II.—The Great Lord Salisbury’s Brother-in-law.
It really is very sad that those three almost bulky volumes of my letters to Lord Esher—which he has so wonderfully kept—could not all have been published just as they are. This is one of the reasons for my extreme reluctance, which still exists, for these “Memories” and “Records” of mine being published in my lifetime. When I was dead there could be no libel action! The only alternative is to have a new sort of “Pilgrim’s Progress” published—the whole three volumes—and substitute Bunyan names. But that would be almost as bad as putting their real names in—no one could mistake them!
I think I have mentioned elsewhere that Lord Ripon, when First Lord, whom I had never met, had a design to make me a Lord of the Admiralty, but his colleagues would not have it and called me “Gambetta.” Lord Ripon said he had sent for me because someone had maligned me to him as “a Radical enthusiast.” Well, the upshot was that in 1886 I became Director of Ordnance of the Navy; and after a time I came to the definite conclusion that the Ordnance of the Fleet was in a very bad way, and the only remedy was to take the whole business from the War Office, who controlled the Sea Ordnance and the munitions of sea war. A very funny state of affairs!
Lord George Hamilton was then First Lord and the Great Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister. Lord Salisbury’s brother-in-law was the gentleman at the War Office who was solely responsible for the Navy deficiencies, bar the politicians. When they cut down the total of the Army Estimates, he took it off the Sea Ordnance. He had to, if he wanted to be on speaking terms with his own cloth. I don’t blame him; I expect I should have done the same, more particularly as I believe in a Citizen Army—or, as I have called it elsewhere, a Lord-Lieutenant’s Army. (The clothes were a bit different; but Lord Kitchener’s Army was uncommonly like it.) Lord George Hamilton, having patiently heard me, as he always did, went to Lord Salisbury. Lord George backed me through thick and thin. The result was a Committee—the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, Chairman; W. H. Smith, Secretary for War; Lord George Hamilton, First Lord of the Admiralty; the Director of Ordnance at the War Office, and myself. It was really a very remarkably unpleasant time. I had an awful bad cold—much worse than General Alderson, the Prime Minister’s brother-in-law—and Lord Salisbury never asked after it, while he slobbered over Alderson. I just mention that as a straw indicating which way the wind blew. The result, after immense flagellations administered to the Director of the Sea Ordnance, was that the whole business of the munitions of war for the Navy was turned over to the Admiralty, “lock, stock and gun barrel, bob and sinker,” and by Herculean efforts and the cordial co-operation of Engelbach, C.B., who had fought against me like a tiger, and afterwards helped like an Angel, and of Sir Ralph Knox, the Accountant-General of the Army, a big deficit, in fact a criminal deficit, of munitions for the Fleet was turned over rapidly into a million sterling of surplus.
They are nearly all dead and gone now, who worked this enormous transfer, and I hope they are all in Heaven.
This story has a lovely sequel; and I forgave Lord Salisbury afterwards for not asking after my cold when, in 1899, many years after, the Hague Peace Conference came along and he submitted my name to Queen Victoria as the Naval Delegate, with the remark that, as I had fought so well against his brother-in-law, there was no doubt I should fight at the Peace Conference. So I did, though it was not for Peace; and M. de Staal, who was a great friend of mine, and who was the President of the Conference, told me that my remarks about boiling the crews of hostile submarines in oil when caught, and so forth, were really unfit for publication. But W. T. Stead tells that story infinitely better than I can. It is in the “Review of Reviews” for February, 1910.
But there is another providential sequel to the events with which I began this statement. I made great friends at the Peace Conference with General Gross von Schwarzhoff and Admiral von Siegel, the Military and Naval German Delegates, and I then (in 1899) imbibed those ideas as to the North Sea being our battle ground, which led to the great things between 1902 and 1910.