Dear Old Tirps,
We are both in the same boat! What a time we’ve been colleagues, old boy! However, we did you in the eye over the Battle Cruisers and I know you’ve said you’ll never forgive me for it when bang went the “Blucher” and von Spee and all his host!
Cheer up, old chap! Say “Resurgam”! You’re the one German sailor who understands War! Kill your enemy without being killed yourself. I don’t blame you for the submarine business. I’d have done the same myself, only our idiots in England wouldn’t believe it when I told ’em!
Well! So long!
Yours till hell freezes,
Fisher.
29/3/16.
I say! Are you sure if you had tripped out with your whole High Sea Fleet before the Russian ice thawed and brought over those half-a-million soldiers from Hamburg to frighten our old women that you could have got back un-Jellicoed?
R.S.V.P.
[5] “A Naval Lieutenant, 1914–1918,” by Etienne, 1919, pp. 48 et seq.
[6] Note.—These are the names of the three first great Battle Cruisers of the Dreadnought type.
[7] On January 2, 1915, Russia asked for a demonstration against the Turks in order to relieve the pressure they were putting on the Russian forces in the Caucasus. Next day the War Office cabled a promise, through the Foreign Office, that this should be done. Before he sent the cable Lord Kitchener wrote to Mr. Churchill: “The only place that a demonstration might have some effect in stopping reinforcements going East would be the Dardanelles.”