... “The heart untravelled fondly turns to home.”—We have no poets nowadays like Pope, Goldsmith and Gay—only damned mystical idiots like Browning and Tennyson that want a dictionary and the Differential-Calculus sort of mind to understand what they are driving at!
... I sat several times [on a recent visit abroad] between Stolypin, the Russian Prime Minister, and Isvolsky, the Foreign Secretary. I didn’t begin it, but Stolypin said to me “What do you think we want most?” He fancied I should answer “So many battleships, so many cruisers, &c., &c.,” but instead I said: “Your Western Frontier is denuded of troops and your magazines are depleted. Fill them up, and then talk of Fleets!” Please see enclosure from Kuropatkin’s secret report: “The foundation of Russia’s safety is her Western boundary!!!”... Have you seen Monsieur Rousseau (I think is his name) in Le Temps? I had an extract of it, and put it aside to send you, but alas! it has gone. “Procrastination is the thief of good intentions”—which is not so good as “Punctuality is the curse of comfort.” But the good Frenchman (like Monsieur Hanotaux before him) is lost in admiration of what moved Mahan to his pungent saying that Garvin seized on with the inspiration of genius—“that 88 per cent. of the English guns were trained on Germany!”... By the way, I’ve got Sir Philip Watts into a new Indomitable that will make your mouth water when you see it! (and the Germans gnash their teeth!)
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1908.
Dec.
The King has sent me a dear letter, and adds “Don’t print this!” Isn’t he a sweet? What wonderful friends I have! It’s a marvel! All I do is to kick their shins.
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1908.
(No date.)
... I am going to ask you to reconsider your supplementary paper herewith. I can’t find that the Admiralty have admitted that 24,000 men would ever start off together as two raids of 12,000 each. I personally have expressed my decided opinion (I think at the 7th meeting) [of the Committee of Imperial Defence] to the contrary. Indeed, I am emphatically of opinion that no raid of any kind [that is, landing of troops] is feasible with all our late developments, which are developing further every day (e.g. we have our wireless on top of Admiralty Building and are communicating with the Scilly Islands now and shortly I hope Gibraltar and so certainly to every point of the German coast where we shall have Wireless Cruisers all over the place. (Not a dog will wag its tail without being reported.) So don’t let us get a scare over 24,000 men coming unobserved. One lot of 12,000 can be put in as the limit; but my suggestion is—leave out numbers, and simply say as a precautionary measure for the confidence of the country, it’s a good safe arbitrary standard to lay down that two Divisions of Regular Troops are always to be left in the Country just in the same way as laid down at the Admiralty that the Home Fleet is not for Service abroad.
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1909.
Jan. 26th.