“Our Fleets are 50 per cent. more at sea, and we hit the target 50 per cent. more than we did two years ago.
“In the first year there were 2,000 more misses than hits!
“In the second year there were 2,000 more hits than misses!”
The very first thing I did when I returned to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord for those seven months in the first year of the war was instantly to get back Sir Percy Scott into the Fighting Arena. I had but one answer to all his detractors and to the opposition to his return:—
“He hits the target!”
He also was maliciously maligned. I don’t mean to say that Sir Percy Scott indulges in soft soap towards his superiors. I don’t think he ever poured hot water down anybody’s back. Let us thank God he didn’t!
I have repeatedly said (and I reiterate it whenever I get the chance) that Nelson was nothing if he was not insubordinate. Nelson’s four immortal Big Fights are brilliant and everlasting testimonies to the virtues of Self-Assertion, Self-Reliance, and Contempt of Authority. But of Nelson and the Nelsonic attributes I treat in another place. (Ah! Lord Rosebery, if only you had written “Nelson’s Last Phase”! I entreated you, but without avail!) (Again a repetition!) Nelson’s Life not yet written! Southey’s Life, meant only for schoolboys, still holds the field. W. T. Stead might have done it, for the sacred fire of Great Emotions was the calorific of Stead’s Internal Combustion Engine. Suffice it to say of Sir Percy Scott that it was he and he alone who made the first start of the Fleet’s hitting the enemy and not missing him. Why hasn’t he been made a Viscount? But that is reserved for those in another sphere!
“The Tides—and Sir Frederick Treves.”—One of my greatest benefactors (he saved my life. Six doctors wanted to operate on me—he wouldn’t have it; the consequence—I’m better now than ever I was in my life) is Sir Frederick Treves, Surgeon, Orator, Writer, “Developer of the Powers of Observation.” He, this morning, September 16th, 1919, gives me something to think about. It has relation to my dear and splendid friend Sir Charles Parsons, President of the British Association and inventor of the Turbine, who said the other day at Bournemouth that our coal bids fair to fail and we must seek other sources of power. Considering that Sir Charles invented the Turbine—derided by everyone as a box of tricks, and it now monopolises 80 per cent. of the horse-power of the world—we ought to listen to him. His idea is to dig a twelve-mile hole into the earth to get hold of power. Now Sir Frederick in his letter this morning uses these words:
“England is an Island. We are surrounded on all sides with the greatest source of power in the world—the Tides.
“There is enough force in the Tides to light and heat the whole country, and to run all its railways. It is running to waste while we are bellowing for coal.”