... The Admiralty hear (by wireless every moment) what all the Admirals and Captains are saying to each other anywhere in Europe and even over to the coasts of America.
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1909.
March 15th.
Private & Secret & Personal. I have just finished in these early hours a careful re-study of your paper E. 5 (which I love) and the criticisms thereon by French and the General Staff. I dismiss French’s criticism as being that of a pure correct Cavalry expert and not dealing with the big questions. The General Staff criticism is on the other hand the thin end of the insidious wedge of our taking part in Continental War as apart absolutely from Coastal Military Expeditions in pure concert with the Navy—expeditions involving hell to the enemy because backed by an invincible Navy (the citadel of the Military force). I don’t desire to mention these expeditions and never will, as our military organisation is so damnably leaky! but it so happens for two solid hours this morning I have been studying one of these of inestimable value only involving 5,000 men, and some guns, and horses about 500—a mere fleabite! but a collection of these fleabites would make Wilhelm scratch himself with fury! However, the point of my letter is this—Ain’t we d—d fools to go on wasting our very precious moments in these abstruse disquisitions on this line and that or the passage of the Dutch German Frontier River and whether the bloody fight is to be at Rheims or Amiens, until the Cabinet have decided the great big question raised in your E. 5: Are we or are we not going to send a British Army to fight on the Continent as quite distinct and apart from Coastal Raids and seizures of Islands, etcetera, which the Navy dominate? Had not the Prime Minister better get this fixed up before we have any more discussions such as foreshadowed to-morrow?
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1909.
March 21st.
... It won’t do to resign on a hypothesis but on a fact! All is in train for the 8 Dreadnoughts! and as Grey says when the day is reached to sign the contracts and then a veto—then is the day to go in a great company and not one alone!... I am vehemently urged to squash my “malignant stabbers-in-the-back” by making a speech somewhere and saying as follows—but I won’t—it would be an effectual cold douche to the 8 Dreadnoughts a year! I might say
“The unswerving intention of 4 years has now culminated in two complete Fleets in Home Waters, each of which is incomparably superior to the whole German Fleet mobilised for war. Don’t take my word! Count them, see them for yourselves! You will see them next June. This can’t alter for years, even were we supinely passive in our building; but it won’t alter because we will have 8 Dreadnoughts a year. So sleep quiet in your beds!”
And I might also add:—
“The Germans are not building in this feverish haste to fight you! No! it’s the daily dread they have of a second Copenhagen, which they know a Pitt or a Bismarck would execute on them!