Have I ever failed yet? It’s an egotistical question, but I never have!
What a d—d fool I should be to brag now if I wasn’t certain!
Yours, etc.,
(Signed) Fisher.
P.S.—I have heard some Idiots say that the Baltic Sea is now impregnable because of German mines in it. No earthly System of mines can possibly avoid being destroyed. We can get into the Baltic whenever we like to do so. I guarantee it.
“Sow the North Sea with Mines.”
(Written in November, 1914).
The German policy of laying mines has resulted in denying our access to their harbours; has hampered our Submarines in their attempts to penetrate into German waters; and we have lost the latest type of “Dreadnought” (“Audacious”) and many other war vessels and over 70 merchant vessels of various sizes.
As we have only laid a patch of mines off Ostend (whose position we have notified), the Germans have free access to our coasts to lay fresh mines and to carry out raids and bombardments.
We have had, to our own immense disadvantage in holding up our coastwise traffic, to extinguish the navigation lights on our East Coast, so as to impede German ships laying mines. At times we have had completely to stop our traffic on the East Coast because of German mines; and the risk is so great that freights in some cases have advanced 75 per cent.—quite apart from shortness of tonnage.
The Germans have laid mines off the North of Ireland, and may further hamper movements of shipping in the Atlantic.
The German mine-laying policy has so hindered the movements of the British Fleet, by necessitating wide detours, that to deal with a raid such as the recent Hartlepool affair involves enormous risks, while at the same time the German Fleet can navigate to our coast with the utmost speed and the utmost confidence. They know that we have laid no mines, and the position, of course, of their own mines is accurately charted by them—indeed we know this as a fact. Our Fleet, on the contrary, has to confine its movements to deep water, or slowly to grope its way behind mine-sweeping vessels.