Heeding neither rain nor mist,
That brazen-faced old optimist.”
Another woman (but I knew her) in sending me some lovely roses to crown the event of a then recent success, sent also some beautiful lines likewise of her own making. She regretted that I preferred a crown of thorns to a crown of the thornless roses she sent me. The rose she alluded to is called “Zephyrine Drouhin,” and, to me, it is astounding that it is so unknown. It is absolutely the only absolute thornless rose; it has absolutely the sweetest scent of any rose; it is absolutely the most glorious coloured of all roses; it blooms more than any rose; it requires no pruning, and costs less than any rose. I planted these roses when I left the Admiralty in 1910. Somebody told the Naval Attaché at Rome, not knowing that he knew me, that I had taken to planting roses, and his remark was: “They’ll d—d well have to grow!” He had served many years with me.
CHAPTER XV
THE BALTIC PROJECT
Note.—This paper was submitted for my consideration by Sir Julian Corbett, in the early autumn of 1914.
From the shape the war has now taken, it is to be assumed that Germany is trusting for success to a repetition of the methods of Frederick the Great in the Seven Years’ War. Not only are the conditions of the present war closely analogous—the main difference being that Great Britain and Austria have changed places—but during the last 15 years the German Great General Staff have been producing an elaborate study of these campaigns.
Broadly stated, Frederick’s original plan in that war was to meet the hostile coalition with a sudden offensive against Saxony, precisely as the Germans began with France. When that offensive failed, Frederick fell back on a defensive plan under which he used his interior position to deliver violent attacks beyond each of his frontiers successively. By this means he was able for seven years to hold his own against odds practically identical with those which now confront Germany; and in the end, though he made none of the conquests he expected, he was able to secure peace on the basis of the status quo ante and materially to enhance his position in Europe.
In the present war, so far as it has gone, the same methods promise the same result. Owing to her excellent communications, Germany has been able to employ Frederick’s methods with even greater success than he did; and at present there seems no certain prospect of the Allies being able to overcome them soon enough to ensure that exhaustion will not sap the vigour and cohesion of the coalition.
The only new condition in favour of the Allies is that the Command of the Sea is now against Germany, and it is possible that its mere passive pressure may avail to bring her to a state of hopeless exhaustion from which we were able to save Frederick in the earlier war. If it is believed that this passive pressure can achieve the desired result within a reasonable time, then there is no reason for changing our present scheme of naval operations. If, on the other hand, we have no sufficient promise of our passive attitude effecting what is required to turn the scale, then it may be well to consider the possibility of bringing our Command of the Sea to bear more actively.
We have only to go back again to the Seven Years’ War to find a means of doing this, which, if feasible under modern conditions, would promise success as surely as it did in the eighteenth century.