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.