VI.—How the Great War was Carried on.
Six weeks after I left the Admiralty on May 22nd, 1915—that deplorable day, the particulars of which I am not at present at liberty to mention—I received most cordial letters from both Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour welcoming me to fill a Post of great magnitude.
A Group on Board H.M.S. “Standard,” 1909.
The Czar, The Grand Duchess Olga, and Sir John Fisher.
I am impelled to digress here for a few moments to tell a very excellent story of Dean Hole (famous for the cultivation of roses). He said to his Curate one day, “I am sick of hearing the name of that poor man whom we pray for every Sunday; just say ‘the prayers of the Congregation are requested for a member of the Congregation who is grievously ill.’” Next Sunday the Curate said at the usual place in Divine Service, “The prayers of the Congregation are requested for a gentleman whose name I’m not at liberty to mention!” That’s my case in regard to what happened between Saturday, May 15th, and Saturday, May 22nd, during which time I received communications which I hold in my hand at this moment, and which some day when made public will be just astonishing! I am advised that the Law does not permit even an outline of them to be given.
I was invited by Mr. Balfour to preside over an Assemblage of the most Eminent Men of Science for War purposes; the chief point was the German Submarine Menace. Also we had to consider Inventions, as well as Scientific Research.
My three Super-Eminent Colleagues of the Central Committee of this great Scientific Organisation were very famous men:—
(1) Sir J. J. Thomson, O.M., President of the Royal Society and now Master of Trinity. I am told (and I believe it) a man unparalleled in Science.
(2) The Hon. Sir Charles Parsons, K.C.B., the Inventor of the Turbine, which has changed the whole art of Marine Engineering, and enabled us to sink Admiral von Spee. We couldn’t have sunk von Spee without Parsons’s Turbine, as those two great Fast Battle-Cruisers “Invincible” and “Inflexible” could not have steamed otherwise 14,000 miles without a hitch (there and back). They only arrived at the Falkland Islands a few hours before Admiral von Spee.
(3) Sir George Beilby, F.R.S., one of the greatest of Chemists, who, if we don’t take care, will give us a smokeless England, by getting rid of coal in its present beastly form, and turning it into oil and fertilisers, dyes, etc., etc. The Refuse he sells to the Poor fifty per cent. cheaper than coal and without smoke or ashes.
The Advisory Panel of other Distinguished Men was as famous as these Magi. There were also many Eminent Associates.
I felt extreme diffidence in occupying the Chair; however, I put it to them all in the famous couplet of the French author who, in annexing the thoughts of other people, took this couplet as the text of his book:—
“I have cull’d a garland of flowers,
Mine only is the string that binds them.”
I said to them all at our first Assemblage: “Gentlemen, You are the Flowers, I am the String!”
You would have thought that such a Galaxy of Talent would have been revered, welcomed, and obeyed—on the contrary, it was derided, spurned, and ignored.
The permanent “Expert Limpets” did for us! All the three First Lords at the Admiralty whom we dealt with in succession were most cordial and most appreciative, but all three were equally powerless. Just a couple or so of instances will suffice to illustrate the reason why we at last said to Sir Eric Geddes:—
“Ave Geddes Imperator!
“Morituri te Salutant.”
(1) The chief object of this magnificent Scientific Organisation being to counter the German Submarine Menace, we naturally asked for a Submarine to experiment with. The answer was “one could not be spared.”
(2) We asked to be furnished with all the details of the destruction of German Submarines that had already taken place, which of course lay at the root of further investigation. This was denied us!
(3) A “Submarine Detector” was developed under the auspices of the Central Committee by May, 1916. A year was allowed to elapse before it was taken up; and even then its progress was cancelled because nothing more than a laboratory experiment with a competing invention came to the notice of the “Limpets.”
(4) The Scientific Members of our Association had conceived and practically demonstrated a most astoundingly simple method of discovering the passage of German Submarines. It was termed “The Loop Detection” scheme. It was turned down—And then two years afterwards was violently taken up, with astoundingly successful results.
I think I have said enough. And really, after all, what is the good of raking up the past?
I have had two pieces of advice given me referring to the trials I had experienced. One was:—
“When sinners entice thee, consent thou not!—
But take the name and address for future reference.”
And the other was:—“Fear less—hope more; eat less—chew more; whine less—breathe more (deep breathing); talk less—say more; hate less—love more, and all good things are yours.”
CHAPTER V
DEMOCRACY
“Government of the people—by the people—for the people.”
(President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, 1863.)
Some time ago the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University presided at a lecture on Democracy given at Cambridge by the Professor of History at Chicago (A. C. McLaughlin). I gather that he implied that Democracy is helpless in the game of secret diplomacy and secret treaties. Democracy now all depends upon the purpose and desire of the English-speaking people.
It’s an opportune moment to repeat John Bright’s very famous speech on a great federation of the nations that speak the Anglo-Saxon tongue.
The speech was given me when crossing the Atlantic by a splendid citizen of the United States, where I had just been receiving boundless hospitality and a wonderful welcome, and had realised the truth about a prophet when not in his own country, and had been asked to “stump the Middle West” to advocate the cause of friendship amongst all those who speak our incomparable tongue, and to establish a Great Commonwealth of Free Nations. There can be no secret treaties and no secret diplomacy when the Government is of the People, by the People, for the People.
This is John Bright’s speech:
“Now what can one say of the future of our race and of our kinsmen? Is that merely a dream? By no means.... Look where we are now?...
“In this country, in Canada, and in the United States there are, or soon will be, one hundred and fifty millions of population, nearly all of whom owe their birth and origin to the comparatively small country in which we live. It is a fact that is not paralleled in any past history, and what may come in the future to compare with it or excel it, it is not for us to speak of, or even with any show of reason to imagine; but we have in all these millions the same language, the same literature, mainly the same laws and the institutions of freedom. May we not hope for the highest and noblest federation to be established among us? That is a question to which I would ask your special and sympathetic attention. The noblest kind of federation among us, under different Governments it may be, but united by race, by sympathy, by freedom of industry, by communion of interests and by a perpetual peace, we may help to lead the world to that better time which we long for and which we believe in, though it may not be permitted to our mortal eyes to behold it.”
That was said by John Bright.
The time has now come for this great federation which he desired—for this great Commonwealth of Free Nations.
There is only one type of treaty which is effective—“Community of Interests.”
All other treaties are “Scraps of Paper.”
It is maintained by eminent men that the late appalling and disastrous war, in which so many millions of human beings have been massacred or maimed, would never have occurred had there been a real Democracy in power in England. They say, as a small instance, that the great Mutiny at the Nore and other mutinies were brought about by trampling on Democracy.
This is what pure and unadulterated Democracy is, and we have not got it in England:—
“EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL.”
For instance, no parent with less than nearly a £1000 a year can now send his boy into the Navy as an Officer!
Nature is no respecter of birth or money power when she lavishes her mental and physical gifts.
We fight God when our Social System dooms the brilliant clever child of the poor man to the same level as his father.
Therefore, we must have such State provision and such State education as will enable the very poorest in the land to let their eligible children rise to Admirals, Generals, Ambassadors, and Statesmen.
Can it be conceived that a real Democracy would have permitted secret treaties such as have been divulged to us, or have scouted the terms of Peace which were allowed only to be seen by Kings and Prime Ministers; or would a real Democracy have flouted the Russian Revolution in its first agonizing throes when gasping for help and recognition?
In a real Democracy, would true Labour leaders have waited on the doormat?
Would a real Democracy wave the red rag of “Empire” in front of these noble self-governing peoples all speaking our tongue in their own free Parliaments, and all of them praying for the hastening of the time when “England, the Mother of Free Parliaments, shall herself be free”?
But the Glorious Epoch is now fast approaching!
A Prime Minister once complimented me on a casual saying of mine at his luncheon table. I was accounting for part of my success against
“Many giants great and tall,”
and I ventured to state that:—
“The secret of successful administration was the intelligent anticipation of agitation.”
Anticipate the Revolution. Do the thing yourself in your way before the agitators get in before you and do it in their way. Get rid of the present obsolete Forms and Antique Ceremonies which grate on the masses, and of Figureheads who are laughing-stocks, and of sinecures which are exasperating—and so anticipate another Cromwell, who is certainly now coming fast along to “Remove another Bauble!”
I forget what they did to the man who tried to import poisonous snakes into New Zealand (finding that happy island unblessed with this commodity). It was something quite drastic they did to him! They killed the snakes.
The Canadian House of Commons adopted by a majority of 33 a motion by Sir Robert Borden, on behalf of the Canadian Government, asking that no more hereditary titles should be bestowed in Canada, and declaring that the Canadian Government should make all recommendations for honours of any kind. This motion was a compromise designed to damp down the popular outcry against titles which has arisen in Canada. In one debate Sir Wilfrid Laurier offered to throw his own title on a common bonfire. He urged that all titles in Canada should be abolished.
Why should Great Britain lag behind Canada and the United States? Hereditary titles are ludicrously out of date in any modern democracy, and the sooner we sweep away all the gimcracks and gewgaws of snobbery the better. The fount of so-called honour has become a deluge, and the newspapers are hard put to it to find room for even the spray of the deluge.
The war has not begotten simplicity and austerity in this respect. On the contrary, it has made what used to be a comedy a screaming farce. There was a time when the Birthday Honours List could be printed on one day, but it is now a serial novel. The first chapter of the latest Birthday list was long, but the Times warned us that it was only “the first of a series which already threatens to outlast the week—quite apart from the gigantic Order of the British Empire.”
Chicago’s great Professor of History, Mr. McLaughlin, made the statement at the Kingsway Hall, in his address to British teachers, that now the United States have over 100 millions of people, and fifty years from now they may well have 200 millions—a great Atlantic and Pacific Power. The Professor added that this great War was “to protect Democracy against the greatest menace it has ever had” (in the present rule of Kings and Secret Treaties, etc., etc.). Another points out as a striking example of present old-time conditions (so pernicious to freedom and efficiency) the positive fact now existing that our Military Leaders, by a class distinction, were only selected from one twenty-fifth of the ore which we have at our disposal though we had brought five million men under arms, as all our generals commanding armies, army corps, divisions, and in most cases brigades, were drawn from among the Regular Forces who handled our small pre-War Army of two hundred thousand men. And the writer adds:
“If considered purely from the standpoint of the law of averages, one would expect to find more good brains if one searched the entire Army than in merely looking for material in one twenty-fifth of it.”
General Currie, who so ably commands all the Canadian Forces, was a Land Agent before the War. Neither Napoleon nor Wellington ever commanded a regiment. Marlborough never handled an army till he was fifty-two years of age. Clive was a Bank Clerk. Napoleon’s maxim was “La carrière ouverte aux talents.” Are we ever going to adopt it?