“‘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.”
Sir Hiram Maxim
When Sir Hiram Maxim—that great American—was very little known, he came to see me when I was Captain of the Gunnery ship at Portsmouth, bringing with him his ever-famous Maxim gun, to be tried by me. So we went to Whale Island to practise with the gun; and when he was ready to fire I adopted the usual practice in trying all new guns and ordered the experimental party to get under cover; and at that order they were supposed to go into a sort of dug-out. Evidently old Maxim considered this an insult to his gun, and he roared out at the top of his voice: “Britishers under cover, Yankees out in the open!” The gun didn’t burst and it was all right; but it might have, all the same.
Admiral Hornby the bravest of the brave, was one of the Britishers; and he came to lunch with me, being extremely fascinated with Hiram’s quaintness. Hiram was a delightful man in my opinion, and I remember his telling me that if I wanted to live long and see good days the thing was to eat Pork and Beans. I never had the chance, till 1910, of eating them cooked à l’Américaine; and I then agreed with Hiram Maxim—no more delicious dish in the world, but you can’t get it in England! After lunch there were some oranges on the table; and to my dying day I shall never forget the extraordinary look on Sir Geoffrey Hornby’s beautiful, refined face as Hiram reached out and grasped an orange from the centre of the table—tore it apart, and buried his face sucking out the contents, emerging all orange. He told us that was the way to enjoy an orange. We neither of us were up to it!
CHAPTER XIV
SOME SPECIAL MISSIONS
I was sent as a very young Lieutenant to a little fishing village called Heppens in Oldenburg. It is now Wilhelmshaven, chief Naval Port of Germany. Its river, the Jahde, was then a shallow stream. The occasion for my visit was the cession to King William of Prussia, as he was then, of this place, Heppens, by the Grand Duke of Oldenburg; and there I met King William, to whom I sat next but one at lunch, and Bismarck and von Moltke and von Roon were there. We had a very long-winded speech from the Burgomaster, and Bismarck, whom I was standing next to, said to me in the middle of it: “I didn’t know this was going to happen, or I would have cut him short.” The King asked me at lunch why I had been sent, and if there was no one else who knew about torpedoes. Well, I don’t think there was. It was an imposing and never-to-be-forgotten sight, that lunch. They all wore their helmets and great-coats at lunch—so mediæval—and telegrams kept coming to Bismarck, who would get up and draw the King aside, and then they would sit down again. Von Roon I thought very débonnaire, and Moltke was like an old image, taciturn and inscrutable, but he talked English as well as I did.
Years after this, Prince Adalbert’s Naval Aide-de-camp, who was a great friend of mine, told me that on the day of mobilization in the war with France he was sent to von Moltke with a message from Prince Adalbert, who was King William’s brother and Head of the Navy, to ask him whether he could see Prince Adalbert for a few moments. To his astonishment, my friend found Moltke lying on a sofa reading “Lady Audley’s Secret,” by Miss Braddon, and he told him he could see the Prince for as long as he liked and whenever he liked. The word “Mobilize” had finished all his work for the present.
On the occasion of my visit I imagined and reported what Heppens would become, and so it did. I never can make out why I didn’t get a German decoration. I think perhaps they thought me too young. However, I had the honour of an empty sentry-box placed outside the little inn where I was staying; and if I had been of higher rank there would have been a sentry in it. The little inn was very unpretentious, and when the landlord had carved for us he came and sat down at table with us. Some days after, at a very exclusive Military Club in Berlin, I met the King’s two illegitimate brothers. They were exactly like him; also I breakfasted with the Head of the German Mining School. I remember it, because we only had raw herring and black bread for breakfast. He was very poor, although he was exceeding clever, and had as his right-hand man a wonderful chemist. So far as I know, the present German mine is nearly what it was then, and the sea-gulls rested on the protuberances as they do now, for I went to Kiel Bay to see them. There was a lovely hotel at Kiel, where they treated me royally. I recommended the adoption of these German mines, and it’s a pity we didn’t. They hold the field to this very day. However, the First Sea Lord of that date didn’t believe in mines or torpedoes or submarines, and I was packed off to China in the old two-decker “Donegal,” as Commander of the China Flagship. Long afterwards Sir Hastings Yelverton, who became First Sea Lord, unburied my Memorandum headed “Ocean Warfare,” and supported the views in it. It enunciated the principle of “Hit first, hit hard, and keep on hitting,” and discoursed on Submarines and Mines.