... 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.
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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.
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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!
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1911.
December 24th.