Therefore the super-Lion, the super-Swift and the super-Submarine are the only three types for fighting (speed being THE characteristic of each of these types). Aviation has wiped out the intermediate types. No armour for anything but the super-Lion and there restricted! Cost £1,995,000; speed over 30 knots; all oil; 10 “improved” guns; and you’ll make the Germans “squirm”!
And again:
‘You had better adopt 2 keels to 1! You have it now. It will be safe; it will be popular; it will head off the approaching German naval increase. Above all remember Keble in The Christian Year.
‘“The dusky hues of glorious War!”
‘There is always the risk of a (bad Admiral) before a second A. K. Wilson comes along to supersede him! How that picture of old ‘ard ‘eart (as the sailors call him) rises before me now!... Three big fleets that had never seen each other came from three different quarters to meet him off Cape St. Vincent—in sight of Trafalgar. When each was many hundreds of miles away from him he ordered them by “wireless” exactly what to do, and that huge phalanx met together at his prescribed second of time without a signal or a sound and steamed a solid mass at 14 knots and dropped their anchors with one splash! Are we going to look at his like again?
‘So you had better have 2 keels to 1!
‘“The dusky hues of glorious War.” What a hymn for The Christian Year by a Saint like Keble!’
On the 14th January he wrote:—
‘I yesterday had an illuminating letter from Jellicoe.... He has all the Nelsonic attributes.... He writes to me of new designs. His one, one, one cry is SPEED! Do lay that to heart! Do remember the receipt for jugged hare in Mrs. Glasse’s Cookery Book! “First catch your hare!”... Also he advocates the “improved” gun and the far bigger ship and (it) will COST LESS.
‘“It’s your money we want,” as those Tariff Reform asses say!... Take my advice—2 keels to 1!’