The main purpose of this second book is obvious from its title. It’s mostly a collection of “Records” confirming what has already been written, and relates almost exclusively to years after 1902. As Lord Rosebery has said so well, “The war period in a man’s life has its definite limits”; and that period is what interests the general reader, and for that reason all attempt at a biography has been discarded.
In our present distress we certainly want badly just now Nelson’s “Light from Heaven”! Nelson had what the Mystics describe as his “seasons of darkness and desertion.” His enfeebled body and his mind depressed used at times to cast a shade on his soul, such as we now feel as a Nation, but (if I remember right) it is Southey who says that the Sunshine which succeeded led Nelson to believe that it bore with it a prophetic glory, and that the light that led him on was “Light from Heaven.” We don’t see that “Light” as yet. But England never succumbs.
PREFACE
Napoleon at St. Helena told us what all Englishmen have ever instinctively felt—that we should remain a purely Maritime Power; instead, we became in this War a Conscript Nation, sending Armies of Millions to the Continent. If we stuck to the Sea, said Napoleon, we could dictate to the World; so we could. Napoleon again said to the Captain of the British Battleship “Bellerophon”: “Had it not been for you English, I should have been Emperor of the East, but wherever there was water to float a ship, we were sure to find you in the way.” (Yes! we had ships only drawing two feet of water with six-inch guns, that went up the Tigris and won Bagdad. Others, similar, went so many thousand miles up the Yangtsze River in China that they sighted the Mountains of Thibet. Another British Ship of War so many thousand miles up the Amazon River that she sighted the Mountains of Peru, and there not being room to turn she came back stern first. In none of these cases had any War Vessel ever before been seen till these British Vessels investigated those waters and astounded the inhabitants.)
Again, Napoleon praised our Blockades (Les Anglais bloquent très bien); but very justly of our Diplomacy he thought but ill. Yes, alas! What a Diplomacy it has been!!! If our Blockade had been permitted by the Diplomats to have been effective, it would have finished the War at once. Our Diplomats had Bulgaria in their hands and lost her. It was “Too Late” a year after to offer her the same terms as she had asked the year before. We “kow-towed” to the French when they rebuffed our request for the English Army to be on the Sea Flank and to advance along the Belgian Coast, supported by the British Fleet; and then there would have been no German Submarine War. At the very beginning of the War we deceived the German Ambassador in London and the German Nation by our vacillating Diplomacy. We wrecked the Russian Revolution and turned it into Bolshevism.
I mention these matters to prove the effete, apathetic, indecisive, vacillating Conduct of the War—the War eventually being won by an effective Blockade.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER I | |
| PAGE | |
| Early Years | [1] |
| CHAPTER II | |
| Further Memories of King Edward and Others | [24] |
| CHAPTER III | |
| The Bible, and other Reflections | [38] |
| CHAPTER IV | |
| Episodes | [50] |
| CHAPTER V | |
| Democracy | [69] |
| CHAPTER VI | |
| Public Speeches | [79] |
| CHAPTER VII | |
| The Essentials of Sea Fighting | [88] |
| CHAPTER VIII | |
| Jonah’s Gourd | [97] |
| CHAPTER IX | |
| Naval Problems | [127] |
| CHAPTER X | |
| Naval Education | [156] |
| CHAPTER XI | |
| Submarines | [173] |
| CHAPTER XII | |
| Notes on Oil and Oil Engines | [189] |
| CHAPTER XIII | |
| The Big Gun | [204] |
| CHAPTER XIV | |
| Some Predictions | [211] |
| CHAPTER XV | |
| The Baltic Project | [217] |
| CHAPTER XVI | |
| The Navy in the War | [225] |
| Postscript | [249] |
| APPENDIX I | |
| Lord Fisher’s Great Naval Reforms | [251] |
| APPENDIX II | |
| Synopsis of Lord Fisher’s Career | [259] |
| Index | [271] |