“See what a rent the envious Casca made.”
My impenetrable armour is Contempt and Fortitude.
Well, yesterday September 7th, 1919, we completed our conversations for the six articles in The Times, and to-day we begin this book with similar talks.
My reluctance to this book being published before my death is increasingly definite; but I have put my hand to the plough, because of the overbearing argument that I cannot resist, that I shall be helping to
(a) Avoid national bankruptcy.
(b) Avert the insanity and wickedness of building a Navy against the United States.
(c) Establish a union with America, as advocated by John Bright and Mr. Roosevelt.
(d) Enable the United States and British Navies to say to all other Navies “If you build more, we will fight you, here and now. We’ll ‘Copenhagen’ you, without remorse.”
This is why I have consented, with such extreme reluctance, to write letters to The Times and dictate six articles; and having thus entered into the fight, I follow the advice of Polonius—Vestigia nulla retrorsum. And so, to-day, I will begin this book—not an autobiography, but a collection of memories of a life-long war against limpets, parasites, sycophants, and jellyfish—at one time there were 19½ millions sterling of ’em. At times they stung; but that only made me more relentless, ruthless and remorseless.
Why I so hate a book, and those articles in The Times, and even the letters, is that the printed word never can convey the virtue of the soul. The aroma is not there—it evaporates when printed—a scentless product, flat and stale like a bad bottle of champagne. It is like an embalmed corpse. Personality, which is the soul of man, is absent from the reader. It is a man’s personality that is the living thing, and in the other world that is the thing you will meet. I have often asked ecclesiastics—“What period of life will the resurrected body represent?” It has always been a poser for them! There will not be any bodies, thank God! we have had quite enough trouble with them down below here. St. Paul distinctly says that it is a spiritual body in the Resurrection. It is our Personalities that will talk to each other in Heaven. I don’t care at what age of a man’s life, even when toothless and decrepit and indistinguishable as he may then be, yet like another Rip Van Winkle, when he speaks you know him. However, that’s a digression.