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.”