1903 [Sir John Fisher, Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth].
... My humble idea is that “men are everything and material nothing” whether it’s working the War Office or fighting a fleet! So some day I am going to try and entice you to read my lectures to the Officers of the Mediterranean Fleet because the spirit intended to be diffused by them is what I think is the one great want in the British Army, and without it 50,000 Lord Eshers would be no good in producing “Angel Gabriel” organisations! The Military system is rotten to the very core! You want to begin ab ovo! The best of the Generals are even worse than the subalterns because they are more hardened sinners! I fear I shocked Ellison, but he is simply first class and I most heartily congratulate you on your selection.... I really begin to feel I never ought to have joined you as I have some very big jobs on now which require incessant personal attention and this must be my excuse for not coming up to see Girouard this week. I have the new Civil Lord staying with me and I have got to prevent him joining with a lot of asses at the Admiralty, who want to throw half a million of money in the gutter.
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Nov. 19th, 1903.
On my return I found the first proofs of your three papers. I have studied them with close care and interest. There are some points of detail which puzzle me, but it seems you are absolutely convincing on the main lines. What I venture to emphasise is this:—We cannot reform the Army Administration until it is laid down what it is the Administration is going to Administer! For instance, the Citizen Army for Home Defence! Are we going to have it? If so, then you will certainly want a Member of the Board or Council to superintend it! Again, I say, the Regular Army (as distinguished from the Home Army and the Indian Army) should be regarded as a projectile to be fired by the Navy! The Navy embarks it and lands it where it can do most mischief!—Thus, the Germans are ready to land a large Military Force on the Cotentin Peninsula in case of War with France and my German Military Colleague at the Hague Conference told me this comparatively small Military Force would have the effect of demobilising half a million of men who would thus be taken away from the German Frontier—they never know where the devil the brutes are going to land! Consequently instead of our Military Manœuvres being on Salisbury Plain and its vicinity (ineffectually aping the vast Continental Armies!) we should be employing ourselves in joint Naval and Military Manœuvres embarking 50,000 men at Portsmouth and landing them at Milford Haven or Bantry Bay!—This would make the Foreigners sit up! Fancy! in the Mediterranean Fleet we disembarked 12,000 men with guns in 19 minutes! What do you think of that! and we should hurry up the soldiers! No doubt there would be good-natured chaff! Once we embarked 7,000 soldiers at Malta and took them round and landed them elsewhere for practice, and I remember having a complaint that the Bluejackets said “Come on, you bloody lobsters! Wake up!” However all the above en passant. I expect the Prime Minister must have pretty good ideas now crystallised as to how the Army should be constituted—let us ask him for this at once—if he hasn’t got it, let us tell him we must have it, because as I said at starting, you can’t organise an administration without clearly knowing what you are going to administer. This is a hasty bit of writing but not a hasty thought.
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1903.
Nov. 25th.
I send you two books—a more portly volume I hesitate to send!—Also I fear without some verbal explanation you may not see the application to Military matters of these purely Naval Notes, but they do apply in the spirit if not in the letter! For instance I had an overwhelming confidence that every Officer and man in the Mediterranean Fleet had also an overwhelming confidence that we thoroughly knew all we had to do in case of war in every conceivable eventuality! Well! that is the confidence you also want in an Army! Have you got it!
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Dec. 2nd.