“I have cull’d a garland of flowers,
Mine only is the string that binds them.”
I said to them all at our first Assemblage: “Gentlemen, You are the Flowers, I am the String!”
You would have thought that such a Galaxy of Talent would have been revered, welcomed, and obeyed—on the contrary, it was derided, spurned, and ignored.
The permanent “Expert Limpets” did for us! All the three First Lords at the Admiralty whom we dealt with in succession were most cordial and most appreciative, but all three were equally powerless. Just a couple or so of instances will suffice to illustrate the reason why we at last said to Sir Eric Geddes:—
“Ave Geddes Imperator!
“Morituri te Salutant.”
(1) The chief object of this magnificent Scientific Organisation being to counter the German Submarine Menace, we naturally asked for a Submarine to experiment with. The answer was “one could not be spared.”
(2) We asked to be furnished with all the details of the destruction of German Submarines that had already taken place, which of course lay at the root of further investigation. This was denied us!
(3) A “Submarine Detector” was developed under the auspices of the Central Committee by May, 1916. A year was allowed to elapse before it was taken up; and even then its progress was cancelled because nothing more than a laboratory experiment with a competing invention came to the notice of the “Limpets.”