My Dear Friend, ...
Quite recently we lost a golden opportunity of wrecking the residue of the German Fleet and wrecking the Kiel Canal, when the main German Fleet went to Riga with the German army embarked in a huge fleet of transports and so requiring all the Destroyers and Submarines of Germany to protect it.
Well, in reply to your question, this is what I would do now:
I would carry out the policy enunciated in the Print on the Baltic Project which was submitted early in the war[16] and again reverted to in my letter to the Prime Minister, dated June 2nd, 1916. Sow the North Sea with mines as thick as the leaves in Vallombrosa! That blocks effectually the Kiel Canal, if continued laying of these mines is always perpetually going on with damnable pertinacity! Then I guarantee to force a passage into the Baltic in combination with a great Military co-operation, but that co-operation must not be the co-operation of the Walcheren Expedition!
“Lord Chatham with his sword drawn
Was waiting for Sir Richard Strachan,
Sir Richard, longing to be at ’em!
Was waiting for the Earl of Chatham!”
It has got to be chiefly a Naval Job! And the Army will be landed by the Navy! The Navy will guarantee landing the Army on the Coast of Pomerania and elsewhere. Three feints, any of which can be turned into a Reality.
Further in detail I won’t go, but I can guarantee success.