I bought a number of magnificent and fast vessels for laying down these mines in masses—no sooner had I left the Admiralty in May, 1915, they were so choice that they were diverted and perverted to other uses.
But perhaps the most sickening of all the events of the war was the neglect of the Humber as the jumping-off place for our great fast Battle Cruiser force, with all its attendant vessels—light Cruisers, Destroyers, and Submarines, and mine-layers, and mine-sweepers—for offensive action at any desired moment, and as a mighty and absolute deterrent to the humiliating bombardment of our coasts by that same fast German Battle Cruiser force. The Humber is the nearest spot to Heligoland; and at enormous cost and greatly redounding to the credit of the present Hydrographer of the Navy, Admiral Learmonth (then Director of Fixed Defences), the Humber was made submarine-proof, and batteries were placed in the sea protecting the obstructions, and moorings laid down behind triple lines of defence against all possibility of hostile successful attack.
However, I had to leave the Admiralty before it was completed and the ships sent there; and then the mot d’ordre was Passivity; and when the Germans bombarded Scarborough and Yarmouth and so on, we said to them à la Chinois, making great grimaces and beating tom-toms; “If you come again, look out!” But the Germans weren’t Chinese, and they came; and the soothing words spoken to the Mayors of the bombarded East Coast towns were what Mark Twain specified as being “spoke ironical.”
I conclude this Chapter with the following words, printed in the early autumn of 1914:—
“By the half-measures we have adopted hitherto in regard to Open-Sea Mines we are enjoying neither the one advantage nor the other.”
That is to say, when the Germans at the very first outbreak of war departed from the rules of the Hague Conference against the type of mine they used, we had two courses open to us: there was the moral advantage of refusing to follow the bad lead, or we could seek a physical advantage by forcing the enemies’ crime to its utmost consequences. We were effete. We were pusillanimous, and we were like Jelly-fish.
And we “Waited and See’d.”
CHAPTER X
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA
We started out on the compilation of this book on the understanding that it was not to be an Autobiography, nor a Diary, nor Meditations (à la Marcus Aurelius), but simply “Memories.” And now you drive me to give you a Synopsis of my life (which is an artful periphrasis), and request me to account for my past life being one continuous series of fightings—Love and Hate alternating and Strife the thread running through this mortal coil of mine. (When a coil of rope is made in a Government Dockyard a coloured worsted thread is introduced; it runs through the centre of the rope: if the rope breaks and sends a man to “Kingdom Come,” you know the Dockyard that made it and you ask questions; if it’s purloined the Detective bowls out the purloiner.) So far my rope of life has not broken and the thread is there—Strife.
Greatly daring, and “storms of obloquy” having been my portion, I produce now an apologia pro vita mea, though it may not pulverise as that great Cardinal pulverised with his famous Apologia (“He looked like Heaven and he fought like Hell”).