As you told me, it was miraculous I left the Admiralty when I did! It was the nick of time! A. K. Wilson is doing splendidly and is unassailable. I had much pressure to emerge the other day, but I won’t, nor have I the heart now.
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1910.
August 5th. Kilverstone Hall.
McKenna has just been here on his second visit (so he liked the first, I suppose! I mention this as an inducement to you to come!) He has shewn me various secret papers. He is a real fighter, and the Navy Haters will pass over his dead body! If our late Blessed Master was alive I should know what to do; but I feel my hands tied now. Perhaps a kindly Providence put us both on the Beach at the right moment! Who knows?
“The lights begin to twinkle on the rocks”! I’ve told —— and others that the 2 keels to 1 policy is of inestimable value because it eliminates the United States Navy, which never ought to be mentioned—criminal folly to do so—Also it gives us such an ample margin as to allow for discount!
The insidious game is to have an enquiry into Ship Designs, which means delay and no money!
Two immense episodes are doing Damocles over the Navy just now. I had settled to shove my colleagues over the precipice about both of them, but as you know I left hurriedly to get in Wilson—so incomparably good! We pushed them over the precipice about Water Tube Boilers, the Turbine, the Dreadnought, the Scrapping [of ships that could neither fight nor run away], the Nucleus Crews—the Redistribution of the Fleet, &c., &c. In each and all it was Athanasius contra mundum, but each and all a magnificent success; so also these two waiting portents full of immense developments.
1. Oil Engines and internal combustion, about which I so dilated at our dinner and bored you. Since that night (July 11th) Bloom & Voss in Germany have received an order to build a Motor Liner for the Atlantic Trade. No engineers, no stokers, and no funnels, no boilers! Only a d—d chauffeur! The economy prodigious! as the Germans say “Kolossal billig”! But what will it be for War? Why! all the past pales before the prospect!!! I say to McKenna: “Shove ’em over the precipice! Shove!” But he’s all alone, poor devil!
The Second is that this Democratic Country won’t stand 99 per cent. at least of her Naval Officers being drawn from the “Upper Ten.” It’s amazing to me that anyone should persuade himself that an aristocratic Service can be maintained in a Democratic State. The true democratic principle is Napoleon’s: “La carrière ouverte aux talents!” The Democracy will shortly realise this, and there will be a dangerous and mischievous agitation. The secret of successful administration is the intelligent anticipation of agitation. Again I say to McKenna “Shove!!! Shove them over the precipice.” I have the plan all cut and dried.
The pressure won’t come from inside the Navy but from outside—an avalanche like A.D. 1788 (the French Revolution)—and will sweep away a lot more than desirable! It is essentially a political question rather than a Naval question proper. It is all so easy, only the d—d Tory prejudices stand in the way! But I gave you a paper about all this printed at Portsmouth, so won’t bore you with more. I am greatly inclined to leave the Defence Committee and move out in the open on these two vital questions on the Navy. The one affects its fighting efficiency as much as the other. I am doing the mole, and certain upheavals will appear shortly, but it wants a Leader in the open!