[The three privately printed volumes entitled “Naval Necessities,” 1904, 1905, and 1906, contain papers written or collected by Sir John Fisher, as Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth and as First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, bearing upon the Naval Reforms which he then introduced or contemplated. The following selections from these papers tell their own story.]
Sir John Fisher to Lord Selborne, First Lord of the Admiralty.
Dear Lord Selborne, ...
You remember you glanced through some manuscript in my office at Portsmouth the day you embarked in “Enchantress,” and I gathered that you saw much in them that commended itself to you. Well! having thus more or less got a favourable opinion from you, I elaborated that manuscript which you had read, and printed it with my confidential printer; ... then I gave it secretly to the five best brains in the Navy below the rank of Admiral to thresh out; and associated two other brains for the consideration of the types of future fighting vessels; then I selected out of those seven brains the one with the most facile pen and ... said to him: “Write a calm and dispassionate précis for me to give the First Lord.” You may be confident (as confident as I know you are) that the First Sea Lord won’t ever sell you! that these seven brains may be absolutely relied upon for secrecy. I have tested each of them for many years!
These are the seven brains: Jackson, F.R.S., Jellicoe, C.B., Bacon, D.S.O., Madden, M.V.O., Wilfred Henderson (who has all the signs of the Zodiac after his name!), associated with Gard, M.V.O., Chief Constructor of Portsmouth Dockyard, and who splendidly kept the Mediterranean Fleet efficient for three years, and Gracie, the best Marine Engineer in the world!
This is the “modus operandi” I suggest to you. If these proposals in their rough outline commend themselves to you and our colleagues on the Board, then let me have these seven, assisted by Mr. Boar (who is a mole in the Accountant-General’s Department—you know of him only by upheavals of facts and figures!), and secretly these eight will get out a detailed statement supported by facts and figures for consideration before we take a step further!...
Please now just a few words of explanation at the possibly apparent (but in no ways real) slight put on those at the Admiralty who might be thought the right persons to conduct these detailed inquiries instead of the eight brains I’ve mentioned!
In the first place, any such heavy extraneous work (such as is here involved) means an utter dislocation of the current work of the Admiralty if carried out by the regular Admiralty staff! and as any such extraneous work must of necessity give place to any very pressing current work, then the extraneous work doesn’t get done properly—so both suffer!—But further! these seven other spirits (not more wicked than any of those at the Admiralty!) will be absolutely untrammelled by any remarks of their own in the official records in the Admiralty, and will not be cognisant (and so not influenced!) by the past written official minutes of the High and Mighty Ones, and so we shall get the directness and unfettered candour that we desire! (Parenthesis:—A most distinguished man at the War Office used to think he had gained his point and blasted the Admiralty by collecting extracts 20 years old with opposing decisions! absolutely regardless that what is right to-day may be wrong to-morrow! but he traded on what we all dislike—the charge of inconsistency!—Why! the two most inconsistent men who ever lived, the two greatest men who ever lived and the two most successful men who ever lived, were Nelson and Napoleon!)
Nelson most rightly said that no sailor could ever be such a born ass as to attack forts with ships (he was absolutely right), and then he went straight at them at Copenhagen. Napoleon said, “L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace!” and then he went and temporised at Warsaw for three solid weeks (was it a Polish Countess?), and so got ruined at Moscow in consequence of this delay.
Circumstances alter cases! That’s the answer to the charge of inconsistency. So please let us have this excellent and unparalleled small working Committee to thresh out all these details (when the general outlines have been considered), but this very special point will no doubt be borne in mind:—“Until you have these details how can you say you approve of the outline?” So what has to be said finally is that if the facts and figures corroborate what is sketched out, then the proposals can be considered for adoption, so the ultimate result is this:—“Let the Committee get on at once.”