s
quaintness. Hiram was a delightful man in my opinion, and I remember
his telling me that if I wanted to live long and see good days the
thing was to eat Pork and Beans. I never had the chance, till 1910,
of eating them cooked _à l’Américaine_; and I then agreed with Hiram
Maxim--no more delicious dish in the world, but you can’t get it in
England! After lunch there were some oranges on the table; and to my
dying day I shall never forget the extraordinary look on Sir Geoffrey
Hornby’s beautiful, refined face as Hiram reached out and grasped an
orange from the centre of the table--tore it apart, and buried his face
sucking out the contents, emerging all orange. He told us that was the
way to enjoy an orange. We neither of us were up to it!
CHAPTER XIV
SOME SPECIAL MISSIONS
I was sent as a very young Lieutenant to a little fishing village
called Heppens in Oldenburg. It is now Wilhelmshaven, chief Naval
Port of Germany. Its river, the Jahde, was then a shallow stream. The
occasion for my visit was the cession to King William of Prussia, as
he was then, of this place, Heppens, by the Grand Duke of Oldenburg;
and there I met King William, to whom I sat next but one at lunch,
and Bismarck and von Moltke and von Roon were there. We had a very
long-winded speech from the Burgomaster, and Bismarck, whom I was
standing next to, said to me in the middle of it: “I didn’t know this
was going to happen, or I would have cut him short.” The King asked me
at lunch why I had been sent, and if there was no one else who knew
about torpedoes. Well, I don’t think there was. It was an imposing and
never-to-be-forgotten sight, that lunch. They all wore their helmets
and great-coats at lunch--so mediæval--and telegrams kept coming to
Bismarck, who would get up and draw the King aside, and then they would
sit down again. Von Roon I thought very _débonnaire_, and Moltke was
like an old image, taciturn and inscrutable, but he talked English as
well as I did.
Years after this, Prince Adalbert’s Naval Aide-de-camp, who was a great
friend of mine, told me that on the day of mobilization in the war with
France he was sent to von Moltke with a message from Prince Adalbert,
who was King William’s brother and Head of the Navy, to ask him whether
he could see Prince Adalbert for a few moments. To his astonishment, my
friend found Moltke lying on a sofa reading “Lady Audley’s Secret,” by
Miss Braddon, and he told him he could see the Prince for as long as he
liked and whenever he liked. The word “Mobilize” had finished all his
work for the present.
On the occasion of my visit I imagined and reported what Heppens would
become, and so it did. I never can make out why I didn’t get a German
decoration. I think perhaps they thought me too young. However, I had
the honour of an empty sentry-box placed outside the little inn where
I was staying; and if I had been of higher rank there would have been
a sentry in it. The little inn was very unpretentious, and when the
landlord had carved for us he came and sat down at table with us. Some
days after, at a very exclusive Military Club in Berlin, I met the
King’s two illegitimate brothers. They were exactly like him; also I
breakfasted with the Head of the German Mining School. I remember it,
because we only had raw herring and black bread for breakfast. He was
very poor, although he was exceeding clever, and had as his right-hand
man a wonderful chemist. So far as I know, the present German mine is
nearly what it was then, and the sea-gulls rested on the protuberances
as they do now, for I went to Kiel Bay to see them. There was a lovely
hotel at Kiel, where they treated me royally. I recommended the
adoption of these German mines, and it’s a pity we didn’t. They hold
the field to this very day. However, the First Sea Lord of that date
didn’t believe in mines or torpedoes or submarines, and I was packed
off to China in the old two-decker “Donegal,” as Commander of the China
Flagship. Long afterwards Sir Hastings Yelverton, who became First Sea
Lord, unburied my Memorandum headed “Ocean Warfare,” and supported the
views in it. It enunciated the principle of “Hit first, hit hard, and
keep on hitting,” and discoursed on Submarines and Mines.
REVAL
You are remarking to me of a charming letter written to me by the late
Emperor of Russia’s youngest sister--the Grand Duchess Olga. She is
a peculiarly sweet creature. Her nickname amongst the Russians was
“Sunshine.” Stolypin, the Prime Minister, told me that, and he also
said to me that she was a kind of life-buoy because if you walked about
with her you would not get bombed by an anarchist. All loved her.
I made her acquaintance first at Carlsbad. On my arrival at the hotel
I found King Edward’s Equerry waiting in the hall. I had written to
tell the King, who was at Marienbad, in answer to his enquiry, as to
the day I should arrive and what time; and he came over to Marienbad
from Carlsbad. I went then and there and found him just finishing lunch
with a peculiarly charming looking young lady, who turned out to be
the Grand Duchess Olga, and her husband, the Grand Duke of Oldenburg,
from whom happily she is now divorced (I didn’t like the look of him at
all). The King, having satisfied himself that I had had lunch, and he
then smoking a cigar as big as a capstan bar, after talking of various
things which interested him, told me that his niece, the Grand Duchess
Olga, did not know anyone in Carlsbad, and he relied on me to make
her time there pleasant, so I promptly asked her if she could waltz.
She said she loved it, but she somehow never got the step properly,
whereupon I asked the King if he had any objection to getting into the
corner of the room while I moved the table and took the rugs up to
give her Imperial Highness a lesson. He made some little difficulty at
first, but eventually went into the corner; and when the lesson began
he was quite pleased and clapped his hands and called out “Bravo!” The
best waltz tune in the world is one of Moody and Sankey’s hymns. I
don’t know whether Sankey originated the saying that he didn’t see why
the Devil should have all the good music. I don’t by that implicate
that the waltz was the devil’s; but, without any doubt, there is a good
deal of temptation in it, and when you get a good partner you cleave to
her all the evening.
This dancing lesson was an unalloyed success, so I asked her to a dance
the next night at the Savoy Hotel; and after some more words with the
King I left, and walking down the stairs to go to my hotel, I thought
to myself: “How on earth are you going to get up a dance when you don’t
know a soul in the place?” when who should I meet but a friend of
mine--a Spanish Grandee, the Marquis de Villa Vieja, and he arranged
what really turned out to be a ball, as he knew everybody, and I having
some dear American friends at Marienbad I telegraphed them to come over
and dine with the Grand Duchess and stay the night for the ball, and
they did. When the dance had begun, and the Grand Duchess was proving
quite equal to her lesson of the day before, suddenly an apparition of
extraordinary grace and loveliness appeared at the door. Villa Vieja
took on the Grand Duchess and I welcomed the beautiful Polish Countess
and danced with her many waltzes running in spite of a hint I received
that her husband was very jealous and a renowned duellist. Next day, by
telegram from the King, I was told by His Majesty that Isvolsky, the
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, was to be asked by me to lunch on
his arrival that day from St. Petersburg. I invited him; and just as
we sat down to lunch the Polish angel of the night before came through
the door and petrified Isvolsky, and the more so as she kissed her hand
to me. He never took his eyes off her, and as she walked to her table
I heard him breathe a sigh, and say _sotto voce_, “Alas, in heaven no
woman!” I said to him: “Monsieur Isvolsky, pray pardon me; perhaps
you did not intend it to be heard, but if it be true what you say, it
takes away much of the charm which I had anticipated finding there.”
He turned to me and said--quoting chapter and verse in the Revelations,
“There was silence in heaven.”
So when I met the Grand Duchess Olga again, when I accompanied King
Edward on that memorable visit to Reval--when, as Prince Orloff, the
Emperor’s principal aide-de-camp, said to me, King Edward changed
the atmosphere of Russian feelings towards England from suspicion to
cordial trust--there was quite an affectionate meeting, and we danced
the “Merry Widow” waltz--a then famous stage performance--with such
effect as to make the Empress of Russia laugh. They told me she had
not laughed for two years. At the banquet preceding the dance the
Grand Duchess and I, I regret to say, made such a disturbance in our
mutual jokes that King Edward called out to me that I must try to
remember that it was not the Midshipmen’s Mess; and my dear Grand
Duchess thought I should be sent to Siberia or somewhere. We sailed at
daylight, and I got a letter from her when I arrived in England saying
she had made a point of seeing Uncle Bertie and that it was all right,
I was not going to be punished. Then she went on to describe that
she had had a very happy day (being her birthday) picnicking in the
woods; the only drawback was, she told me, that the gnats would bite
her ankles. Being, at that period, both a courtier and a sycophant, I
telegraphed to her at some Palace she was at in Russia to say “I wished
to God I had been one of the gnats.” It was weeks before she got the
telegram, as the Russian Secret Department believed it was from some
anarchist, and was a cypher for bombing the Emperor or something of
the sort, and there was a lot of bother to trace out who had sent it.
I find among my papers another charming letter which I received from
the Grand Duchess Olga. It runs:
PETERHOF.
_11/25 July, 1909._
DEAR ADMIRAL,
I have been going to write to you for ever so long and now is a
chance to send you a few lines.
How are you getting on? We speak of you very often. I suppose
you’ll be going to Carlsbad this automn--and I am very sorry that
we are not going--so as to meet you there!
I have a great favour to ask you--but as I believe and think
you _can_ grant it--I shall ask: Lieutenant ---- of your Royal
Navy--whom we got to like very much two years ago at Sorrento--is
willing to come this automn and spend a month with us at our
country place--_if_ he gets leaves of course; I write all this to
you as I don’t know who else can help and give him leave.
We should like to have him about the middle of your September (the
very beginning of ours). If you think he can get leave just then
would you kindly telegraph to me--then I could write and ask him
(I suppose he will be at Cowes?). Today is my namesday, and having
received any amounts of presents--we are going to Church--as one
always does--on such occasions and then there will be a rather big
lunch and the band will play--All this glorious occasion is not
only for me--but also for my niece Olga.
My sister Xenia--who does not know you--says she is sorry not to
have that honour and pleasure!
My husband sends his best love (or whatever one says). Goodbye dear
Admiral. I wish I was going to see you soon it would be awfully
amusing. Write to me later on when you will be free please!
Much love and good wishes.
OLGA.
P.S. Mrs. Francklin sends lots of kind messages and love. Mama
sends her best love too.
That visit of King Edward to Russia was really quite remarkable for the
really eloquent speech the King made, without a note of any sort. I
said to him at breakfast the next morning, when they brought in a copy
of what they thought he had said, that I wondered on such a momentous
occasion he didn’t have it written out. “Well!” he said to me, “I did
try that once, when the French President Loubet came to visit me, and
I learnt the speech off by heart in the garden of Buckingham Palace.
When I got up to say it, I could not remember it, and had to keep on
beginning again at the beginning. So I said to myself, ‘Never again’!”
And I must say I share his conviction that there is no such eloquence
as when out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Emotion
and earnestness will do much more than move mountains; they will move
multitudes--and that was what King Edward was able to do.
I have spoken elsewhere of what I deemed was a suitable epitaph for
him--those great words of Pascal: “le cœur a ses raisons que la raison
ne connaît point.” The heart has reasons that the mind knows nothing
about.
God bless him!
Stolypin, when we met him at Reval on King Edward’s visit to the Czar,
was described to us as the greatest, the bravest and most single-minded
Prime Minister that Russia had ever possessed. He spoke English
fluently, and certainly was very pro-English. He was beyond deception.
His only daughter, he told me, had been killed by a bomb while he
was walking with her in the garden, and one of his hands was greatly
mutilated by the same explosion. He was murdered at the theatre at
Moscow not very long afterwards. We had many conversations together. He
said it was criminal folly having the capital of Russia elsewhere than
inland, as at Moscow, for that Petersburg was open to German attack
by sea. He seemed to have a prophetic view of England’s imbecility as
regards using her enormous sea supremacy to prevent the Baltic becoming
a German lake, as it became in the war, though we were five times
stronger than the German Fleet. So it passed by as an idle dream, any
idea of England’s interference, and alas! he remembered our betrayal of
Denmark when the Germans took Kiel and Schleswig-Holstein.
Stolypin repeatedly said to me the German frontier was his one and
only thought, and he was devoting all his life to make that frontier
impregnable against Germany, both in men and munitions, and strategic
arrangements. But he did not live long enough to carry out his scheme.
CARTAGENA
I also went with King Edward to Cartagena, when he returned the King
of Spain’s visit. King Alfonso, whom I had previously met in England,
was very cordial to me because we had seven “Dreadnoughts” ready before
the Germans had one. In fact, when I told him this piece of news, as we
were walking up and down the deck, with King Edward and Queen Alexandra
watching us from two deck-chairs, King Alfonso was so delighted that
he threw his arms round my neck, cried “You darling!” and kissed me.
Then he put his hand in his waistcoat pocket, took out a chocolate and
popped it into my mouth. He gave me the highest Spanish Order he could.
But when the box came on board containing it, it turned out to be the
Order of Isabella the Catholic, which is only given to Roman Catholics;
but the interesting thing is that when I was a little Midshipman I
had been reading “Ferdinand and Isabella,” and I remember saying to
my messmates that I intended some day to have the Order of Isabella
the Catholic. And when, some years after, as a Lieutenant it was the
fashion to wear medal ribbons in a rosette, upon some supercilious
officer asking me what “that thing” was in my button-hole, I quite
remember saying, by way of pulling his leg, that it was the Spanish
Order of Isabella the Catholic. However, I got the proper Order in time
to wear at the banquet.
The banquet was a very fine sight, as King Alfonso had brought down the
tapestries, pictures and other ornaments from the Escurial. The Spanish
Admirals were a grand sight. They wore the ancient uniform, and each
had a great Malacca cane with a big gold top. They all came on board to
call on King Edward in an old-fashioned pulling barge, and the sailors
wore crimson and gold sashes. That rowing barge and the splendid
uniforms lay at the root of one occasion when King Edward was really
angry with me. I had been arranging for him the details of the great
Naval Review and was summoned to Buckingham Palace to discuss them with
him. I found no Equerries in attendance, no one about, and the King
white with anger. “So!” he cried out to me, “I’m to go by such and such
a train, am I? And I’m to embark at such and such a time, am I? And I’m
to use your barge because it’s a better barge than mine, is it? Look
here, _am I the King or are you?_” The upshot of the interview was that
he threw the papers on the floor, with “Have it your own way!” But the
secret cause of his anger was that he had made up his mind to go off in
a rowing-boat like the Spanish Admirals, forgetting that there is no
tide at Cartagena, whereas the tide at Cowes runs many knots, and it
would have taken a rowing-boat hours to do what the barge could do in a
few minutes.
KIAMIL PASHA
One of the most pleasurable incidents of my holding the appointment of
Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet was going to Smyrna to
do honour to that splendid old Turk, Kiamil Pasha. He was then Vali,
or Governor, of the Province of Smyrna. He was most hale and vigorous.
He so delighted me with his conversations and experiences that it’s
a sincere joy to me now to recall, even in this humble way, what a
magnificent old man he was, and how he had so often placed his life in
jeopardy for the sake of right and for the good of his country, which
last, he said (he spoke most fluent English), had been “imperishably
bound up with England’s righteous work in the East.” He had been many
times Grand Vizier, and he knew all the secret incidents following and
preceding the Crimean War. And he said fervidly that England was the
only nation that never asked and never schemed to get anything out of
Turkey. And he said it was only the insensate folly of the English
Authorities that could ever have dislodged England from her wonderful
supremacy over the minds of the whole Turkish people. I told him, in
return, that the English treatment of Turkey was only on a par with
the English folly of giving up Heligoland, Corfu, Tangier, Minorca,
Java, Sumatra, Curaçoa (the key of the Panama Canal), Delagoa Bay (the
only harbour in Africa), and so on, and so on, and explained, to his
delighted amusement, that we were a nation of Lions led by Asses. He
pretty well foretold all that has happened since 1902.
With respect to Tangier, which was the dowry of Henrietta Maria, I
diverge a moment to mention that a great Spaniard in high office once
said to me that it was a curious fact that whenever Spain had left the
side of England she had inevitably come to grief.
Following on Kiamil’s wonderful prescience, I found on my visit to the
Sultan, who had invited me to Constantinople, that all I had heard from
him about Bulgaria was confirmed at Constantinople. One and all said
that Bulgaria was the fighting nation, and that Bulgaria was the Key
of the East. I was so saturated with the importance of this fact that I
spoke to Kitchener about it when the War commenced, but we did not give
Bulgaria what she wanted, and when, a year afterwards, she was offered
the same terms it was too late.
A great Bank always, I believe, has a travelling inspector who
visits all the branches. We want such a personage to visit all our
representatives in foreign lands, and see what they have done for
England in the previous year.
CHAPTER XV
SOME PERSONALITIES
Amongst the 13 First Lords of the Admiralty I have had to deal with
(and with nine of them I was very intimately associated) I should like
to record that in my opinion Lord George Hamilton and Lord Spencer had
the toughest jobs, because of the constitution of their respective
Boards of Admiralty; and yet neither of them received the credit each
of them deserved for his most successful administration. With both of
them their tact was unsurpassable. They had to deal with extremely
able colleagues, and my experience is that it is not a good thing to
have a lot of able men associated together. If you take a little of
the best Port Wine, the best Champagne, the best Claret, and the best
Hock and mix them together, the result is disastrous. So often is it
with a Board of Admiralty. That’s why I have suffered fools gladly!
But Lord George Hamilton and Lord Spencer had an awful time of it. To
both of these (I consider) great men I am very specially beholden. Lord
George Hamilton more particularly endured much on my behalf when I was
Director of Naval Ordnance, fighting the War Office. It was his own
decision that sent me to Portsmouth as Admiral Superintendent of the
Dockyard, and thus enabled me practically to prove the wisdom and the
economy of concentrating workmen on one ship like a hive of bees and
adopting piece-work to the utmost limit. Cannot anyone realise that
if you have your men spread over many ships building, your capital is
producing no dividend as compared with getting a ship rushed and sent
to sea ready to fight? I was held up as a dramatic _poseur_ because
the “Dreadnought” was built in a year and a day. Yes! She was ready to
fight in a year and a day. She did fire her guns. The “Inflexible,”
her famous prototype in former years, which I commanded, was four or
five years building. I took up the battleship “Royal Sovereign” when
I went as Superintendent of Portsmouth Dockyard and got her completed
within two years, and thereby saw my way to doing it in a year. And so
would I have done the famous “Hush Hush” ships, as I said I would; only
circumstances brought about my departure from the Admiralty, and apathy
came back, and those “Hush Hush” ships consequently took more than
a year to build. And some armchair quill-drivers still sling ink at
’em. And when I heard from an eye-witness how the whole lot of German
cruisers did flee when they appeared and ought to have been gobbled
up I rubbed my hands with malignant glee at the devastation of my
pen-and-ink enemies. As usual in the war, on that occasion the business
wasn’t pushed home.
To revert to my theme--I owe also a great debt to Lord George Hamilton,
when at a previous stage of my career he dissuaded me from accepting an
offer from Lord Rothschild, really beyond the dreams of avarice, of
becoming the head of a great armament and shipbuilding combine, which
accordingly fell through on my refusal. Had I gone, I’d have been a
millionaire instead of a pauper as I am now; but I wouldn’t have been
First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910 and then “Sacking the Lot!” Lord
George also selected me to be Controller of the Navy.
Lord Spencer called a horse after me--almost as great an honour. Lord
Spencer was really a very magnificent man, and he had the attributes
of his great ancestor, who selected Nelson over a great many of his
seniors to go and win the Battle of the Nile. There was no one else
who would have done it; and when Sir John Orde, one of the aggrieved
Admirals, told the King that the selected Nelson was mad, he replied,
“I wish to God he would bite you all!” My Lord Spencer had the same
gift of selection--it’s the biggest gift that a man in such a position
can have, and the life, the fate of his country may depend upon him.
Only war finds out poltroons. Lord Spencer turned out his master, to
whom he was faithfully devoted, when he saw the Navy was in danger
and that Mr. Gladstone would not agree to strengthen it. His manners
were superb. He satisfied that great description of what constitutes a
gentleman: “He never hurt any man’s feelings.”
There’s another First Lord I have too faintly alluded to--Lord
Northbrook. He also was a great man, but he was not considered so by
the populace. He was a victim to his political associates--they let
him in. His finance at the Admiralty was bad through no fault of his,
and he was persuaded to go to Egypt, which I think was a mistake. I
stayed with him, and the microscope of home revealed him to me. His
conceptions were magnificent and his decisions were like those of the
Medes and Persians. Of all the awful people in the world nothing is so
terrible as a vacillator. I am not sure the Devil isn’t right when he
says, “Tell a lie and stick to it.” Lord Northbrook also in spite of
intense opposition laid hold of my hand and led me forth in the paths
I glory in, of Reform and Revolution. Stagnation, in my opinion, is
the curse of life. I have no fellow-feeling with those placid souls
who, like a duck-pond, torpid and quiescent, live the life of cabbages.
I don’t believe anybody can say, “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven,”
because it is immortally shown that strife is the secret of a good life.
As with Lord Spencer, so was it with Lord Selborne. He again, as First
Lord of the Admiralty, took the unusual course of kindly coming to
Malta to see me when I commanded the Mediterranean fleet (the Boer War
placed England in a very critical position at that time); and though
there was a great strife with the Admiralty he chose me after my three
years as Commander-in-Chief to be Second Sea Lord of the Admiralty and
permitted me to unfold a scheme of education which came into being on
the following Christmas Day without the alteration of a comma. More
than that, he benevolently spared me from the Admiralty to become
Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, to see that scheme carried out. Many
letters have I that that step indicated the end of my naval career.
I believe to that date it always has been so, but within a year I was
First Sea Lord, and never did any First Lord hold more warmly the hand
of his principal adviser than Lord Selborne held mine.
There are few people living to whom I am under a greater obligation
than Admiral Sir Francis Bridgeman, G.C.B. This distinguished sailor
aided me in the gradual building up of the Grand Fleet. As I have
said before, it had to be done unostentatiously and by slow degrees,
for fear of exciting the attention of the German Admiralty and too
much embroiling myself with the Admirals whose fleets had to be
denuded till they disappeared, so as to come under Admiral Sir Francis
Bridgeman’s command, with whom the Grand Fleet originated under the
humble designation of the Home Fleet--a gathering and perpetuation of
the old more or less stationary coast-guard ships scattered all round
the United Kingdom and, as the old phrase was, “Grounding on their beef
bones” as they swung with the tide at their anchors. In the Providence
of God the animosities of the Admirals thus engendered caused the
real success of the whole scheme--and what should have been as clear
as crystal to the least observant onlooker was obscured by the fumes
of anger exuding from these scandalized Admirals. I look back with
astonishment at my Job-like conduct, but it had its compensations. I
hope Sir Francis Bridgeman will forgive me for hauling him into this
book--I have no other way of showing him my eternal gratitude; and
it was with intense delight that I congratulated Mr. Churchill on
obtaining his services to succeed Sir Arthur Wilson, the First Sea
Lord, who had so magnificently adhered to the scheme I left.
Sir Arthur refused a Peerage, and he was a faithful and self-effacing
friend in his room at the Admiralty those seven fateful months I
was First Sea Lord during the war. It was peculiarly fortunate and
providential that the two immediately succeeding First Sea Lords after
my departure on January 25th, 1910, should have been the two great
sailors they were--otherwise there would have been no Grand Fleet--they
altered nothing, and the glacier moved along, resistless and crushing
all the obstacles in its path, and now, after the war, it has passed
on; the dead corpses of the foes of the scheme are disclosed, and we’ll
bury them without comment.
I began these talks by solemnly declaring that I would not mention
a single living name--please let it stand--it shows what one’s
intention was; but one is really forced to stand up to such outstanding
personalities as Sir Arthur Wilson and Sir Francis Bridgeman, and I
again repeat with all the emphasis at my command that it would have
been impossible to have conducted those eight great years of ceaseless
reform, culminating in the production of the most incomparable fleet
that ever existed, had not the two Political Administrations, four
First Lords, and every member of the several Boards of Admiralty been,
as I described them in public, united, determined, and progressive.
Never for one instant did a single Board of Admiralty during that time
lay on its oars. For to rest on our oars would not have been standing
still; the malignant tide was fierce against us, and the younger
Officers of the fleet responded splendidly.
On January 3rd, 1903, I wrote as follows in reply to some criticism of
me as First Sea Lord:--
“Our Fleets are 50 per cent. more at sea, and we hit the target 50 per
cent. more than we did two years ago.
“In the first year there were 2,000 more misses than hits!
“In the second year there were 2,000 more hits than misses!”
The very first thing I did when I returned to the Admiralty as First
Sea Lord for those seven months in the first year of the war was
instantly to get back Sir Percy Scott into the Fighting Arena. I had
but one answer to all his detractors and to the opposition to his
return:--
“_He hits the target!_”
He _also_ was maliciously maligned. I don’t mean to say that Sir Percy
Scott indulges in soft soap towards his superiors. I don’t think he
ever poured hot water down anybody’s back. Let us thank God he didn’t!
I have repeatedly said (and I reiterate it whenever I get the chance)
that Nelson was nothing if he was not insubordinate. Nelson’s four
immortal Big Fights are brilliant and everlasting testimonies to the
virtues of Self-Assertion, Self-Reliance, and Contempt of Authority.
But of Nelson and the Nelsonic attributes I treat in another place.
(Ah! Lord Rosebery, if only you had written “Nelson’s Last Phase”!
I entreated you, but without avail!) (Again a repetition!) Nelson’s
_Life_ not yet written! Southey’s _Life_, meant only for schoolboys,
still holds the field. W. T. Stead might have done it, for the sacred
fire of Great Emotions was the calorific of Stead’s Internal Combustion
Engine. Suffice it to say of Sir Percy Scott that it was he and he
alone who made the first start of the Fleet’s hitting the enemy and not
missing him. Why hasn’t _he_ been made a Viscount? But that is reserved
for those in another sphere!
“The Tides--and Sir Frederick Treves.”--One of my greatest benefactors
(he saved my life. Six doctors wanted to operate on me--he wouldn’t
have it; the consequence--I’m better now than ever I was in my life)
is Sir Frederick Treves, Surgeon, Orator, Writer, “Developer of the
Powers of Observation.” He, this morning, September 16th, 1919, gives
me something to think about. It has relation to my dear and splendid
friend Sir Charles Parsons, President of the British Association
and inventor of the Turbine, who said the other day at Bournemouth
that our coal bids fair to fail and we must seek other sources of
power. Considering that Sir Charles invented the Turbine--derided by
everyone as a box of tricks, and it now monopolises 80 per cent. of
the horse-power of the world--we ought to listen to him. His idea is
to dig a twelve-mile hole into the earth to get hold of power. Now Sir
Frederick in his letter this morning uses these words:
“_England is an Island._ We are surrounded on all sides with the
greatest source of power in the world--the _Tides_.
“There is enough force in the Tides to light and heat the whole
country, _and to run all its railways_. It is running to waste while we
are bellowing for coal.”
I know exactly what the Royal Society will say to Sir Frederick Treves.
The Royal Society, not so many years ago, said through one of its most
distinguished members that the aeroplane was a physical impossibility.
When I said this to Sir Hiram Maxim he placed his thumb to his nose and
extended his fingers; and, as I have remarked elsewhere, aeroplanes
are now as plentiful as sparrows. So do not let us put Sir Frederick
Treves in the waste paper basket. He’s a great man. When Lord Lister
and my dear friend Sir Thomas Smith were beholding him operating on
King Edward at the time when his illness stopped his Coronation--even
those two wonderful surgeons held their breath at Treves’s astounding
skill and confidence. He kept on, and saved King Edward’s life. There
was no “Not running risks” with him. He snatched his King from death.
The others both thought Death had won, and they both exclaimed!
Sir Frederick won’t see this until he reads it in his presentation copy
of this book, or he wouldn’t have it.
And then he is so choice in his educational ideas. Here’s a lovely
morsel, which I commend to Schoolmasters (Curse ’em! they ruined
Osborne). Sir Frederick says:--
“Our present system of education is on a par with the Training of
Performing Dogs, they’re merely taught tricks! and Trick antics do
not help a boy much in the serious business of life. There is no
attempt to get at the mind of a boy, and still less any attempt to
find out his particular abilities. The only thing is, Is he good
at Mental Acrobatics? A very fine book on ‘The New Education’[17]
was published in the Autumn of last year, 1918. It shows up the
wasteful absurdities of the present Educational System. Of course,
no attention has been paid to it, because it is so simple, so
evident, and so human.... Years are spent in teaching a boy Latin
Verses, but never a moment to teach him ‘_How to develop powers of
Observation_.’”
I could tell my readers instances of Sir Frederick’s powers in this
last regard; and the medical students during the many years he was
their Lecturer could all of them do Sir Frederick greater justice than
I can.
“_God bless Sir Frederick Treves!_”
Of all the famous men I have known, Lord Kelvin had the greatest
brain. He went to sea with me in many new ships that I commanded.
Once, in a bleak March east wind at Sheerness I found him on deck on
a high pedestal exposed to the piercing blast watching his wonderful
compass, and he had only a very thin coat on. I said: “For goodness
sake, Sir William, come down and put on a great coat.” He said: “No,
thank you, I am quite warm. I’ve got several vests on.” His theory
was that it was much warmer wearing many thin vests than one thick
one, as the interstices of one were filled up by the next one, and so
on. I explained this afterwards, as I sat one day at lunch next to
the Emperor of Russia, when he asked me to explain my youth and good
health, and I hoped that he would follow Lord Kelvin’s example, as I
did. Lord Kelvin got this idea of a number of thin vests instead of one
thick one from the Chinese, who, in many ways, are our superiors.
For instance, a Chinaman, like an ancient Greek or Roman, maintains
that the liver is the seat of the human affections. We believe that
the heart is. So a Chinese always offers his hand and his liver to
the young lady of his choice. Neither do they ever kiss each other in
China. Confucius stopped it because the lips are the most susceptible
portion of the human body to infection. When two Chinese meet, they
rub their knees with their hands, and say “Ah” with a deep breath.
A dear friend of mine went to the Viceroy of Nankin to enquire how
his newly-raised Army was getting on with the huge consignment of
magnificent rifles sent out from England for its use. The Chinese
Viceroy told my friend he was immensely pleased with these rifles, and
the reports made to him showed extraordinary accuracy, as the troops
hit the target every time. The Viceroy sent my friend up in a Chinese
gunboat to see the Army. When my friend landed he was received by the
Inspector-General of Musketry, who was a peacock feather Mandarin, and
taken to see the soldiers firing. To my friend’s amazement the soldiers
were firing at the targets placed only a few hundred yards off, and
he explained to the Mandarin that these wonderful rifles fitted with
telescopic sights were meant for long ranges, and their accuracy was
wonderful. The Mandarin replied to him: “Look here! my orders from the
Viceroy are that every man in the army should hit the target, because
these rifles are so wonderfully good, and so they do, and the Viceroy
is very pleased at my reports.” And he added: “You know, we go back
2,000 years before your people in our knowledge of the world.”
Lord Kelvin had a wonderful gift of being able to pursue abstruse
investigations in the hubbub of a drawing room full of visitors. He
would produce a large green book out of a gamekeeper’s pocket he had
at the back of his coat, and suddenly go ahead with figures. I had an
interesting episode once. Sir William Thomson, as he then was, had come
with me for the first voyage of a new big cruiser that I commanded. I
had arranged for various responsible persons to report to me at 8 a.m.
how various parts of the ship were behaving. One of them reported that
a rivet was loose, and there was a slight leak. I said casually: “I
wonder how much water would come in if the rivet came out altogether.”
Sir William was sitting next me at breakfast, very much enjoying eggs
and bacon, and he asked the Officer: “How big is the rivet?” and
whereabouts it was, etc. The Officer left, and Sir William went on
with his eggs and bacon, and I talked to Sir Nathaniel Barnaby on the
other side of me, who was the designer of the ship that we were in.
Presently, Sir William, in a mild voice, never having ceased his eggs
and bacon, said so much water would come in. Sir N. Barnaby thereupon
worked it out on paper and said to Sir William: “You made a good
guess.” He replied: “I didn’t guess. I worked it out.”
The Midshipmen idolised Lord Kelvin, and they were very intimate with
him. I heard one of them, who was four-foot-nothing, explain to Sir
William how to make a magnet. Sir William listened to the Midshipman’s
lecture on magnetism with the greatest deference, and gave the little
boy no idea of what a little ass he was to be talking to the greatest
man on earth on the subject of magnetism. The same little boy took the
time for him in observing the lighthouse flashes, and Sir William wrote
a splendid letter to _The Times_ pointing out that the intervals of
darkness should be the exception, and the flashes of light the rule, in
a lighthouse, whereupon the Chief Engineer of the Lighthouse Department
traversed Sir William’s facts. The little boy came up to Sir William
and asked him if he had read the letter, and he hadn’t, so he told him
of it and then asked Sir William if he would like him to write to _The
Times_ to corroborate him. Sir William thanked him sweetly, but said he
would take no notice, as they would alter the flashes, and so they did.
This little boy was splendid. He played me a Machiavellian trick. We
had an ass one night as Officer of the Watch, and in the middle watch
I was nearly jerked out of my cot by a heavy squall striking the ship.
I rushed up on deck (raining torrents) and we got in what was left of
the sails, and I came down soaked through and bitterly cold, and on
the main deck I met my young friend, the little Midshipman, with a
smoking hot bowl of cocoa. I never enjoyed anything more in my life,
and I blessed the little boy, but it suddenly occurred to me that he
was as dry as a bone. I said: “How is it you are dressed?” He said: “I
am Midshipman of the watch.” I said: “The devil you are! How is it you
aren’t wet?” “Well, sir,” he said, “I thought I should be best doing
my duty by going below and making you a bowl of cocoa.” I felt I had
sold myself, like Esau, for a mess of pottage. He was a splendid boy,
and he wrote me periodically till he died. He was left a fortune. He
was turned out of the Navy for knocking his Captain down. I received a
telegram to say that he was ill and delirious and talking of me only,
and almost immediately afterwards a telegram came to say he was dead.
Sir Nathaniel Barnaby, the eminent Director of Naval Construction at
the Admiralty, was also a great man, but he never had recognition. He
was not self-assertive. He was as meek as Moses, and he was a saint. It
was he conceived the wonder of the time--the “Inflexible”; and I was
her first Captain. He went out in her with me to the Mediterranean. We
had an awful gale in the Bay of Biscay. Sir Nathaniel nearly died with
sea-sickness. I was cheering him up, and he whispered in reply: “Fools
build houses for wise men to live in. Wise men build ships for fools to
go in.”
If ever there was a great Christian, he was. After he retired he
devoted his whole life to Sunday schools, not only in this country,
but in America. There was some great scheme, of which he gave me
particulars at the time, of a vast association of all Sunday schools
wherever the English tongue is spoken. Perhaps it is in being now--I
don’t know; but it was a fine conception that on some specified day
throughout the world every child should join in some hymn and prayer
for that great idea of John Bright’s--the Commonwealth of Free Nations,
all speaking the same grand old English tongue. I was too busy ever
to follow that up, as I would have liked to have done, and been his
missionary.
A letter which he wrote to me in 1910, and a much earlier note of mine
to him, which he enclosed with it, are interesting, and I give them
here:
_Letter from Sir Nathaniel Barnaby, K.C.B. (formerly
Chief Constructor of the Navy) to Lord Fisher._
MORAY HOUSE,
LEWISHAM, S.E.
_15th January, 1910_
MY DEAR ADMIRAL,
I suppose the enclosed brief note must have been written by
you to me over a quarter of a century ago. You were meditating
“Dreadnoughts” even then and finding in me the opposition on the
ground of “the degradation of our other Ironclads” through the
introduction of the “18-knot ‘Nonsuch.’”
I have said to you before that I love a man who knows his own mind,
and insists on getting his way. I have therefore no complaint to
make.
In a note dated two days earlier I see you say, “Bother the money!
if we are all agreed that will be forthcoming.”
And they accuse you of cheeseparing and starving the Navy!
It was I that stood for economy--see enclosed, on the principal
events affecting and indicating Naval Policy, 1866–1884, drawn up
by me for Mr. Campbell-Bannerman.
See also the other side of me in a letter to the Peace Society
People, and see a little hymn written for children to “Russian
National Anthem” and now widely sung.
With sincere respect and good wishes,
Yours always,
(Signed) NATHANIEL BARNABY.
Please return your note to me; nothing else.
[Illustration: SIR JOHN FISHER AT THE HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCE,
MAY, 1899.]
This was the old letter of mine which he enclosed:--
_From Lord Fisher to Sir N. Barnaby in 1883._
_January 25th._
I have delayed sending you this letter hoping to find copy of a
brief article I wrote on H.M. Ironclad “Nonsuch” of 18 knots,
after seeing your design A; I can’t find it, and have written
for the original, which I will send for your amusement. I don’t
think your argument is a sound one as to the “degradation of our
other ironclads by the construction of an 18-knotter.” Isn’t the
principle right to make each succeeding ironclad an improvement and
as perfect as you can?
THERE IS NO PROGRESS IN UNIFORMITY!!
We’ve had enough of the “Admiral” class of ship. Now try your hand
on a “Nonsuch” (of vast speed!).
In violent haste,
Ever yours,
(Sgd.) J. A. F.
“Build few, and build fast,
Each one better than the last.”
Two of Sir Nathaniel Barnaby’s great successors in that arduous and
always thankless post of Director of Naval Construction are Sir Philip
Watts and Sir Eustace Tennyson-D’Eyncourt. These two great men have
each of them done such service as should have brought them far greater
honour than as yet they have received. The “Dreadnought” could not have
been born but for Sir Philip Watts. I commend to all who wish to have a
succinct account of the ships of the British Navy that formed the line
of battle on the outbreak of war on the 4th August, 1914, to read the
paper delivered by Sir Philip Watts at the Spring Meeting of the Naval
Architects on the 9th April, 1919, when a very excellent Sea Officer
with more brains than most people I have met presided--being the
Marquis of Bristol. And it was a great delight to me that he commanded
the “Renown,” my favourite ship, to bring to England King Alfonso--an
equally admired hero of mine. If ever there was a brave man it is King
Alfonso.
My other scientific hero besides Sir Philip Watts is Sir Eustace
D’Eyncourt. He also was the practical means, besides his wonderful
professional genius, of bringing forth what are known as the “Hush
Hush” ships on account of the mystery surrounding their construction;
and notwithstanding the armchair “Know-alls” who have done their
best to blast their reputation, they achieved--the five of them--a
phenomenal success. Sir Eustace D’Eyncourt also gave us those
incomparable Monitors, with their bulges under water, which were “given
away” through the unmitigated folly of the Censors, who permitted a
newspaper correspondent to describe how he had seen men, like St.
Peter, walking on the water--they were walking on the protuberance
which extended under the surface as the absolute protection against
submarines; and when an old first-class cruiser called the “Grafton”
had been so made submarine-proof, the captain of her, after receiving
a torpedo fired at him at right angles and hitting him amidships,
reported to the Admiralty that she went faster than before, simply
because her hull proper had not been touched; the submarine had only
blown away the submarine obstruction that Sir Eustace had fitted to
her. Has he been made a lord? Personally I should say the tanks could
never have existed without him; of that I am quite sure. Sir Philip
Watts and Sir Eustace D’Eyncourt are enshrined in my heart.
Previously in this chapter I mentioned Mr. Gladstone. I sat next to
him at dinner once. At the other side of him was a very beautiful
woman, but she was struck dumb by awe of Mr. Gladstone, so he turned
round to me and asked me if I had ever been in China. Yes, I had.
And he asked me who were the best missionaries. I said the Roman
Catholics were the most successful as they wore the Chinese dress,
were untrammelled by families, so they got better amongst the people
in the interior, but furthermore in their chapels they represented our
Saviour and His Apostles with pigtails and dressed as Chinamen. Yes,
he said, he remembered that, and he told me the name of the Head of
the Roman Catholic Mission, whose name I had forgotten, and said to
me that the Pope considered he had gone too far in that respect, and
had recalled him. That had happened some twenty years previously, and
I had forgotten all about it. Someone said what a pity that all that
is now being said is being lost. Mr. Gladstone said: “Nothing is lost.
Science will one day take off the walls of this room what we have been
saying.” This was years before the gramophone and the dictaphone and
the telephone. He told us a great deal about Abraham and pigs, and
why Abraham was so dead against them, and how he, Gladstone, had been
driven by Daniel O’Connell in a four-in-hand, and how the Bishops in
his early days were so much handsomer than now. One Bishop he specially
named was called “The Beauty of Holiness.” When he left, he asked me
to walk home with him, which I did. Mrs. Gladstone said, seated inside
the brougham which was waiting at the door: “Come in, William.” He
said: “No, I am going to walk with this young man.” It was midnight,
and Piccadilly was quite alive. He was living with Lady Frederick
Cavendish, I think, at Carlton Gardens. We were nearly run over, as he
was regardless of the traffic. I remember his saying: “Do right, and
you can never suffer for it.” I thought of that when, in my own case
later on, it was “Athanasius contra Mundum.” I was urged only to attack
one vested interest at a time, but I said, “No, if you kick everyone’s
shins at the same time they won’t trouble about their neighbours,”
and it succeeded; but alas! I gave up one thing, which was the real
democratic pith and marrow, the Free Education of the Naval Officer,
and a competence from the moment of entry, and open to all. King Edward
said to me about this: “You’re a Socialist.” I said that a white shirt
doesn’t imply the best brain. We have forty million to select from,
and we restrict our selection to about one-fortieth of the population.
I here relate an episode which made a deep impression on me and one
never effaced. At the time of Gladstone’s death I was looking at his
picture in a shop window. Two working men were doing the same. The
one said to the other: “That man died poor, but could have died rich,
had he used his knowledge as Prime Minister to make investments quite
lawfully; but he didn’t!”
It really is a very fine thing in the public men of this nation.
I have always worshipped Abraham Lincoln. I have elsewhere related how
he never argued with Judge or Jury or anyone else, but always told
a story, thus following that great and inestimable example in Holy
Writ: “And without a parable spake he not unto them.” But one wishes
it were more known how great were his simple views. His sole idea of a
Christian Church was to preach the Saviour’s condensed statement “to
love God and your Neighbour!” He said that summed up all religion.
He gloried in having been himself a hired labourer and believed in a
system which allowed labourers “to strike” when they wanted to, and did
not oblige them to labour whether you pay them or not. He said: “I do
not believe in a law to prevent a man getting rich (that would do more
harm than good), so while we do not propose any war upon Capital we do
wish to allow the humblest an equal chance to get rich with everybody
else. I want every man to have a chance to better his condition.” And
what Lincoln says of diligence is very good: “The leading rule for the
man of every calling is DILIGENCE! Whatever piece of business you have
in hand, before stopping do all the labour pertaining to it which can
be done.”
That most moving account of Lincoln’s simple eloquence at the graves
of Gettysburg is a most touching episode. The thousands listening to
him never uttered a sound. There was a dead silence, when he stopped
speaking. He left thinking himself a failure. It was the success of his
life. A great orator just before him had moved the multitude to cheer
unboundedly! but after Lincoln their feelings made them dumb.
While on personalities, I should like to say a little on one of
the best friends I ever had and in my opinion the greatest of all
journalists. Lord Morley once told me that he had never known the equal
of W. T. Stead in his astounding gift of catching the popular feeling.
He was absolute integrity and he feared no man. I myself have heard him
tackle a Prime Minister like a terrier a rat. I have known him go to a
packed meeting and scathe the whole mob of them. He never thought of
money; he only thought of truth. He might have been a rich man if he
hadn’t told the truth. I know it. When he was over sixty he performed a
journalistic feat that was wondrous. By King Edward’s positive orders
a cordon was arranged round the battle-cruiser “Indomitable,” arriving
late at night at Cowes with the Prince of Wales on board, to prevent
the Press being a nuisance. Stead, in a small boat, dropped down with
the tide from ahead and swarmed up a rope ladder under the bows, about
30 feet high and then along a sort of greasy pole, known to sailors as
the lower boom, talked to one of the Officers, who naturally supposed
he couldn’t be there without permission; and the _Daily Mail_ the
next morning had the most perfect digest I have ever read of perhaps
one of the most wonderful passages ever made. This big battle cruiser
encumbered with the heaviest guns known, and with hundreds and hundreds
of tons of armour on her side, beat the “Mauretania,” the greyhound of
the seas, built of gingerbread, carrying no cargo, and shaped for no
other purpose than for speed and luxury.
Of course no other paper had a word.
Stead always told me he would die in his boots. Strife was his portion,
he said. I am not sure that my friend Arnold White would not have shot
him at sight in the Boer War. Stead was a pro-Boer, and so was I. I
simply loved Botha, and Botha gave me great words. He said: “English
was the business language of the globe”--that’s good! Of course every
genius has a strain of queerness. Does not the poet say: “Great wits
to madness often are allied?” I remember a book which had a great
circulation, entitled “The Insanity of Genius.” I very nearly wrote a
letter to _The Times_ only I was afraid they might think _me_ mad, and
I was afraid that Admiral Fitzgerald might not think me modest (see his
letter in _The Times_ of Sept. 8th, 1919). This was my letter to _The
Times_:--
“Genius is not insanity, it only means the man is before his time.
That’s all.”
That was the whole of the letter.
There was a very great scientist (he is a very great friend of mine and
he discovered something I can’t remember the name of) who said: “A man
must be mad to think of flying machines!” and he lived to see them as
plentiful as sparrows.
Without saying a word to me or even letting me know, in a few hasty
hours Stead wrote in the “Review of Reviews” in February, 1910, the
most extraordinarily accurate _résumé_ of every date and name connected
with my career. It would have taken any other man a month. However,
he made one great mistake in it. He only spoke in it, like all other
things that have been said of me, of “The full corn in the ear!” What
really is a man’s life is the endurance and the adversity and the
non-recognition and the humiliating slights and the fighting morning,
noon and night, of early life. That brings fortune. I like that word
“fortune.” Those inspired men who translated the Great Bible never said
a thing “happened,” they always said it “fortuned.”
I here insert a letter kindly lent me by Lord Esher. As it was written
on the spur of the moment and out of the abundance of the heart, I give
it verbatim. Esher loved Stead as much as I did. I knew it, and that’s
why I wrote to him. We felt a common affliction:--
_April 22, 1912._ HOTEL EXCELSIOR, NAPLES.
This loss of dear old Stead numbs me! Cromwell and Martin Luther
rolled into one. And such a big heart. Such great emotions. You
must write something. _All I’ve read quite inadequate._ The
telegrams here say he was to the forefront with the women and
children, putting them in the boats! _I can see him!_ and probably
singing “Hallelujah,” and encouraging the ship’s band to play
cheerfully. He told me he would die in his boots. So he has. _And
a fine death._ As a boy he had threepence a week pocket money. One
penny bought Shakespeare in weekly parts, the other two pennies
to his God for Missions. And the result was he became editor of
a big newspaper at 22! And he was a Missionary himself all his
life. Fearless even when alone, believing in his God--the God of
truth--and his enemies always rued it when they fought him. He
was an exploder of “gas-bags” and the terror of liars. He was
called a “wild man” because he said “Two keels to one.” He was at
Berlin--the High Personage said to him: “Don’t be frightened!”
Stead replied to the All Highest: “Oh, no! we won’t! _for every
Dreadnought you build we will build two!_” _That_ was the genesis
of the cry “Two keels to one.” I have a note of it made at the time
for my “Reflections.” But, my dear friend, put your concise pen to
paper for our Cromwellian Saint. He deserves it.
Yours always,
FISHER.
“You cannot do anyone more good than by trying unsuccessfully to do
him an injury,” was one of the aphorisms of Lord Dalling (Sir Henry
Bulwer); and it occurred to me forcibly on one occasion when I went to
stay with my very great friend, Henry Labouchere (the proprietor of
_Truth_). On the way I had been reading a peculiarly venomous attack
on me in his paper; and when he greeted me as affectionately as ever,
I showed it to him, saying: “Don’t put your arm on my shoulder! Read
that damned thing there!” Labouchere glanced at it and replied, “Where
would you have been if I hadn’t persistently maligned you?”
When I was with him at his villa at Florence, he used to smoke the most
beastly cigarettes at ten a penny, yet he left over a million sterling,
and was generous to absurdity to those he loved.
He had none but Italian servants; he told me he was always extremely
polite to them for the knife came so easy to them. He said he didn’t
realise this until, after he had had some words with an English
friend, his Italian gardener, who had overheard the altercation, asked
Labouchere if he would like him (the gardener) to deal with his friend,
and he tapped the stiletto in his waistband.
His own wit was as ready as his gardener’s stiletto. On one occasion
he was at Cologne railway station, and the Custom House Officer was
turning his portmanteau inside out. Labouchere had a telegraph form in
his pocket; he wrote out a telegram with a stylographic pen and handed
it to the official who was standing behind the Custom House Officer and
told him it was a Government telegram. This was the telegram:
PRINCE BISMARCK,
BERLIN.
Can’t dine with you to-night. Missed train through a damned ass of
a Custom House Officer. Will let you have his name.
LABOUCHERE, Cologne.
They offered him a special train. Labouchere had never seen Bismarck
in his life. This was the occasion on which Labouchere was reprimanded
by the Foreign Office for his delay in taking up his appointment as
attaché at St. Petersburg. His excuse was that the money allowed him
only permitted his travelling by railway as far as Cologne; the rest of
the way he walked.
This book would be incomplete if I did not draw attention to the great
debt the nation owes to three men yet unmentioned in this volume.
Mr. George Lambert, M.P., twice refused office and sacrificed his
political prospects and with a glorious victory sustained the whole
Government effort to kick him out of Parliament; but he conquered with
a magnificent majority of over two thousand! Why?
Because after serving for over seven years in the Admiralty he could
speak of his own knowledge that the War administration and the fighting
Sea Policy were shamefully effete.
The Recording Angel will mark down opposite Mr. Lambert’s name: “Well
done, thou good and faithful servant!” But may he also have his reward
here and now, as many years of good work here below may lie between him
and Heaven as yet.
Commodore Hugh Paget Sinclair is another “Stalwart” of the War. His
business was to provide the officers and men to man the Fleet--imagine
the stupendous task that was his!
_We never wanted for Officer or Man!_
He is now Director of Naval Intelligence; and may his ascent in the
Navy be what is his splendid due!
Sir Alfred Yarrow I select for mention, for without him Mesopotamia
would have been a bigger crime than it was, and throughout all ages it
will be branded for gross and culpable and criminal ineptitude. If I
was asked to name the Capturer of Bagdad I would unhesitatingly reply
it was Sir Alfred Yarrow.
The Navy has not had its due credit for the Capture of Bagdad. If
Sir Alfred Yarrow with his usual astounding push, and without regard
to red tape or thanks or recognition, had not sent those splendid
light-draught gunboats of his to Mesopotamia, packed up in bits like
portmanteaux, then Bagdad would not have been ours. The Viceroy of
India sent us (acting on the advice he had received) the wrong draught
of water. We ignored the Viceroy and all his crew. It took _eighteen_
days to get this pressing vital business through the Government
Departments concerned. It took us _one_ day to accomplish the whole
procedure, with Sir Alfred Yarrow, and we chucked all the Departments.
So 24 light-draught gunboats grew up like Jonah’s Gourd, which came up
in a night (Jonah, iv, 10).
* * * * *
I append a memorandum compiled from the Official papers:--
_History of Provision of 24 Light-draught Gunboats for Mesopotamia._
* * * * *
_Note._--These Vessels played a great part in the capture of Bagdad.
* * * * *
January 9th, 1915.--Telegram from Viceroy to India Office that
Admiralty be asked to provide 4 gunboats--draught 4½ feet for
Tigris.[18]
January 11th, 1915.--India Office asked Admiralty to meet Viceroy’s
wishes.
January 29th, 1915.[19]--Admiralty Departments suggested various
types. War Staff proposed 3 from Egypt be sent.
January 29th, 1915.--Lord Fisher ordered 24 light-draught
gunboats. In order to save time, Captain [now Rear-Admiral Sir S.
S.] Hall, R.N., (Lord Fisher’s Secretary) was directed by Lord
Fisher “_to co-operate with Mr. Yarrow[20] and carry the operation
through without reference to Admiralty Departments or any other
Departments_.”
January 29th, 1915.--_Conference held. Design settled._[21]
January 30th, 1915.--{Captain Hall toured the country
February 1st, 1915.--{for likely firms to construct
{the 24 gunboats.
February 2nd, 1915.[22]--Proposals made for placing orders approved
by Lord Fisher and First Lord, and orders were placed as follows:--
12 Small by Yarrow.
4 Large by Barclay Curle.
2 Large by Lobnitz.
2 Large by Ailsa Shipbuilding Co.
2 Large by Wood Skinner.
2 Large by Sunderland Shipbuilding Co.
February 8th, 1915.--Captain Hall was appointed Commodore-in-Charge
of the Submarine Service, but was directed by Lord Fisher to
continue supervision of the provision of 24 gunboats.
Sir Alfred Yarrow ought (like Mr. Schwab) to have been made a Duke, and
I wrote to Sir John Jellicoe, when he was First Sea Lord, and told him
so.
The history of the Flotillas of light-draught gunboats built both
for Mesopotamia and the Danube will ever be associated with the good
service done by Sir Alfred Yarrow, and for which he was only made a
Baronet. Those built for the Tigris led our Army to Bagdad and far
beyond, and were at times unsupported far ahead of the military force;
and without any question whatever without them the Mesopotamian muddle
could never have emerged into a glorious victory. The speed with which
these vessels were constructed and despatched in small parcels to
Mesopotamia and there put together in an extemporary dockyard arranged
by Sir Alfred Yarrow’s staff was as much a feature as any other part
of their production. It necessitated masses of natives of different
religious persuasions being gathered together to assist the skilled
artizans in bolting the pieces together and launching them on the
Tigris. Their differing hours of prayer were a disturbing element
in the rapidity of the construction; but my splendid friend the
foreman from the Scotstoun Yard of Messrs. Yarrow contrived a prayer
compromise. The Danube Flotilla arranged for with a number of other
builders was equally remarkable; and Commodore (now Admiral) Bartolomé
wrote me a commendatory letter of their good service there.
I must also mention Commodore (now Admiral) Sir S. S. Hall, but for
whose continual journeys from shipyard to shipyard these vessels would
never have been delivered on the scene of action in the time required.
Within six months all these Flotillas were thought
of--designed--built--and in service, and nothing gave me intenser
delight than the visit I paid to these craft as they were all built and
then taken to pieces for transit to their destination in packages that
any motor car could have transported.
The world at large can have little conception of the remarkability of
those comparatively large hulls with good speed and practically drawing
but a few inches of water--the propellers (which were too large in
diameter for the depth of water) being made by an ingenious device to
revolve in a well above the water-line, the water being drawn up by
suction. I thought to myself as I viewed these miracles of ingenuity
and rapidity: “England can never succumb.”
CHAPTER XVI
THINGS THAT PLEASE ME
“I have culled a Garland of Flowers--
Mine is the string that binds them.”
* * * * *
Thou shalt not kill, but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive!
(When catching Submarines).
* * * * *
Seest thou a man diligent in business--he shall stand before Kings--he
shall not stand before mean men.
* * * * *
God who cannot be unjust,
Heedeth all who on Him trust.
Them who call on Him for aid,
Anguish shall not make afraid.
Trust him then in life. In death
He can give thee Living Breath!
After death the Life now thine
He can make the Life Divine.
* * * * *
I never bother to bother about anyone who doesn’t bother to bother
about me!
* * * * *
[Illustration:
[_Portrait by J. Mallia & Co., Valetta._
COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF OF THE MEDITERRANEAN FLEET, 1899–1902.]
“Put on the impenetrable armour of contempt and
fortitude.”
* * * * *
When danger threatens and the foeman nigh,
“_God and our Navy!_” is the Nation’s cry.
_But_, the danger over and the Country righted,
God is forgotten and the Sailor slighted.
* * * * *
Never fight a Chimney Sweep; some of the soot comes off on you.
* * * * *
Pas de Culte sans mystère.
* * * * *
Ode to an Apple--
Newton saw an apple fall,
Eve an apple did enthral;
It played the devil with us all,
The Devil making Eve to fall.
* * * * *
“Liberty of Conscience” means doing wrong but not worrying about it
afterwards.
* * * * *
“Tact” is insulting a man without his knowing it.
* * * * *
Even a man’s faults may reflect his virtues.
* * * * *
Sincerity is the road to Heaven.
* * * * *
I thought it would be a good thing to be a missionary, but I thought it
would be better to be First Sea Lord.
* * * * *
Think in Oceans--shoot at sight.
* * * * *
Big conceptions and Quick Decisions.
* * * * *
Napoleonic in Audacity.
Cromwellian in Thoroughness.
Nelsonic in Execution.
* * * * *
“Surprise” the pith and marrow of war!
* * * * *
Audacity and Imagination beget surprise.
* * * * *
Rashness in war is Prudence.
* * * * *
Prudence in war is Imbecility.
* * * * *
Hit first! Hit hard! Keep on hitting!! (The 3 H’s).
* * * * *
The 3 Requisites for Success--Ruthless, Relentless, Remorseless (The 3
R’s).
* * * * *
BUSINESS--Call on a Business man in Business hours only on Business.
Transact your Business and go about your Business, in order to give him
time to finish his Business, and you time to mind your own Business. [I
had this printed on cards, one of which was handed to every caller on
me at the Admiralty.]
* * * * *
The Nelsonic Attributes--
(_a_) Self Reliance.
(_b_) Power of Initiative.
(_c_) Fearlessness of Responsibility.
(_d_) Fertility of Resource.
* * * * *
Originality never yet led to Preferment.
* * * * *
Mediocrity is the Road to Honour.
* * * * *
Repetition is the Soul of Journalism.
* * * * *
No difficulty baffles great zeal.
* * * * *
The Pavement of Life is strewn with Orange Peel.
* * * * *
Inconsistency is the bugbear of Silly Asses.
* * * * *
Never Deny: Never Explain: Never Apologise.
* * * * *
“To defy Power that seems omnipotent ...
Never to change, nor falter, nor repent.”
(SHELLEY.)
* * * * *
Cardinal Rampolla got his Hat at a younger age than any preceding
Cardinal. Asked to account for his phenomenal success, he
replied:--It’s due to 3 things:
{ asked for }
I never { refused } anything.
{ resigned }
* * * * *
The best scale for an experiment is 12 inches to a foot.
* * * * *
Dread Nought is over 80 times in the Bible (“Fear Not”). So I took as
my motto “Fear God and Dread Nought.”
* * * * *
Moltke wrote as follows:
“A clever military leader will succeed in many cases in choosing
defensive positions of such an offensive nature from a strategic
point of view that the opponent is compelled to attack us in them.”
* * * * *
In looking through a packet of ancient papers I find some youthful
thoughts of my own and some others which evidently I thought very
choice.
“Anything said before a lecture muddles it.”
“Anything after weakens it!”
* * * * *
“There is nothing you can’t have if you want it enough.”
* * * * *
The following extract is from Blake:
“He who bends to himself a joy,
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in Eternity’s Sunrise.”
* * * * *
Dean Swift satirized the vulgar exclusiveness of those who desired the
infinite meadows of Heaven only to be frequented by the religious sect
they adorned on earth:
“We are God’s chosen few!
All others will be damned!
There is no place in Heaven for you,
We can’t have Heaven crammed!”
* * * * *
Lord Dalling (Sir Henry Bulwer) codified his life in axioms and
phrases. His intimate friend, Sir Drummond Wolff, says so. (By the way,
Wolff’s father was a marvellous Bible scholar. I heard him preach the
sermon of my life: it was extempore, on “The Resurrection.” A great
friend of his told me that Wolff did really know the Bible by heart.)
These are Lord Dalling’s sayings; he quotes Talleyrand for one of his
rules of life:
“Acknowledge the receipt of a book from the author at once: this
relieves you of the necessity of saying whether you have read it.”
Again this is excellent:
“You cannot do anyone more good than by trying unsuccessfully to
do him an injury.” (Mr. Labouchere gave me the same reason for
attacking me in his paper _Truth_.)
“Nothing is so foolish as to be wise out of season.”
“The best trait in a man’s character is an anxiety to serve those
who have obliged him once and can do so no more.”
* * * * *
Nelson’s Ipsissima Verba.
“Do not imagine I am one of those hot-brained people who fight at
an immense disadvantage without an adequate object ... in a week’s
time I shall get reinforcements and the enemy will get none, and
then I must annihilate him.”
It was not “Victory” that Nelson ever desired. It was “Annihilation!”
* * * * *
Moses, Gideon and Cromwell.
Moses and Gideon were each of them summoned straight from their simple
daily task to go and help their fellow countrymen, and both were able
to perform the task allotted to them in spite of their first great
doubts of their fitness for the work. The figure of Moses looms through
the Ages as gigantic as the Pyramids, and nearer home and in a lesser
sphere stands our English Cromwell, the Great Protector!
“I would have been glad,” said Cromwell, “to have lived on my woodside
or kept a flock of sheep rather than have undertaken a government like
this.” And yet in the end he had undertaken it because he said he “had
hoped he might prevent some imminent evil.”
* * * * *
Suffragettes.
The nine Muses were all women.
The three Graces were all women.
* * * * *
A great philosopher has stated that a woman can be classed under two
categories:
1. A mother, a mistress and a friend; or,
2. A comrade and queen and child.
A woman is really rooted in physical reality, and all the above six
attributes of the philosopher always live in her.
Thus the Song of Solomon produced a passionate commodity, but it
required the Mary Magdalene of the Gospel to express the _summum bonum_
of a woman of “Greatly Loving.”
In the first prayer book of A.D. 1549 there was a Collect for her! No
other woman had a Collect except the Virgin Mary.
Emotion, self-surrender, selflessness, immortal courage, wondrous
physical beauty! Mary Magdalene was a great human reality. It is quite
obvious she was no debauchee or her Beauty would have failed, nor could
she have been a “hardened” sinner or she would have scoffed!
What was her history? What caused her lapse? Who was her Betrayer?
“Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much. Verily I
say unto you, Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole
world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a
memorial of her.”
And is it not very striking that St. Peter, who dictated St. Mark’s
Gospel, records in the 16th chapter, verse 9, of St. Mark, that the
first person in the world to whom the Saviour showed Himself after His
Resurrection was Mary Magdalene?
“Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, He appeared
_first_ to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. And
she went and told them that had been with Him as they mourned and
wept. And they, when they heard that He was alive and had been seen of
her, believed not.”
* * * * *
A Sun-Dial that I Love.
Que Dieu éclaire les heures que je perds.
(May God light up the hours that I fail to light.)
* * * * *
Though hidden yet from all our eyes,
He sees the Gideon who shall rise
To save us and His sword.
EPILOGUE
MOUNT PISGAH
It is stated that the historian, Lecky, O.M. (I assisted at the
operation of his receiving the Order of Merit) gave more thought and
time to the book of his last years, “The Map of Life,” than to any
other of all his works, and it is said that for three years he kept on
revising the last of its chapters.
The book was derided to me by a literary friend of great eminence as
being “The Pap of Life!” I read its last chapters with great avidity.
If for nothing else, the book is worthy of immortality for the reason
that it so emphasises those great words of Dryden as being appropriate
to the close of a busied life--
“Not Heaven itself upon the past has Power,
What has been has been, and I have had my hour.”
Whenever (as I often do) I pass Dryden’s bust in Westminster Abbey I
invariably thank him for those lines.
Mr. Lecky urges his readers to leave the active scenes of life in
good time and not to “Lag superfluous on the Stage” (I believe Mr.
Gladstone recommended this also, but didn’t do it!).
To illustrate Mr. Lecky we have that great and splendid Trio of
Translation to Heaven at the very zenith of their powers. Elijah was
hurrying along (that great, hairy, weird old man) so that Elisha could
hardly keep pace with him, and he is suddenly caught up in a Chariot
of Fire to Heaven! I ask, “Was not Nelson’s leaving this earth quite a
similar glorious departure?”
“Partial firing continued until 4.30 p.m. when a victory having
been reported to Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson, K.B., and
Commander-in-Chief, he THEN died of his Wound.”
Moses (with whom I am now more particularly concerned) also left this
life in a similar glorious way, for God was his companion when his
Spirit left this Earth, and it markedly is recorded of Moses that--
“His eye was not dim,
Nor his natural force abated!”
Mr. Lecky doesn’t quote my three men above. I consider them superior to
Noah, Daniel and Job, who are the three named in Scripture as being so
dear to the pious man. Ezekiel, chapter xiv., verse 14.
I reiterate that the advice of the derided Lecky seems to me excellent,
to leave active life at one’s zenith, and thus anticipate senility.
The Archbishop of Seville is a lovely story by Cervantes. All Spain
came to hear him preach. Indeed he had to preach every day, the crowds
were so great, and he said to his faithful Secretary: “Tell me when
you notice me waning, for a man never knows it himself.” The Secretary
did so, and the Archbishop gave him the sack! Yes! The Archbishop had
passed the Rubicon, and this dismissal was the proof. Having this fear,
I left Office on my birthday in 1910, though for a few short months
in 1914 I enjoyed the “dusky hues of glorious war,” and exceedingly
delighted myself in those seven months in arranging a new Armada
against Germany of 612 vessels, and in sending Admiral von Spee and all
his ships to the bottom of the sea.
The following much-prized lines were sent me on the Annihilation of
Admiral von Spee’s Squadron off the Falkland Islands on December 8th,
1914. He had sunk Admiral Cradock’s Squadron five weeks before. The
“Dreadnought” Battle Cruisers, “Inflexible” and “Invincible,” sent
to sink von Spee, made a passage of 14,000 miles without a hitch and
arrived just a few hours before von Spee. It was a timely arrangement:--
From the President of Magdalen College, Oxford, Sir Herbert Warren
(Professor of Poetry).
Merserat Ex-spe Spem, rediit spes, mergitur Ex-spes.
“Von Spee sent the ‘Good Hope’ to the bottom: hope revived; he is
sunk himself, without hope.”
From Mr. Godley, the Public Orator at Oxford University.
Hoc tibi Piscator Patria debet opus.
“Your country owes this exploit to you, O Fisher!”
But that Great Providence, that shapes our course, rough hew it how
we will, ordained my departure from the conduct of the War. Amongst
the masses of regretful letters at my departure I choose one from an
Admiral then 88 years old, who satisfies the great Dr. Weir Mitchell’s
dictum of the clear brain becoming clearer with age. This Admiral
annexed a Continent for England, abounding in riches in New Guinea; but
he got no thanks; and England gave away his gift. But his name lives
there. I conclude with his letter:--
DEAR OLD FISHER,
It is marvellous how all variations of our lives are unravelled by
Divine Inspiration that cannot err.
“No one can ‘hustle’ Providence.”
(That’s one of your sayings!)
Think of Moses!
“He was the truest warrior that ever buckled sword.
He the most gifted Poet that ever breathed a word:
And never Earth’s Philosopher traced with his golden pen,
On the Deathless Page, truths half so sage as he wrote down
for men;
Yet no man knows his sepulchre, and no man saw it e’er,
For the Angels of God up-turned the sod and laid the Dead Man
there.”
Moses saved his people. He prepared them for the conquest in which
he was to take no part. He was the meekest man on earth, yet he
could be the most ruthless!
Doubtless you saved England at the Falkland Islands.
Doubtless you prepared our Fleet for this war! (Nothing to boast
of! You the clay in the hands of the Potter!) And it seems likely
that some Joshua will reap what you have sown! Yet history will
put it right.
“O lonely grave in Moab’s land! O dark Beth-Peor’s hill!
Speak to these curious hearts of ours and teach them to be still!”
Ever faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. MORESBY.
FOOTNOTES
[1] “This one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and
reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the
mark.”--_Phil._ iii. 13, 14.
[2] Sir Julian Corbett, the author of the wonderful “Seven Years’ War,”
wrote to me in past vituperative years as follows:
“Yesterday I was asked if it were _really_ true that you (Sir
John Fisher) had sold the country to Germany! I was able to assure the
questioner that the report was at least exaggerated. It is often my
fortune to be able to quiet minds that have been seriously disturbed
by the unprecedented slanders that have been the reward of your
unprecedented work.”
[3] See letters at end of this chapter.
[4] On hearing of von Tirpitz’s dismissal I perpetrated the following
letter, which a newspaper contrived to print in one of its editions. I
can’t say why, but it didn’t appear any more, nor was it copied by any
other paper!
DEAR OLD TIRPS,
We are both in the same boat! What a time we’ve been colleagues,
old boy! However, we did you in the eye over the Battle Cruisers
and I know you’ve said you’ll never forgive me for it when bang
went the “Blucher” and von Spee and all his host!
Cheer up, old chap! Say “Resurgam”! You’re the one German sailor
who understands War! Kill your enemy without being killed yourself.
_I don’t blame you for the submarine business._ I’d have done the
same myself, only our idiots in England wouldn’t believe it when I
told ’em!
Well! So long!
Yours till hell freezes, FISHER. 29/3/16.
I say! Are you sure if you had tripped out with your whole High
Sea Fleet before the Russian ice thawed and brought over those
half-a-million soldiers from Hamburg to frighten our old women that
you could have got back un-Jellicoed?
R.S.V.P.
[5] “A Naval Lieutenant, 1914–1918,” by Etienne, 1919, pp. 48 _et seq._
[6] _Note._--These are the names of the three first great Battle
Cruisers of the Dreadnought type.
[7] On January 2, 1915, Russia asked for a demonstration against the
Turks in order to relieve the pressure they were putting on the Russian
forces in the Caucasus. Next day the War Office cabled a promise,
through the Foreign Office, that this should be done. Before he sent
the cable Lord Kitchener wrote to Mr. Churchill: “The only place that a
demonstration might have some effect in stopping reinforcements going
East would be the Dardanelles.”
[8] “The dramatic scene which followed may one day furnish material
for the greatest historical picture of the war. Lord Fisher sat and
listened to the men who knew nothing about it and heard one after
another pass opinion in favour of a venture to which he was opposed. He
rose abruptly from the table and made as if to leave the room.
“The tall figure of Lord Kitchener rose and followed him. The two stood
by the window for some time in conversation and then both took their
seats again. In Lord Fisher’s own words: ‘I reluctantly gave in to Lord
Kitchener and resumed my seat.’
“Mr. Asquith saw that drama enacted, and Mr. Asquith knew that it arose
out of Lord Fisher’s opposition to the scheme under discussion. But
he allowed his colleagues on the Council to reach their conclusions
without drawing from the expert his opinion for their guidance. The
monstrous decision was therefore taken without it. But they all knew
it--such a scene could not occur without everyone knowing the cause.”
[9] It must be emphasised here, as well as in regard to Lord
Kitchener’s statement to the War Council dated May 14th, 1915, that
Lord Fisher considered that it would be both improper and unseemly for
him to enter into an altercation either at the War Council or elsewhere
with his chief Mr. Churchill, the First Lord. Silence or resignation
was the right course.
[10] This was the Armada of 612 vessels authorised by Mr. Lloyd George
as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
[11] At my entreaty a far better man went, Admiral Sir Reginald
Henderson, G.C.B. He is a splendid seaman and he devised a splendid
scheme.
[12] This was written in December, 1908, and our Fleet and ships were
always dogged in the war by them.
[13] There are statues of Franklin and of Robert Falconer Scott
in Waterloo Place; but neither of these displayed his heroism in
naval action. They were each peaceable seekers--but what on earth
good accrues from going to the North and South Poles I never could
understand--no one is going there when they can go to Monte Carlo!
[14] In the following selections, words between square brackets are not
part of the original letters.
[15] N.B.--These very motor boats here described sank two battleships
of the Bolshevists only the other day. _See_ Chapter IV.--F. 21/9/19.
[16] _Then after this came the 15-inch gun; then the 18-inch gun,
actually used at sea in the War; and then the 20-inch gun, ready to be
built and go into the “Incomparable” of 40,000 tons and 40 knots speed,
on May 22nd, 1915--F._ 21/9/19.
[17] “The New Teaching,” edited by John Adams. Hodder and Stoughton.
[18] This shows how badly advised the Navy was by the India Office, _as
under 3 feet was vital_, and the order was given accordingly.
[19] Eighteen days going through Departments.
[20] Mr. Yarrow had technical charge of the whole business and was the
sole designer--and there was no paper work whatever.
[21] All this action on the same day.
[22] All the rest of the required action taken in 4 days.
Index
A
Abdul Hamid,55;
the Pope and, 91 _et seq._, 204, 205
Aboukir Bay, French Fleet in, 161
Adalbert, Prince, 230
Adams, John, editor of “The New Teaching,” 251 _n._
Admiralty clerks and the Naval War Staff, 102 _et seq._
Aircraft, 124 _et seq._
Alcester, Lord, 140
Alexandra, Queen, 12, 20, 198, 238
Alfonso, King, 237–238, 258
Americans, 221 _et seq._
Anderson, Mr. J. W. S., 111
Angell, Mr. Norman, 126, 211
Arbuthnot, Sir R., 60
Arnold-Forster, Rt. Hon. H. O., 169–171, 179
Asquith, Rt. Hon. H. H., 42, 50, 58, 59, 70, 74, 196, 199
B
Bacon, Admiral Sir Reginald, 104, 128
Baddeley, Mr. V. W., 111
Balfour, Rt. Hon. A. J., 36, 64, 82, 182, 210
Barnaby, Sir Nathaniel, 253, 255;
letter to Lord Fisher, 256–257
Barnardo, Dr., 160
Bartolomé, Admiral Sir Charles de, 104, 270
Battenberg, Prince Louis of, 168
Beatty, Lord, 37, 40, 121
Beilby, Sir George, 116
Beit, Mr., 4, 33, 34, 182
Benbow, Admiral, 163
Bernstorff, Count von, 210
Bieberstein, Marschall von, 204, 205
Birdwood, General Sir William R., 82
Bismarck, Prince, 229
“Blücher,” sinking of the, 149–150
Booth, General, 160
Borden, Rt. Hon. Sir R. L., 218
Botha, General, 136, 263
Boys, Admiral, 168
Bridgeman, Admiral Sir Francis, 246, 247
Bridgman, Mr., 92
Bright, John, 23, 100, 223, 225–227, 256
Bristol, Marquis of, 258
Brock, Commander, at Zeebrugge, 50
Bryce, Lord, 205
Buckle, Mr., 181
Bulwer, Sir Henry, _see_ Dalling, Lord
Byron, Lord, 92, 102
C
Caillaux, M., 209
Caldwell, Major-General Sir Charles, 83, 84
Callaghan, Admiral Sir George A., 37, 39
Campbell-Bannerman, Sir H., 42, 176, 182, 183, 256
Canning, Sir Stratford, 95
Carden, Admiral Sir Sackville H., 79, 82
Cartagena, 237–239
Cavendish, Lady Frederick, 260
Cawley, Lord, 56
Cervantes, 282–283
Chalmers, Dr., 153
Choate, Mr., 17
Churchill, Mr. Winston, 36, 41, 50, 52, 55–59, 63, 64, 66, 67, 71–73,
81, 124, 127, 183, 196, 198, 206, 207, 212–214, 246
Clark, Mr. Champ, 202
Clarke, Sir George, 16, 165, 169, 173, 179, 196
Clemenceau, M., 209
Corbett, Sir Julian, 2 _n._, 101
Cornwallis, Admiral, 163
Cradock, Admiral, 135, 136, 283
Crease, Captain, 104
Cromer, Lord, 56, 60, 70, 76, 94
Cromwell, Oliver, 107, 278
D
Dalling, Lord, 265, 277
“Daniell cell,” the, 140
Daniels, Mr. Josephus, 225
Dardanelles, the, 49 _et seq._
Denbigh, Lord, 10
Depew, Mr. Chauncey, 224
Dilke, Sir Charles, 16
Disraeli, 25, 101
Dogger Bank incident, the, 65, 71, 94
Dryden, 281
Dumanoir, Admiral, 162
Dundonald, Lord, 146, 163
E
Ellison, General Sir C., 165, 166
Empress Marie, 198
Esher, Lord, 5, 12;
letter to Lord Fisher, 13, 33, 34;
Lord Fisher’s letters to, 165 _et seq._
F
Falkenhayn, General von, 97
Fisher, Mr. Andrew, 61, 69
Fitzgerald, Admiral, 263
Flint, Mr., 110
Franklin, Benjamin, 163 n
Frederick the Great, 34
French, Lord, 57, 58, 69, 169, 172–174, 188
G
Gard, Mr., 122
Gardiner, Mr. A. G., 53
Garibaldi, visit of, to the “Warrior,” 150
Garvin, Mr. J. L., 187
German Emperor on Lord Fisher, 33, 182
Girouard, Sir E. P. C., 166
Gladstone, Mr., 41, 42, 244, 259, 260, 261, 282
Gladstone, Mrs., 260
Godley, Mr., 283
Goschen, Viscount, 107, 139
Grand Duke Nicholas, 52, 79
Granville, Lord, 205
Greene, Sir Graham, 111
Grey, Lord, 18, 96, 189, 190, 205
Grierson, General, 172
Guazzo, Steven, 35
H
Haddock, Commodore, 144, 145
Haig, Lord, 172
Haldane, Lord, 102, 104, 106, 209
Hall, Admiral Sir S. S., 269–271
Hall, Admiral W. H., 103
Hall, Rear-Admiral Sir William Reginald, 85
Hamilton, Sir Ian, 83, 215
Hamilton, Lady, 158
Hamilton, Lord George, 242, 243, 244
Hankey, Sir Maurice, 58, 64, 74, 194
Hanotaux, M., 187
Harcourt, Sir William Vernon, 186, 216
Hawke, Admiral Lord, 163
Hawthorne, 115
Henderson, Admiral Sir Reginald, 105 _n._
Henderson, Mr. Arthur, 47
Hertz German submarine mine the, 130, 151
Hertzog, General, 136
Hildyard, General, 169
Hindenburg, Field-Marshal von, 74, 106
Hood, Admiral Sir Horace, 104
Hood, Admiral Viscount, 60, 163
Hornby, Admiral Sir Geoffrey Phipps, 65–66, 71, 93, 228
House, Colonel, 45
Howe, Admiral, 163
Hush Hush ships, 98–101, 243, 258
I
Inge, Dean, 61
Ingenohl, Admiral von, 32
Inglefield, Admiral Sir Frederick S., 168
Ismay, Mr. 145
Isvolsky, M., 182, 187, 233
J
Jackson, Admiral Sir Henry B., 40
Jellicoe, Lord, 30, 31, 36–40, 64, 74, 105, 208–210, 270
Johnson, Abraham, 148–149
Jones, Commodore Oliver, 146
K
Kelly-Kenny, General, 174
Kelvin, Lord, 143, 193, 251 _et seq._
Kerr, Lord Walter, 140
Key, Sir Cooper, 143
Kiamil Pasha, 93, 95, 239
Kiel Canal, the, 19, 130, 131
Kiderlen-Waechter, von, 204
Kiernan, John, 147–148
King Edward, 1 _et seq._;
letter from author to, 3–4;
his tact, 5–7, 25, 51, 113, 117, 184, 186, 187, 191, 192, 198–199,
203, 207, 211, 225, 226, 232, 234, 236, 237, 260
King William, 229
Kitchener, Lord, 50, 52, 57, 59, 65, 67, 74, 79, 80, 83, 104, 105,
176, 198, 199, 241
Knollys, Sir Francis, 3, 20, 21, 171, 193
Knox, Mr. Philander, 205
Kruger, Paul, 169
Kuropatkin, M., 187
L
Labouchere, Mr. Henry, 265–267
Lambert, Mr. George, 267
Lansdowne, Lord, 82
Latimer, Bishop, 120
Law, Mr. Bonar, 82
Learmonth, Admiral, 132
Lecky, Rt. Hon. W. E. H., 281, 282
Leishman, Mr. John G. A., American Ambassador to Germany, 204, 205
Lincoln, Abraham, 261, 262
Lister, Lord, 250
Lloyd George, Mr., 55, 56, 59, 81 _n._, 131, 186, 204, 213, 215–217,
223
Loubet, President, 12, 236
Ludendorff, General von, 32, 97, 106
Lyttelton, Sir N., 65
M
McClintock, Admiral Sir Leopold, 143
McCrea, Mr., 222
Macgregor, Sir Evan, 111
McKenna, Mr. Reginald, 41, 43, 44, 62, 186, 193–197, 199–201, 206, 207
McKenna, Mrs. Reginald, 43
Mackenzie, Sir Thomas, 61–62, 70
Macnamara, Dr. T. J., 42, 44
Madden, Admiral Sir Charles, 104
Magee, Archbishop, 151
Mahan, Admiral, 5, 37, 187, 216
Maxim, Sir Hiram, 227, 228, 250
Maxse, Mr. Leo, 182
Maxwell, General, 172
Mears, Sir Grimwood, Secretary to the Dardanelles Commission, 61
Merchant Navy, the, 119–120
Milne, Mr., 139
Mitchell, Dr. Weir, 284
Moltke, Field-Marshal Count, 229, 230, 276
Moresby, Admiral J., letter to Lord Fisher, 284–285
Morgenthau, Mr. H., 84
Morley, Lord, 216, 262
Munro, General Sir Charles, 85
Murray, Mr. George, 199
Murray, Sir Oswyn, 111
N
Naples, Queen of, 158
Napoleon, 18, 44, 162, 201
Naval War Staffs and Admiralty clerks, 102 _et seq._
Nelson, 18, 25–27, 51, 66, 105, 107, 109, 111, 117, 142, 147, 158
_et seq._
Nicholson, Field-Marshal Lord, 65, 85
Nicholson, Mr. W. F., 103
Northbrook, Lord, 156, 157, 244, 245
O
O’Connell, Daniel, 260
Oldenburg, Grand Duke of, 229, 232
Olga, Grand Duchess, 231, 232;
letter to Lord Fisher, 233–234
Oliver, Admiral Sir Henry, 104
Orde, Sir John, 244
Orloff, Prince, 2, 234
P
Palmerston, Lord, 203
Parker, Sir Hyde, 66
Parsons, Sir Charles, 249
Pepys, Samuel, 111
Perrin, Mr. W. G., 111
Petersen, Mr., 119
Phillips, Mr. J. F., 111
Pitt, Mr., 18, 36, 203
Plumer, General, 32, 172, 174
Pohl, Admiral von, 29 _et seq._
Pohl, Frau von, 30–32, 105
Polsonare family, the, 152
Pope, the, and Abdul Hamid, 91 _et seq._
Probyn, Sir Dighton, 20
Q
Queen Alexandra, 12, 20, 198, 238
Queen Victoria, 156, 157
R
Rawlinson, Sir Henry, 119
Redesdale, Lord, letter to Lord Fisher, 14
Reich, Herr von, on “Dreadnoughts,” 14 _et seq._
Reid, Sir George, 199
Reval, 231 _et seq._
Rhodes, Cecil, 34, 35
Richmond, Captain, 104
Ridley, Bishop, 120
Roberts, Lord, 53, 183
Roch, Mr. W. F., 62
Rodney, Admiral, 163
Roon, Count von, 229
Roosevelt, Mr., 23
Rosebery, Lord, 27, 44, 49, 55, 138, 158, 162, 248
Rothschild, Lord, 244
Rousseau, M., 187
Rozhdestvensky, Admiral, 107
Runciman, Mr. Walter, 44
Russia, Emperor of, 191, 251
S
St. Vincent, Lord, 181
Salisbury, Lord, 94, 204
Sampson, Admiral, 225
Samuel, Mr. Herbert, 42
Samuel, Sir Marcus, 116
Sanders, Marshal Liman von, 85, 97
Scapa Flow, 31
Schreiner, Mr. G. A., 84
Schwab, Mr., 270
Schwartzhoff, Gross von, 105, 106, 212
Scott, Mr. Robert Falconer, 163 _n._
Scott, Sir Percy, 248, 249
Seely, General, 216
Selborne, Lord, 170, 245, 246
Shipbuilding, new, inaugurated by Lord Fisher, 86 _et seq._
Sinclair, Commodore Hugh Paget, 267
Slade, General F. G., 174, 175
Smith, Sir F. E., 183
Smith, Sir Thomas, 250
Smith-Dorrien, General, 169, 172, 174
Some Personalities, 242 _et seq._
Southey, 249
Special Missions, some, 229 et seq.
Spee, Admiral von, 36, 78, 135, 136, 283
Spencer, Lord, 242, 244, 245
Stead, Mr. W. T., 35, 170, 171, 197, 249, 262, 263, 264
Stolypin, M., 187, 231, 236–237
Stopford, Sir F., 172
Submarines, Lord Fisher’s Memorandum on, 88–90
Swift, Dean, 276
T
Taft, Mr., 202
Tall, Isaac, 151
Taylor, Bishop Jeremy, 114
Tennyson-D’Eyncourt, Sir Eustace, 257–259
Thomas, Mr. Holt, 125, 126
Thompson, Mr., 224
Thomson, Sir William, _see_ Kelvin, Lord
Tirpitz, Admiral von, 16, 29 _et seq._, 97, 184
Togo, Admiral, 107
Treves, Sir Frederick, 249–251
Troubridge, Sir Thomas, 155, 161
Tryon, Sir George, 146
Tweedmouth, Lord, 5
Tyrwhitt, Sir Reginald Yorke, 170
V
Villa Vieja, Marquis de, 233
W
Walker, Sir Charles, 111
Warburton, Eliot, 27
War Council Meetings, Lord Fisher’s notes of his special intervention
at, 78 _et seq._
Ward, Sir Joseph, 193
Warren, Sir Herbert, 283
Washington, George, 223, 226
Watts, Dr., 114
Watts, Sir Philip, 187, 257–259
Weymouth, Admiral, 122
White, Mr. Arnold, 263
White, Sir William, 95
Wilmot, Admiral Sir S. Eardley, letter to Lord Fisher, 129
Wilson, Mr. A. K., 199, 206
Wilson, Sir Arthur, 102, 183, 194, 195, 197, 200, 246, 247
Wilson, Mr. Havelock, 119–120
Wilson, President, 202, 222
Wolff, Sir Drummond, 277
Woolward, Captain Robert, 144
Y
Yarrow, Sir Alfred, 116, 268 _et seq._
Yelverton, Sir Hastings, 231
Z
Zeebrugge, 50, 58, 75, 79, 81, 119
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Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between paragraphs. In
versions of this eBook that support hyperlinks, the page references in
the List of Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.
The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page
references.
Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of pages, have been renumbered and
gathered together just before the index.
Page 38: “my dead Friend” was printed that way.
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