When I went over by appointment to see Lord Fisher, he got to work at once in that inimitable way of his. He explained that what he had in view was to place sufficient motor-lighters at Lord Kitchener's disposal, each carrying about 500 men, to land 50,000 troops on a beach at one time. He insisted upon the most absolute secrecy. What he wanted me to do was to discuss the construction of the lighters in detail with the admiral who had the job in charge, so as to ensure that their design would fall in with purely military requirements. I had, some sixteen years before when Lord Fisher had been Commander-in-Chief on the Mediterranean station, enjoyed a confidential discussion with him in Malta concerning certain strategical questions in that part of the world, and had been amazed at the alertness of his brain, his originality of thought, his intoxicating enthusiasm, and his relentless driving power. Now, in 1915, he seemed to be even younger than he had seemed then. He covered the ground at such a pace that I was speedily toiling breathless and dishevelled far in rear. It is all very well to carry off Memories into a quiet corner and to try to assimilate limited portions of that work at a time, deliberately and in solitude. But to have a hotch-potch of Shakespeare, internal combustion engines, chemical devices for smoke screens, principles of the utilization of sea power in war, Holy Writ, and details of ship construction dolloped out on one's plate, and to have to bolt it then and there, imposes a strain on the interior economy that is greater than this will stand. After an interview with the First Sea Lord you suffered from that giddy, bewildered, exhausted sort of feeling that no doubt has you in thrall when you have been run over by a motor bus without suffering actual physical injury.
The main point that I insisted upon when in due course discussing the construction details of the motor-lighters with the admiral who was supervising the work, was that they should be so designed as to let the troops aboard of them rush out quickly as soon as the prow should touch the shore. The vessels were put together rapidly, and one or two of those first completed were experimented with in the Solent towards the end of April, when they were found quite satisfactory. Although they were never turned to account for the purpose which Lord Fisher had had in mind when the decision was taken to build them, a number of these mobile barges proved extremely useful to our troops in the later stages of the Dardanelles campaign, notably on the occasion of the landing at Suvla and while the final evacuations were being carried out. Indeed, but for the "beetles" (as the soldiers christened these new-fangled craft), our army would never have got away from the Gallipoli Peninsula with such small loss of stores and impedimenta as it did, and the last troops told off to leave Helles on the stormy night of the 8th-9th of January 1916 might have been unable to embark and might have met with a deplorable disaster.
After that first meeting with him at the Admiralty, I frequently saw Lord Fisher, and he kept me acquainted with his views on many points, notably on what was involved in the threat of the U-boats after Sir I. Hamilton had landed his troops in the Gallipoli Peninsula. On more than one occasion he honoured me with a surprise visit in my office. These interviews in my sanctum were of quite a dramatic, Harrison-Ainsworth, Gunpowder-Treason, Man-in-the-Iron-Mask character. He gave me no warning, scorning the normal procedure of induction by a messenger. He would appear of a sudden peeping in at the door to see if I was at home, would then thrust the door to and lock it on the inside with a deft turn of the wrist, would screw up the lean-to ventilator above the door in frantic haste, and would have darted over and be sitting down beside me, talking earnestly and ventre-à-terre of matters of grave moment, almost before I could rise to my feet and conform to those deferential observances that are customary when a junior officer has to deal with one of much higher standing. Some subjects treated of on these occasions were of an extremely confidential nature, and in view of the laxity of many eminent officials and—if the truth be told—of military officers as a body, the precautions taken by the First Sea Lord within my apartment were perhaps not without justification.
War is too serious a business to warrant the proclamation of prospective naval and military operations from the housetops. Reasonable precautions must be taken. One thing one did learn during those early months of the war, and that was that the fewer the individuals are—no matter who they may be—who are made acquainted with secrets the better. But this is not of such vital importance when the secret concerns some matter of limited interest to the ordinary person as it is when the secret happens to relate to what is calculated to attract public attention.
Of course it was most reprehensible on the part of that expansive youth, Geoffrey, to have acquainted Gladys—strictly between themselves of course—that his company had been "dished out with a brand-new, slap-up, experimental automatic rifle, that'll make Mr. Boche sit up when we get across." Still it did no harm, because Gladys doesn't care twopence about rifles of any kind, and had forgotten all about it before she had swallowed the chocolate that was in her mouth. But when Geoffrey informed Gladys a fortnight later—again strictly between themselves—that the regiment was booked for a stunt at Cuxhaven, it did a great deal of harm. Because, although Gladys did not know where Cuxhaven was, she looked it up in the atlas when she got home, and she thereupon realized, with a wriggle of gratification, that she was "in the know," and under the circumstances she could hardly have been expected not to tell Agatha—under pledge, needless to say, of inviolable secrecy. Nor would you have been well advised to have bet that Agatha would not—in confidence—mention the matter to Genevieve, because you would have lost your money if you had. Then, it was only to be expected that Genevieve should let the cat out of the bag that afternoon at the meeting of Lady Blabit's Committee for the Development of Discretion in Damsels, observing that in such company a secret was bound to be absolutely safe. However, that was how the whole story came to be known, and Geoffrey might just as well have done the thing handsomely, and have placarded what was contemplated in Trafalgar Square alongside Mr. Bonar Law's frenzied incitements to buy war bonds.
Speaking seriously, there is rather too much of the sieve about the soldier officer when information comes to his knowledge which it is his duty to keep to himself. He has much to learn in this respect from his sailor brother. You won't get much to windward of the naval cadet or the midshipman if you try to extract out of him details concerning the vessel which has him on her books in time of war—what she is, where she is, or how she occupies her time. These youngsters cannot have absorbed this reticence simply automatically and as one of the traditions of that great Silent Service, to which, more than to any other factor, we and our Allies owe our common triumph in the Great War. It must have been dinned into them at Osborne and Dartmouth, and it must have been impressed upon them—forcibly as is the way amongst those whose dwelling is in the Great Waters—day by day by their superiors afloat. The subject used not to be mentioned at the Woolwich Academy in the seventies. Nor was secretiveness inculcated amongst battery subalterns a few years subsequently. One does not recollect hearing anything about it during the Staff College course, nor call to mind having preached the virtues of discretion in this matter to one's juniors oneself at a later date. Here is a matter which has been grossly neglected and which the General Staff must see to.
When Lord Kitchener was going to be away from town for two or three days in the summer of 1915, he sometimes instructed me to be at Mr. Asquith's beck and call during his absence in case some important question should suddenly arise, and once or twice I was summoned to 10 Downing Street of a morning in consequence, and was ushered into the precincts. On these occasions the Prime Minister was to be found in a big room upstairs; and he was always walking up and down, like Aristotle only that he had his hands in his pockets. His demeanour would be a blend of boredom with the benign. "Whatch-think of this?" he would demand, snatching up some paper from his desk, cramming it into my hand, and continuing his promenade. Such observations on my part in response to the invitation as seemed to meet the case would be acknowledged with a grunt—dissent, concurrence, incredulity, or a desire for further information being communicated by modulations in the grunt. Once, when the document under survey elaborated one of Mr. Churchill's virgin plans of revolutionizing the conduct of the war as a whole, the Right Honourable Gentleman in an access of exuberance became garrulous to the extent of muttering, "'Tslike a hen laying eggs."
But, all the same, when instructions came to be given at the end of such an interview, they invariably were lucid, concise, and very much to the point. You knew exactly where you were. For condensing what was needed in a case like this into a convincing form of words, for epitomizing in a single sentence the conclusions arrived at (supposing conclusions by any chance to have been arrived at) after prolonged discussions by a War Council, or at a gathering of the Dardanelles Committee, I have never come across anybody in the same street with Mr. Asquith.