MEMORANDUM.
“I have just heard that, notwithstanding the opposition to it, Sir John Jellicoe will attend the War Council at 11.30 a.m. next Friday. That he may have strength and power to overcome all ‘the wiles of the Devil’ is my fervent prayer.
“That there has been signal failure since May, 1915, to continue the Great Push previous to that date of building fast Destroyers, fast Submarines, Mine Sweepers and small Craft generally is absolutely indisputable.
“Above all, it was criminal folly and inexcusable on the part of the Admiralty to allow skilled workmen (20,000 of them) to be taken away from shipyards. Also it was inexcusable and weak to give up the Admiralty command of steel and other shipbuilding materials.
“Kitchener instantly cancelled the order to take men from the shipyards when it was attempted by his subordinates while I was First Sea Lord. He saw the folly of it!
“Again, deferring the shipbuilding that was in progress was fatuous. I saw myself two fast Monitors (each of them a thousand tons advanced) from which all the workmen had been called off. A few months afterwards there was feverish and wasteful haste to complete them. So was it with the five fast big Battle Cruisers of very light draught of water. All similarly delayed.
“Well! Jellicoe, a ‘No Talker,’ at the War Council was opposed to a mass of ‘All Talkers,’ so he did not make a good fight; but when he got back to the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow he remembered himself and wrote a most excellent Memorandum, which put himself right.
“However, a wordy war is no use; nothing but a cataclysm will stop our ‘Facilis descensus Averni.’”
We must by some political miracle swallow up Korah, Dathan and Abiram and have a fresh lot. In Parliament we have nothing but the suggestio falsi and the suppressio veri! A little bit of truth skilfully disguised:
“A truth that’s told with bad intent,
Beats any lie you can invent.”
In reply to your question with reference to Mr. Bonar Law’s corrected statement in Hansard, the Printer’s date at the bottom of the Submarine Paper,[18] sent to the Prime Minister and First Lord of the Admiralty is January, 1914, seven months before the War.
Yours always,
Fisher.
Lord Fisher to Sir Maurice Hankey, K.C.B., Secretary to the War Cabinet.
19, St. James’s Square.
My Dear Hankey,
In reply to your inquiry, my five points of peace (as regards Sea war only) are:
(1) The German High Sea Fleet to be delivered up intact.
(2) Ditto, every German Submarine.
(3) Ditto, Heligoland.
(4) Ditto, the two flanking islands of Sylt and Borkum.
(5) No spot of German Territory in the wide world to be permitted! It would infallibly be a Submarine Base.
Yours,
(Signed) Fisher,
October 21st, 1918.
(Trafalgar Day).
Why we were not as relentless in carrying out our Peace requirements at Sea as on Land is positively incomprehensible.
The German Fleet was not turned over and was afterwards sunk at pleasure by the German crews. I don’t feel at all sure that every German submarine, complete and incomplete, was handed over. Every oil engine ought to have been cleared out of Germany. Through some extraordinary chain of reasoning, absolutely incomprehensible, the three Islands of Heligoland, Sylt and Borkum were not claimed and occupied. In view of the prodigious development of Aircraft it was imperative that these Islands should be in the possession of England.
All this to me is absolutely astounding. The British Fleet won the War, and the British Fleet didn’t get a single thing it ought to have, excepting the everlasting stigma amongst our Allies, of being fools, in allowing the German Fleet to be sunk under our noses, because we mistook the Germans for gentlemen.
The Miracle of the Peace
(that took place at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th Month!) only equalled by the Destruction of Sennacherib’s Army, on the night described in the 25th verse of the 19th chapter of Second Book of Kings! The heading of the chapter is “An Angel slayeth the Assyrians.”
“That night the Angel of the Lord went forth ... in the morning behold they were all dead corpses!”
A Cabinet Minister, in an article (after the Armistice) in a newspaper, stated that the Allies were at their last gasp when the Armistice occurred as it did as a Miracle! for Marshal Foch had been foiled on the strategic flank by the inability of the American Army to advance and the unavoidable consequences of want of experience in a new Army (immense but inexperienced—they were slaughtered in hecatombs and died like flies!) and so the American advance on the Verdun flank was held up, and Haig therefore had to batter away instead (and well he did it!). And though the British Army entered Mons, yet the German Army was efficient, was undemoralised, and had immense lines of resistance in its rear before reaching the Rhine! There was no Waterloo, no Sedan, no Trafalgar (though there could have been one on October 21st, 1918, for the German Naval Mutiny was known! Sir E. Geddes said so in a Mansion House Speech on November 9th, 1918). There was no Napoleon—no Nelson! but “The Angel of the Lord went forth....”
Lord Fisher to a Friend.
March 27th, 1918.
My Dear Blank,
It has been a most disastrous war for one simple reason—that our Navy, with a sea supremacy quite unexampled in the history of the world (we are five times stronger than the enemy) has been relegated into being a “Subsidiary Service!”...
What crashes we have had
Tirpitz—Sunk.
Joffre—Stranded.
Kitchener—Drowned.
Lord French— }
Lord Jellicoe— } Made Viscounts.
Lord Devonport— }
Fisher—Marooned.
Sir W. Robertson—The “Eastern Command” in Timbuctoo.
Bethmann-Hollweg—}
Asquith— } Torpedoed.
Heaven bless you! I am here walking 10 miles a day! and eating my heart out!
And a host of minor prophets promoted. (We don’t shoot now! we promote!)
Yours, etc.,
(Signed) Fisher.
27/3/18.
To Lord Fisher from an Admirer.
21st November, 1918.
Dear Lord Fisher,
We are just back after taking part in the most wonderful episode of the war, and my heart is very full, and I feel that the extraordinary surrender of the Flower of the German Fleet is so much due to your marvellous work and insight—in giving England the Fleet she has—that I must write you!
I suppose the world will never again see such a sight—a line of 14 heavy, modern, capital ships, with their guns fore and aft in securing position, in perfect order and keeping good station, quietly giving themselves up without a blow or a murmur. Surely such a humiliating and ignominious end could never have been even thought of in all history past or present.
Had I been in a private ship I would have used every endeavour to get you up to see the final fulfilment of your life’s work. As it is, I can’t think it was very gracious of the authorities not to have ensured your presence. But history will give you your due.
Forgive this effusion, and please don’t bother to answer it. But I realise that to-day’s victory was yours, and it is iniquitous that you were not here to see it.
Your affectionate and devoted admirer,
——.
To Lord Fisher from Admiral Moresby.
Fareham,
July 9th, 1918.
Dear old Friend,
Just a line. One of our “Article writing” Admirals sent me one of them on the progress of the war! Your name was not mentioned, nor your services alluded to! I returned it, saying it was the play without Hamlet. You might be wrong, or despised, but you could not be ignored. With our Navy revolutionised, Osborne created, obsolete cruisers scrapped, naval base shifted from Portland to Rosyth, Dreadnoughts and Battle Cruisers invented, Falkland Islands victory, and so on, he might as well talk of Rome without Cæsar. He replied and said you were an Enigma, and that covered it all! There is some truth in this, for such are all born leaders of men, from our Master, the greatest Enigma of all (who made thee thyself, who gave thee power to do these things), down to all who can see what is going on on the other side of the hill....
Yours ever,
(Signed) J. Moresby.