Can’t dine with you to-night. Missed train through a damned ass of a Custom House Officer. Will let you have his name.
Labouchere, Cologne.
They offered him a special train. Labouchere had never seen Bismarck in his life. This was the occasion on which Labouchere was reprimanded by the Foreign Office for his delay in taking up his appointment as attaché at St. Petersburg. His excuse was that the money allowed him only permitted his travelling by railway as far as Cologne; the rest of the way he walked.
This book would be incomplete if I did not draw attention to the great debt the nation owes to three men yet unmentioned in this volume.
Mr. George Lambert, M.P., twice refused office and sacrificed his political prospects and with a glorious victory sustained the whole Government effort to kick him out of Parliament; but he conquered with a magnificent majority of over two thousand! Why?
Because after serving for over seven years in the Admiralty he could speak of his own knowledge that the War administration and the fighting Sea Policy were shamefully effete.
The Recording Angel will mark down opposite Mr. Lambert’s name: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!” But may he also have his reward here and now, as many years of good work here below may lie between him and Heaven as yet.
Commodore Hugh Paget Sinclair is another “Stalwart” of the War. His business was to provide the officers and men to man the Fleet—imagine the stupendous task that was his!
We never wanted for Officer or Man!
He is now Director of Naval Intelligence; and may his ascent in the Navy be what is his splendid due!