Memories, by Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Fisher

by Baron John Arbuthnot Fisher Fisher

[“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?

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.

[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!

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.”