Transcriber’s Note

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MEMORIES

[Portrait by J. C. Beresford.

Lord Fisher, 1917.

Admiral of the Fleet.

MEMORIES

BY
ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET
LORD FISHER

HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMXIX

Readers of this book will quickly observe that Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher has small faith in the printed word; and those who have enjoyed the privilege of having “his fist shaken in their faces” will readily admit that the printed word, though faithfully taken down from his dictation, must lack a large measure of the power—the “aroma,” as he calls it—which his personality lends to his spoken word.

Had Lord Fisher been allowed his own way, there would have been no Book. Not for the first time in his career, the need of serving his country and his country’s Navy has over-ridden his personal feeling. These “Memories,” therefore, must be regarded as a compromise (“the beastliest word in the English language”—see “The Times” of September 9th, 1919) between the No-Book of Lord Fisher’s inclination and the orderly, complete Autobiography which the public wishes to possess.

The book consists in the main of the author’s ipsissima verba, dictated during the month of September, 1919. One or two chapters have been put together from fugitive writings which Lord Fisher had collected and printed (in noble and eloquently various type) as a gift to his friends after his death. The discreeter passages of the letters which he wrote to Lord Esher between 1903 and 1912 illustrate some portions of the life’s work which—caring little for the past and much for the future,[1] much for the idea and little for the fact—Lord Fisher has successfully declined to describe in his own words.

Preamble

There is no plan nor sequence! Just as the thoughts have arisen so have they been written or dictated! The spoken word has not been amended—better the fragrance of the fresh picked flower than trying to get more scent out of it by adding hot water afterwards! Also it is more life-like to have the first impulse of the heart than vainly to endeavour after studied phrases! Perhaps the only curiosity is that I begin my life backwards and leave my birth and being weaned till the end!

“The last shall be first” is good for Autobiography!

I think a text is a good thing! So I adopt the following (from R. L. Stevenson) as being nice for the young ones to read what follows:—

To be honest, to be kind, to earn a little and to spend a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary, and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but those without capitulation, above all on the same grim condition to keep friends with himself, here is a task for all that a man has of fortitude and delicacy.

PREFACE

Not long ago a gentleman enclosed me the manuscript of his book, and asked me for a preface. I had never heard of him. He reminded me of Mark Twain in a similar case—the gentleman in a postscript asked Mr. Twain if he found fish good for the brain; he had been recommended it, he said. Twain replied, Yes! and he suggested his correspondent having whales for breakfast!

One gentleman sent me a cheque for two thousand guineas, and asked me to let him have a short article, on any subject. I returned the cheque—I had never heard of him either. I have had some most generous offers from publishers.

Sir George Reid said to me: “Never write an Autobiography. You only know one view of yourself—others see you all round.” But I don’t see any harm in such “Memories” as I now indite! In regard to Sir G. Reid’s observation, there’s one side no one else can see, and that’s “the inside!”

Nothing in this Volume in the least approaches the idea of a Biography. Facts illumined by letters, and the life divided into sections, to be filled in with the struggles of the ascent, seems the ideal sort of representation of a man’s life. A friend once wrote me the requisites of a biographer. Three qualifications were:

(a) Plenty of time for the job.
(b) A keen appreciation of the work done.
(c) A devotion to the Hero.

And, as if it didn’t so much matter, he added—the biographer should possess a high standard of literary ability.

But yet I believe that the vindication of a man’s lifework is almost an impossible task for even the most intimate of friends or the most assiduous and talented of Biographers, simply because they cannot possibly appreciate how great deeds have been belittled and ravaged by small contemporary men. These yelping curs made the most noise, as the empty barrels do! and it’s only long afterwards that the truth emerges out of the mist of obloquy and becomes history.

Remember it’s only in this century that Nelson has come into his own.

FISHER.

* * * * *

“Sworn to no Party—Of no Sect am I!

I can’t be silent and I will not lie!”

* * * * *

“Time and the Ocean and some Guiding Star

In High Cabal have made us what we are!”

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

MEMORIES

CHAPTER I
KING EDWARD VII

King Edward had faith in me, and so supported me always that it is only natural I should begin this book with the remarks about him which I privately printed long since for use at my death; but events have occurred to alter that decision and induce me to publish this book.

There are more intimate touches than those related here, which I forbear to publish. There is a limit to those peculiar and pregnant little exhibitions of a kind heart’s purpose being put in print. They lose their aroma.

In the Dictionary of National Biography there is a Marginal Heading in the Life of King Edward as follows:

“HIS FAITH IN LORD FISHER.”

It is the only personal marginal note! I now descant upon it, not to be egotistical, but to exemplify one of the finest traits in King Edward’s noble character—without doubt I personally could not be of the very least service to him in any way, and yet in his belief of my being right in the vast and drastic reforms in the Navy he gave me his unfaltering support right through unswervingly, though every sycophantic effort was exhausted in the endeavour to alienate him from his support of me. He quite enjoyed the numberless communications he got, and the more outrageous the calumnies the more he revelled in my reputed wickedness! I can’t very well put some of them on paper, but the Minotaur wasn’t in it with me! Also I was a Malay! I was the son of a Cingalese Princess—hence my wicked cunning and duplicity! I had formed a syndicate and bought all the land round Rosyth before the Government fixed on it as a Naval Base—hence my wealth! How the King enjoyed my showing him my private income as given to the Income Tax Commissioners was £382 6s. 11d. after the legal charges for income tax, annuities, etc., were subtracted from the total private income of £750![2]

But King Edward’s abiding characteristic was his unfailing intuition in doing the right thing and saying the right thing at the right time. I once heard him on the spur of the moment make a quite impromptu and totally unexpected speech to the notabilities of Malta which was simply superb! Elsewhere I have related his visit to Russia when I accompanied him. As Prince Orloff said to me, swept away by King Edward’s eloquence, “Your King has changed the atmosphere!”

King Edward, besides his wonderful likeness to King Henry the Eighth, had that great King’s remarkable attributes of combining autocracy with almost a socialistic tie with the masses. I said to His Majesty once: “Sir, that was a real low form of cunning on your Majesty’s part sending to ask after Keir Hardie’s stomach-ache!” By Jove, he went for me like a mad bull! and replied: “You don’t understand me! I am the King of ALL the People! No one has got me in their pockets, as some of them think they have!” and he proceeded with names I can’t quote!

Acting on Sir Francis Knollys’s example and advice I burnt all his letters to me, except one or two purely personal in their delightful adherence to Right and Justice! but even these I won’t publish ever—they were not meant to be seen by others. What anointed cads are those who sell Nelson’s letters to Lady Hamilton! letters written out of the abundance of his heart and the thankfulness of an emotional nature full of heartfelt gratitude to the sympathising woman who dressed his wounds, his torn-off scalp after the Nile, and his never-ceasing calamity of what is now called neuritis, which was for ever wasting his frail body with pain and anguish of spirit as it so unfitted him for exertion.

Here is a letter to King Edward, dated March 14th, 1908:

“With Sir John Fisher’s humble duty to your Majesty and in accordance with your Majesty’s orders, I saw Mr. Blank as to the contents of the secret paper sent your Majesty, but I did not disclose what makes it so valuable—that it came from a Minister of Foreign Affairs, whose testimony is absolutely reliable.

“I told Mr. Blank and asked him to forgive my presumption in saying it, that we were making a hideous mistake in our half measures, which pleased no one and thus we perpetuate the fable of ‘Perfidious Albion,’ and that we ought to have thrown in our lot with Russia and completely allowed her to fortify the Aland Islands as against Sweden and Germany.

“For a Naval War against Germany we want Russia with us, and we want the Aland Islands fortified.

“Germany has got Sweden in her pocket, and they will divide Denmark between them in a War against Russia and England, and unless our Offensive is quick and overwhelming Germany will close the Baltic just as effectually as Turkey locks up the Black Sea with the possession of the Dardanelles.

“Russia and Turkey are the two Powers, and the only two Powers, that matter to us as against Germany, and that we have eventually to fight Germany is just as sure as anything can be, solely because she can’t expand commercially without it.

“I humbly trust your Majesty will forgive my presumption in thus talking Politics, but I know I am right, and I only look at it because if we fight we want Russia and Turkey on our side against Germany.

“With my grateful thanks for your Majesty’s letter,

“I am your Majesty’s humble servant,
“J. A. Fisher.”

* * * * *

March 14th, 1908.

Note.—This letter to King Edward followed on a previous long secret conversation with his Majesty in which I urged that we should “Copenhagen” the German Fleet at Kiel à la Nelson, and I lamented that we possessed neither a Pitt nor a Bismarck to give the order. I have alluded to this matter in my account of Mr. Beit’s interview with the German Emperor, and the German Emperor’s indignation with Lord Esher as signified in the German Emperor’s letter to Lord Tweedmouth that Sir John Fisher was the most dreaded man in Germany from the Emperor downwards.

It must be emphasized that at this moment we had a mass of effective Submarines and Germany only had three, and we had seven Dreadnoughts fit to fight and Germany had none!

This proposal of mine having been discarded, all that then remained for our inevitable war with Germany was to continue the concentration of our whole Naval strength in the Decisive Theatre of the War, in Northern Waters, which was so unostentatiously carried out that it was only Admiral Mahan’s article in The Scientific American that drew attention to the fact, when he said that 88 per cent. of England’s guns were pointed at Germany.

I mention another excellent illustration of King Edward’s fine and magnanimous character though it’s to my own detriment. He used to say to me often at Big Functions: “Have I missed out anyone, do you think?” for he would go round in a most careful way to speak to all he should. Just then a certain Admiral approached—perhaps the biggest ass I ever met. The King shook hands with him and said something I thought quite unnecessarily loving to him: when he had gone he turned on me like a tiger and said: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” I humbly said, “What for?” “Why!” he replied, “when that man came up to me your face was perfectly demoniacal! Everyone saw it! and the poor fellow couldn’t kick you back! You’re First Sea Lord and he’s a ruined man! You’ve no business to show your hate!” and the lovely thing was that then a man came up I knew the King did perfectly hate, and I’m blessed if he didn’t smile on him and cuddle him as if he was his long-lost brother, and then he turned to me afterwards and said with joyful revenge, “Well! did you see that?” Isn’t that a Great Heart? and is it to be wondered at that he was so Popular?

An Australian wrote a book of his first visit to England. He was on a horse omnibus sitting alongside the ’Bus Driver—suddenly he pulled up the horses with a jerk! The Australian said to him, “What’s up?” The Driver said, “Don’t you see?” pointing to a single mounted policeman riding in front of a one-horse brougham. The Australian said, “What is it?” The ’Bus Driver said, “It’s the King!” The Australian said, “Where’s the escort?” thinking of cavalry and outriders and equerries that he had read of! The ’Bus Driver turned and looked on the Australian with a contemptuous regard and said: “Hescourt? ’e wants no Hescourt! Nobody will touch a ’air of ’is ’ead!” The Australian writes that fixed him up as regards King Edward!

His astounding memory served King Edward beautifully. Once he beckoned me up to him, having finished his tour round the room, to talk about something and I said: “Sir, the new Japanese Ambassador is just behind you and I don’t believe your Majesty has spoken to His Excellency.” The King instantly turned round and said these very words straight off. I remember them exactly; he took my breath away: “My dear Ambassador, do let me shake you by the hand and congratulate you warmly on the splendid achievement yesterday of your wonderful country in launching a ‘Dreadnought’ so completely home-produced in every way, guns, armour engines, and steel, etc. Kindly convey my admiration of this splendid achievement!”

I remembered then that in the yesterday’s paper there had been an account of the great rejoicings in Japan on the launch of this “Dreadnought.” The sequel is good. The Japanese Ambassador sought me later in the evening and said: “Sir John! it was kind of you to remind the King about the ‘Dreadnought’ as it enables me to send a much coveted recognition to Japan in the King’s words!” I said: “My dear Ambassador, I never said a word to the King, and I am truly and heartily ashamed that as First Sea Lord it never occurred to me to congratulate you on what the King has truly designated as a splendid feat!”

I expect the Ambassador spent a young fortune in sending out a telegram to Japan, and do you wonder that King Edward was a Cosmopolitan Idol?

Another occasion to illustrate his saying out of his heart always the right thing at the right time. I was journeying with His Majesty from Biarritz to Toulon—I was alone with him in his railway carriage, there was a railway time table before him. The train began unexpectedly to slow down, and he said “Hulloa! why are we stopping?” I said, “Perhaps, your Majesty, the engine wants a drink!” so we stopped at a big station we were to have passed through—the masses of people shouted not “Vive le Roi!” but “EDOUARD!” (As the Governor of the Bank of France said to a friend of mine, “If he stays in France much longer we shall have him as our King! When’s he going?”). Sir Stanley Clarke I saw get out and fetch the Prefect and the General in Command to the King—the King got out, said something sweet to the Prefect and then turned to the General and said with quite unaffected delight, “Oh, Mon Général! How delightful to meet you again! how glorious was that splendid regiment of yours, the —th Regiment of Infantry, which I inspected 20 years ago!” If I ever saw Heaven in a man’s face, that General had it! He was certainly a most splendid looking man and not to be forgotten, but yet it was striking the King coming out with his immediate remembrance of him. Well! that incident you may be sure went through the French Army, and being a conscript nation, it went into every village of France! Do you wonder he was loved in France? And yet the King had the simplicity and even the weaknesses of a child, and sometimes the petulance thereof. He gave me a lovely box of all sizes of rosettes of the Legion of Honour adapted to each kind of uniform coat, and he added, “Always wear this in France—I find it aids me very much in getting about!” As if he wasn’t as well known in all France as the Town Pump!

These are the sweet incidents that illustrate his nature!

He went to a lunch at Marienbad with some great swells who were there who had invited His Majesty to meet a party of the King’s friends from Carlsbad, where I was—I wasn’t asked—being an arranged snub! A looker-on described the scene to me. The King came in and said “How d’ye do” all round and then said to the Host, “Where’s the Admiral?” My absence was apologised for—lunch was ready and announced. The King said, “Excuse me a moment, I must write him a letter to say how sorry I am at the oversight,” so he left them stewing in their own juice, and His Majesty’s letter to me was lovely—I’ve kept that one. He began by d——ing the pen and then the blotting paper!—there were big blots and smudges! He came back and gave the letter to my friend and said, “See he gets it directly you get back to Carlsbad to-night.”

Once at a very dull lunch party given in his honour I sat next King Edward and said to His Majesty: “Pretty dull, Sir, this—hadn’t I better give them a song?” He was delighted! (he always did enjoy everything!) so I recited (but, of course, I can’t repeat the delicious Cockney tune in writing, so it loses all its aroma!). Two tramps had been camping out (as was their usual custom) in Trafalgar Square. They appear on the stage leaning against each other for support!—too much beer! They look upwards at Nelson on his monument, and in an inimitable and “beery” voice they each sing:

“We live in Trafalgar Square, with four Lions to guard us,

Fountains and statues all over the place!

The ‘Metropole’ staring us right in the face!

We own it’s a trifle draughty—but we don’t want to make no fuss!

What’s good e-nough for Nelson is good e-nough for us!”

On another occasion I was driving with him alone, and utterly carried away by my feelings, I suddenly stood up in the carriage and waved to a very beautiful woman who I thought was in America! The King was awfully angry, but I made it much worse by saying I had forgotten all about him! But he added, “Well! find out where she lives and let me know,” and he gave her little child a sovereign and asked her to dinner, to my intense joy!

On a classic occasion at Balmoral, when staying with King Edward, I unfolded a plan, much to his delight (now that masts and sails are extinct), of fusing the Army into the Navy—an “Army and Navy co-operative society.” And my favourite illustration has always been the magnificent help of our splendid soldiers at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, where a Sergeant of the 69th Regiment was the first to board the Spanish three-decker, “San Josef,” and he turned then round to help Lord Nelson, who, with his one arm, found it difficult to get through the stern port of the “San Josef” again. In Lord Howe’s victory two Regiments participated—the Queen’s Royal West Surrey Regiment (formerly the 2nd Foot) and the Worcestershire Regiment (formerly the 29th and 36th Regiment). Let us hope that the Future will bring us back to that good old practice! This was the occasion when I was so carried away by the subject that I found myself shaking my fist in the King’s face!

Lord Denbigh, in a lecture he gave at the Royal Colonial Institute, related an incident which he quite correctly stated had hitherto been a piece of diplomatic secret history, and it is how I got the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour, associated with a lovely episode with King Edward of blessed memory.

In 1906, at Madeira, the Germans first took an hotel; then they wanted a Convalescent Home; and finally put forth the desire to establish certain vested interests. They imperiously demanded certain concessions from Portugal. The most significant of these amounted to a coaling station isolated and fortified. The German Ambassador at Lisbon called on the Portuguese Prime Minister at 10 o’clock one Saturday night and said that if he didn’t get his answer by 10 o’clock the next night he should leave. The Portuguese sent us a telegram. That night we ordered the British Fleet to move. The next morning the German Ambassador told the Portuguese Prime Minister that he had made a mistake in the cipher, and he was awfully sorry but he wasn’t going; it was all his fault, he said, and he had been reprimanded by his Government. (As if any German had ever yet made a mistake with a telegram!)

To resume about the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour. The French Official statement when conveying to me the felicitations of the President of the French Republic was that I had the distinction of being at that time the only living Englishman who had received this honour, but the disaster that had been averted by the timely action of the British Fleet deserved it. So that evening, on meeting King Edward, I told His Majesty of the quite unexpected honour that I had received, and that I had been informed that I was the only Englishman that had got it, on which the King said: “Excuse me I’ve got it!” Then, alas, I made a faux pas and said “Kings don’t count!” And no more do they! He got it because certainly they all loved him in the first place, and secondly, President Loubet couldn’t help it, while if it hadn’t been for the British Fleet on this occasion the Germans would have been in Paris in a week, and if the Germans had known as much as they do now they would have been!

I don’t mean to urge that King Edward was in any way a clever man. I’m not sure that he could do the rule of three, but he had the Heavenly gift of Proportion and Perspective! Brains never yet moved the Masses—but Emotion and Earnestness will not only move the Masses, but they will remove Mountains! As I told Queen Alexandra on seeing his dear face (dead) for the last time, his epitaph is the great words of Pascal in the “Pensées” (Chapter ix, 19):

“Le cœur a ses raisons

Que la raison ne connaît point.”

(“The heart has reasons that reason knows nothing about”!)

He was a noble man and every inch a King! God Bless Him! I don’t either say he was a Saint! I know lots of cabbages that are saints!—they couldn’t sin if they wanted to!

Postscript.

It suddenly occurred to me to send these notes on King Edward to Lord Esher as he had peculiar opportunities of realizing King Edward’s special qualities as a King, and realized how much there was in him of the Tudor gift of being an autocrat and yet being loved of the people!

Lord Esher to Lord Fisher

Roman Camp,
Callander, N.B.
July 30, 1918.

My dear Admiral,

The pages are wonderful, because they are you.

Not a square inch of pose about them.

Tears! that was the result of reading what you have to say about King Edward. But do you recollect our talk with him on board the Royal Yacht about France and Germany? Surely that was worth recording.

I have kept many of his letters. They show him to have been one of the “cleverest” of men. He had never depended upon book-learning—why should he?

He read, not books—but men and women—and jolly good reading too!

But he knew everything that it was requisite a King should know—unless Learning prepares a man for action, it is not of much value in this work-a-day world: and no Sovereign since the Tudors was so brave and wise in action as this King!

Your anecdotes of him are splendid. Add to them all that you can remember.

It was a pleasure to be scolded by the King for the sake of the smile you subsequently got.

The most awful time I ever had with him was at Balmoral when I refused to be Secretary of State for War. But I beat him on that, thank God!

Ever yours,
My beloved Admiral,
Esher.

Letter from Lord Redesdale

1 Kensington Court, W.
May 24, 1915.

My Dear Fisher,

Do me the favour of accepting this little attempt to render justice to the best friend you ever had. (King Edward the Seventh.)

You and he were worthy of one another. Your old and very affectionate friend,

Redesdale.

The following letter, written in 1907, would never have been penned but for the kindly intimacy and confidence placed and reposed in me by King Edward; it therefore rightly comes in these remarks about him; and so does the subsequent explanatory note on “Nelson and Copenhagen.”

Extract from a Letter from Sir John Fisher to King Edward

I have just received Reich’s book. It is one unmitigated mass of misrepresentations.

In March this year, 1907, it is an absolute fact that Germany had not laid down a single “Dreadnought,” nor had she commenced building a single Battleship or Big Cruiser for eighteen months.

Germany has been paralysed by the “Dreadnought.”

The more the German Admiralty looked into her qualities the more convinced they became that they must follow suit, and the more convinced they were that the whole of their existing Battle Fleet was utterly useless because utterly wanting in gun power! For instance, half of the whole German Battle Fleet is only about equal to the English Armoured Cruisers.

The German Admiralty wrestled with the “Dreadnought” problem for eighteen months, and did nothing. Why? Because it meant their spending twelve and a half million sterling on widening and deepening the Kiel Canal, and in dredging all their harbours and all the approaches to their harbours, because if they did not do so it would be no use building German “Dreadnoughts” because they could not float! But there was another reason never yet made public. It is this: Our Battleships draw too much water to get close into the German Coast and harbours (we have to build ours big to go all over the world with great fuel endurance). But the German Admiralty is going, is indeed obliged, to spend twelve and a half million sterling in dredging so as to allow these existing ships of ours to go and fight them in their own waters when before they could not do so. It was, indeed, a Machiavellian interference of Providence on our behalf that brought about the evolution of the “Dreadnought.”

To return to Mr. Reich. He makes the flesh of the British public creep at page 78 et seq., by saying what the Germans are going to do. He does not say what they have done and what we have done.

Now this is the truth: England has seven “Dreadnoughts” and three “Dreadnought” Battle Cruisers (which last three ships are, in my opinion, far better than “Dreadnoughts”); total, ten “Dreadnoughts” built and building, while Germany, in March last, had not begun even one “Dreadnought.” It is doubtful if, even so late as May last, a German “Dreadnought” had been commenced. It will therefore be seen, from this one fact, what a liar Mr. Reich is.

Again, at page 86, he makes out the Germans are stronger than we are in torpedo craft, and states that England has only 24 fully commissioned Destroyers.

Again, what are the real facts? As stated in an Admiralty official document, dated August 22nd, 1907: “We have 123 Destroyers and 40 Submarines. The Germans have 48 Destroyers and 1 Submarine.”

The whole of our Destroyers and Submarines are absolutely efficient and ready for instant battle and are fully manned, except a portion of the Destroyers, which have four-fifths of their crew on board. Quite enough for instant service, and can be filled up under an hour to full crew. And they are all of them constantly being exercised.

There is one more piece of information I have to give: Admiral Tirpitz, the German Minister of Marine, has just stated, in a secret official document, that the English Navy is now four times stronger than the German Navy. Yes, that is so, and we are going to keep the British Navy at that strength, vide ten “Dreadnoughts” built and building, and not one German “Dreadnought” commenced last May. But we don’t want to parade all this to the world at large. Also we might have Parliamentary trouble. A hundred and fifty members of the House of Commons have just prepared one of the best papers I have ever read, shewing convincingly that we don’t want to lay down any new ships at all because we are so strong. My answer is: We can’t be too strong. Sir Charles Dilke, in the United Service Magazine for this month, says: “Sir George Clarke points out that the Navy is now, in October, 1907, stronger than at any previous time in all History,” and he adds that Sir George Clarke, in making this printed statement, makes it with the full knowledge of all the secrets of the Government, because, as Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, he, Sir George Clarke, has access to every bit of information that exists in regard to our own and foreign Naval strength.

King Edward VII. (who died May 6th, 1910) saying Good-bye to Lord Fisher, First Sea Lord, 1910.

(Lord Fisher 69, so also the King.)

N.B.—The King thought the 1841 vintage very good. Certainly good men were born that year!

In conclusion, a letter in The Times of September 17th, 1907, should be read. The writer of the letter understates the case, as the British Home Fleet is twenty per cent. stronger than he puts it.

As regards Mr. Reich’s Naval statements, they are a réchauffé of the mendacious drivel of a certain English newspaper. I got a letter last night from a trustworthy person à propos of these virulent and persistent newspaper attacks as to the weakness of the Navy, stating that the recent inspection of the Fleet by Your Majesty has knocked the bottom out of the case against the Admiralty.

I don’t mean to say that we are not now menaced by Germany. Her diplomacy is, and always has been, and always will be, infinitely superior to ours. Observe our treatment of the Sultan as compared with Germany. The Sultan is the most important personage in the whole world for England. He lifts his finger, and Egypt and India are in a blaze of religious disaffection. That great American, Mr. Choate, swore to me before going to the Hague Conference that he would side with England over submarine mines and other Naval matters, but Germany has diplomatically collared the United States absolutely at The Hague.

The only thing in the world that England has to fear is Germany, and none else.

We have no idea, at the Foreign Office, of coping with the German propaganda in America. Our Naval Attaché in the United States tells me that the German Emperor is unceasing in his efforts to win over the American Official authorities, and that the German Embassy at Washington is far and away in the ascendant with the American Government.

I hope I shall not be considered presumptuous in saying all this. I humbly confess I am neither a diplomatist nor a politician. I thank God I am neither. The former are senile, and the latter are liars. But it all does seem such simple common sense to me that for our Army we require mobile troops as against sedentary garrisons, and that our military intervention in any very great Continental struggle is unwise, remembering what Napoleon said on that point with such emphasis and such sure conception of war, and that great combined Naval and Military expeditions should be our rôle. In the splendid words of Sir Edward Grey: “The British Army should be a projectile to be fired by the British Navy.”

The foundation of our policy is that the communications of the Empire must be kept open by a predominant Fleet, and ipso facto such a Fleet will suffice to allay the fears of the “old women of both sexes” in regard to the invasion of England or the invasion of her Colonies.

Nelson’s Copenhagen

In May, 1907, England had seven “Dreadnoughts” ready for battle, and Germany had not one. And England had flotillas of submarines peculiarly adapted to the shallower German waters when Germany had none.

Even in 1908 Germany only had four submarines. At that time, in the above letter I wrote to King Edward, I approached His Majesty, and quoted certain apposite sayings of Mr. Pitt about dealing with the probable enemy before he got too strong. It is admitted that it was not quite a gentlemanly sort of thing for Nelson to go and destroy the Danish Fleet at Copenhagen without notice, but “la raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure.”

Therefore, in view of the known steadfast German purpose, as always unmitigatedly set forth by the German High Authority that it was Germany’s set intention to make even England’s mighty Navy hesitate at sea, it seemed to me simply a sagacious act on England’s part to seize the German Fleet when it was so very easy of accomplishment in the manner I sketched out to His Majesty, and probably without bloodshed. But, alas! even the very whisper of it excited exasperation against the supposed bellicose, but really peaceful, First Sea Lord, and the project was damned. At that time, Germany was peculiarly open to this “peaceful penetration.” A new Kiel Canal, at the cost of many, many millions, had been rendered necessary by the advent of the “Dreadnought”; but worse still for the Germans, it was necessary for them to spend further vast millions in deepening not only the approaches to the German Harbours, but the Harbours themselves, to allow the German “Dreadnoughts,” when built, to be able to float. In doing this, the Germans were thus forced to arrange that thirty-three British pre-“Dreadnoughts” should be capable of attacking their shores, which shallow water had previously denied them. Such, therefore, was the time of stress and unreadiness in Germany that made it peculiarly timely to repeat Nelson’s Copenhagen. Alas! we had no Pitt, no Bismarck, no Gambetta! And consequently came those terrible years of War, with millions massacred and maimed and many millions more of their kith and kin with piercèd hearts and bereft of all that was mortal for their joy.

Queen Alexandra, Lord Knollys, and Sir Dighton Probyn.

At the end of these short and much too scant memories of him whom Lord Redesdale rightly calls in the letter I printed above

“The best friend you ever had,”

I can’t but allude to a Trio forming so great a part of his Glory. Not to name them here would be “King Edward—an Unreality.” I could not ask Queen Alexandra for permission either to print her Letters or her Words, but I am justified in printing how her steadfast love, and faith, and wonderful loyalty and fidelity to her husband have proved how just is the judgment of Her Majesty by the Common People—“the most loved Woman in the whole Nation.”

And then Lord Knollys and Sir Dighton Probyn, those two Great Pillars of Wisdom and Judgment, who so reminded me, as they used to sit side by side in the Royal Chapel, of those two who on either side held up the arms of Moses in fighting the Amalekites:

“And Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands,

The one on the one side, and the other on the other side;

And his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.”

Yes! King Edward’s hands were held steady till the setting of his sun on May 6th, 1910, and so did he “discomfit his enemies by their aid.”

For over forty years Lord Knollys played that great part in great affairs which will occupy his Biographer with Admiration of his Self-Effacement and unerring Judgment. Myself I owe him gratitude inexpressible.

For myself, those Great Three ever live in my heart and ever will.

There are no such that I know of who are left to us to rise in their place.

CHAPTER II
“THE MOON SWAYS OCEANS AND PROVOKES THE HOUND.”

The hound keeps baying at the moon but gets no answer from her, and she continues silently her mighty influence in causing the tides of the earth, such a mighty influence as I have seen in the Bay of Fundy, and on the coast of Arcadia where the tide rises some 40 feet—you see it like a high wall rolling in towards you on the beach! It exalts one, and the base things of earth vanish from one’s thoughts. So also may the contents of this book be like-minded by a mighty silence against baying hounds! I hope to name no living name except for praise, and even against envy I hope I may be silent. Envy caused the first murder. It was the biggest and nastiest of all Cæsar’s wounds:

“See what a rent the envious Casca made.”

My impenetrable armour is Contempt and Fortitude.

Well, yesterday September 7th, 1919, we completed our conversations for the six articles in The Times, and to-day we begin this book with similar talks.

My reluctance to this book being published before my death is increasingly definite; but I have put my hand to the plough, because of the overbearing argument that I cannot resist, that I shall be helping to

(a) Avoid national bankruptcy.

(b) Avert the insanity and wickedness of building a Navy against the United States.

(c) Establish a union with America, as advocated by John Bright and Mr. Roosevelt.

(d) Enable the United States and British Navies to say to all other Navies “If you build more, we will fight you, here and now. We’ll ‘Copenhagen’ you, without remorse.”

This is why I have consented, with such extreme reluctance, to write letters to The Times and dictate six articles; and having thus entered into the fight, I follow the advice of Polonius—Vestigia nulla retrorsum. And so, to-day, I will begin this book—not an autobiography, but a collection of memories of a life-long war against limpets, parasites, sycophants, and jellyfish—at one time there were 19½ millions sterling of ’em. At times they stung; but that only made me more relentless, ruthless and remorseless.

Why I so hate a book, and those articles in The Times, and even the letters, is that the printed word never can convey the virtue of the soul. The aroma is not there—it evaporates when printed—a scentless product, flat and stale like a bad bottle of champagne. It is like an embalmed corpse. Personality, which is the soul of man, is absent from the reader. It is a man’s personality that is the living thing, and in the other world that is the thing you will meet. I have often asked ecclesiastics—“What period of life will the resurrected body represent?” It has always been a poser for them! There will not be any bodies, thank God! we have had quite enough trouble with them down below here. St. Paul distinctly says that it is a spiritual body in the Resurrection. It is our Personalities that will talk to each other in Heaven. I don’t care at what age of a man’s life, even when toothless and decrepit and indistinguishable as he may then be, yet like another Rip Van Winkle, when he speaks you know him. However, that’s a digression.

What I want to rub in is this: The man who reads this in his armchair in the Athenæum Club would take it all quite differently if I could walk up and down in front of him and shake my fist in his face.

(It was a lovely episode this recalls to my mind. King Edward—God bless him!—said to me once in one of my moments of wild enthusiasm: “Would you kindly leave off shaking your fist in my face?”)

I tried once, so as to make the dead print more lifelike, using different kinds of type—big Roman block letters for the “fist-shaking,” large italics for the cajoling, small italics for the facts, and ordinary print for the fool. The printer’s price was ruinous, and the effect ludicrous. But I made this compromise and he agreed to it—whenever the following words occurred they were to be printed in large capitals: “Fool,” “Ass,” “Congenital Idiot.” Myself, I don’t know that I am singular, but I seldom read a book. I look at the pages as you look at a picture, and grasp it that way. Of course, I know what the skunks will say when they read this—“Didn’t I tell you he was superficial? and here he is judged out of his own mouth.” I do confess to having only one idea at a time, and King Edward found fault with me and said it would be my ruin; so I replied: “Anyhow, I am stopping a fortnight with you at Balmoral, and I never expected that when I entered the Navy, penniless, friendless, and forlorn!” Besides, didn’t Solomon and Mr. Disraeli both say that whatever you did you were to do it with all your might? You can’t do more than one thing at a time with all your might—that’s Euclid. Mr. Disraeli added something to Solomon—he said “there was nothing you couldn’t have if only you wanted it enough.” And such is my only excuse for whatever success I have had. I have only had one idea at a time. Longo intervallo, I have been a humble, and I endeavoured to be an unostentatious, follower of our Immortal Hero. Some venomous reptile (his name has disappeared—I tried in vain to get hold of it at Mr. Maggs’s bookshop only the other day) called Nelson “vain and egotistical.” Good God! if he seemed so, how could he help it? Some nip-cheese clerk at the Admiralty wrote to him for a statement of his services, to justify his being given a pension for his wounds. His arm off, his eye out, his scalp torn off at the Nile—that clerk must have known that quite well but it elicited a gem. Let us thank God for that clerk! How this shows one the wonderful working of the Almighty Providence, and no doubt whatever that fools are an essential feature in the great scheme of creation. Why!—didn’t some geese cackling save Rome? Nelson told this clerk he had been in a hundred fights and he enumerated his wounds; and his letter lives to illumine his fame.

The Almighty has a place for nip-cheese clerks as much as for the sweetest wild flower that perishes in a day.

It is really astounding that Nelson’s life has not yet been properly written. All that has been written is utterly unrepresentative of him. The key-notes of his being were imagination, audacity, tenderness.

He never flogged a man. (One of my first Captains flogged every man in the ship and was tried for cruelty, but being the scion of a noble house he was promoted to a bigger ship instead of being shot.) It oozed out of Nelson that he felt in himself the certainty of effecting what to other men seemed rash and even maniacal rashness; and this involved his seeming vain and egotistical. Like Napoleon’s presence on the field of battle that meant 40,000 men, so did the advent of Nelson in a fleet (this is a fact) make every common sailor in that fleet as sure of victory as he was breathing. I have somewhere a conversation of two sailors that was overheard and taken down after the battle of Trafalgar, which illustrates what I have been saying. Great odds against ’em—but going into action the odds were not even thought of, they were not dreamt of, by these common men. Nelson’s presence was victory. However, I must add here that he hated the word Victory. What he wanted was Annihilation. That Crowning Mercy (as Cromwell would have called it), the battle of the Nile, deserves the wonderful pen of Lord Rosebery, but he won’t do it. Warburton in “The Crescent and the Cross” gives a faint inkling of what the glorious chronicle should be. For two years, that frail body of his daily tormented with pain (he was a martyr to what they now call neuritis—I believe they called it then “tic douloureux”), he never put his foot outside his ship, watching off Toulon. The Lord Mayor and Citizens of London sent him a gold casket for keeping the hostile fleet locked up in Toulon. He wrote back to say he would take the casket, but he never wanted to keep the French Fleet in harbour; he wanted them to come out. But he did keep close in to Toulon for fear of missing them coming out in darkness or in a fog.

In his two years off Toulon Nelson only made £6,000 of prize money, while it was a common thing for the Captain of a single man-of-war off the Straits of Gibraltar to make a haul of £20,000, and Prize-Money Admirals in crowds basked in Bath enriched beyond the dreams of avarice. Nelson practically died a pauper.

Now this is another big digression which I must apologise for, but that’s the damnable part of a book. If one could walk up and down and talk to someone, it never strikes them as incongruous having a digression.

I wind up this chapter, as I began it, with the fervent intention of avoiding any reference to those who have assailed me. I will only print their affectionate letters to me, for which I still retain the most affectionate feelings towards them. I regret now that on one occasion I did so far lose my self-control as to tell a specific Judas to take back his thirty pieces of silver and go and hang himself. However, eventually he did get hanged, so it was all right.

CHAPTER III
ADMIRAL VON POHL AND ADMIRAL VON TIRPITZ

Yesterday, September 8th, 1919 (I must put this date down because yesterday in a telegram I called von Tirpitz a liar) I got an enquiry whether it was correct that in 1909, as stated by Admiral von Tirpitz, I, as First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, engineered a German Naval Scare in England in order to get bigger British Naval estimates—and that I had said this to the German Naval Attaché. I replied “Tell Tirpitz—using the immortal words of Dr. Johnson—‘you lie Sir, and you know it!’” Now, first of all, could I possibly have told the German Naval Attaché such a thing if I possessed the Machiavellian nature which is inferred by Tirpitz?

Secondly, there was a vast multitude of acute domestic enemies too closely watching me to permit any such manœuvre.

This affords an opportunity of telling you some very interesting facts about Tirpitz. They came to be known through the widow of Admiral von Pohl (who had been at the German Admiralty and commanded the German High Sea Fleet) interviewing a man who had been a prisoner at Ruhleben. He relates a conversation with Frau von Pohl, and he mentions her being an intimate friend of the German ex-Crown Princess, and as being extremely intelligent. Frau von Pohl had been reading Lord Jellicoe’s book, and said to the ex-Ruhleben prisoner: “How strange is the parallel between Germany and Britain, that in both Navies the Admirals were in a stew as to the failings of their respective fleets.” So much so on the German side, she said, that the German Fleet did not consider itself ready to fight till two months before the battle of Jutland, and the Germans till then lived in a constant fever of trepidation. These were the questions she heard. “‘Why do the English not attack? Will the English attack to-morrow?’[3] These questions we asked ourselves hourly. We felt like crabs in the process of changing their shells. Apparently our secret never oozed out.” She put the inefficiency of the German Fleet all down to Tirpitz, and said that if any man deserved hanging it was he. Admiral von Pohl was supposed to have committed suicide through dejection. If all this be true, how it does once more illuminate that great Nelsonic maxim of an immediate Offensive in war! Presumably Frau von Pohl had good information; and she added: “The only reason Tirpitz was not dismissed sooner was lest the British should suspect from his fall something serious was the matter, and attack at once.”[4] Part of her interview is of special interest, as it so reminded me of my deciding on Scapa Flow as the base for the fleet. For as Frau von Pohl states, its speciality was that the German Destroyers could not get to Scapa Flow and back at full speed. Their fuel arrangements were inadequate for such a distance. “My husband,” she said, “was called out by the Emperor to put things right, but was in a constant state of trepidation.” Alas! trepidation was on our side also, for in a book written by a Naval Lieutenant he says how a German submarine was supposed to have got inside Scapa.[5] As a matter of fact, it was subsequently discovered that a torpedo had rolled out of its tube aboard one of our Destroyers and passed close to H.M.S. “Leda,” who quite properly reported “a torpedo has passed under my stern.” This caused all the excitement.

Admiral von Pohl succeeded Admiral von Ingenohl as Commander-in-Chief of the German High Sea Fleet. It has not much bearing on what I have been saying, but it is interesting that Frau von Pohl said that the wife of the German Minister of the Interior had told her that her husband, on November 6th, five days before the Armistice, had talked to the Emperor of the truth as to the German inferiority. The Emperor listened, first with amazement, and then with incredulity, and ultimately in a passion of rage called him a madman and an arrogant fool, and turned him out in fury from his presence. This is not quite on all fours with Ludendorff, but Ludendorff may have been confining himself strictly to the fighting condition of the Army; and without doubt he was right there, for General Plumer told me himself he had the opportunity of bearing personal testimony to the complete efficiency of the German Army at the moment of the Armistice. Plumer was, it may be observed, rightly accorded the honour of leading the British Army into Cologne.

The man who contemplates all the things that may be somewhat at fault and adds up his own war deficiencies with that curious failure of judgment to realise that his enemy has got as many if not more, has neither the Napoleonic nor the Nelsonic gift of Imagination and Audacity. We know, now, how very near—within almost a few minutes of total destruction (at the time the battle-cruiser “Blucher” was sunk)—was the loss to the Germans of several even more powerful ships than the “Blucher,” more particularly the “Seydlitz.” Alas! there was a fatal doubt which prevented the continuance of the onslaught, and it was indeed too grievous that we missed by so little so great a “Might Have Been!” Well, anyhow, we won the war and it is all over. But I for one simply abominate the saying “Let bygones be bygones.” I should shoot ’em now! And seek another Voltaire.

Sir John Fisher in “Renown,” 1897.

I get the following from Lord Esher:—“In January, 1906, King Edward sent me to see Mr. Beit, who had been recently received by the German Emperor at Potsdam. The Emperor said to Beit that ‘England wanted war: not the King—not, perhaps, the Government; but influential people like Sir John Fisher.’ He said Fisher held that because the British Fleet was in perfect order, and the German Fleet was not ready, England should provoke war. Beit said he had met Fisher at Carlsbad, and had long talks with him, and that what he said to him did not convey at all the impression gathered by His Imperial Majesty. The Emperor replied: ‘He thinks it is the hour for an attack, and I am not blaming him. I quite understand his point of view; but we, too, are prepared, and if it comes to war the result will depend upon the weight you carry into action—namely, a good conscience, and I have that.... Fisher can, no doubt, land 100,000 men in Schleswig-Holstein—it would not be difficult—and the British Navy has reconnoitred the coast of Denmark with this object during the cruise of the Fleet. But Fisher forgets that it will be for me to deal with the 100,000 men when they are landed.’”

The German Emperor told another friend of mine the real spot. It was not Schleswig-Holstein—that was only a feint to be turned into a reality against the Kiel Canal if things went well. No, the real spot was the Pomeranian Coast, under a hundred miles from Berlin, where the Russian Army landed in the time of Frederick the Great. Frederick felt it was the end and sent for a bottle of poison, but he didn’t take it, as the Russian Empress died that night and peace came.

Long before I heard from Lord Esher, I had written the following note about Beit:—

A mutual friend at Carlsbad introduced me to Mr. Beit, the great South African millionaire. He adored Cecil Rhodes, and so did I. Beit, so I was told, had got it into his head that I somewhat resembled his dead friend, and he talked to me on one occasion about Rhodes until 3 a.m. after dining together. Beit begged me to come and see him on my return to London at his house in Park Lane, just then finished, but I never did for I was vastly busy then. I was troubled on all sides, like St. Paul.

“Without were fightings, and within were fears.” Fighting outside the Admiralty, and fears inside it.

He really was a dear man, was Beit.

Of course I don’t know anything about his business character. Apparently there is a character a man puts on in business, just as a man does in politics, and it may be quite different from his character as a gentleman.

Beit every year made a pilgrimage to Hamburg, to see his old mother, who lived there, and it much touched me, his devotion to her. But our bond of affection was our affection for Rhodes.

The German Emperor sent for Beit, for I gathered that Beit saw how peace was threatened. I don’t know if this was the reason of the interview. In this Imperial conversation my name turned up as Lord Esher had made a statement that by all from the German Emperor downwards I was the most hated man in Germany. The German Emperor did say to Beit that I was dangerous, and that he knew of my ideas as regards the Baltic being Germany’s vulnerable spot, and he had heard of my idea for the “Copenhagening” of the German Fleet. But this last I much doubt. He only said it because he knew it was what we ought to have done.

With regard to saying anything more of that interview I prefer to keep silent. In an Italian book, printed at Brescia in A.D. 1594, occur these words of Steven Guazzo;

“They should know,” says Anniball, “that it is no lesse admirable to know how to holde one’s peace than to know how to speake. For, as wordes well uttered shewe eloquance and learning, so silence well kept sheweth prudence and gravitie!”

I wish Beit could have read Stead’s splendid appreciation of Cecil Rhodes, who describes him as a Titan of intrinsic nobility and sincerity, of innate excellence of heart, and immense vitality of genius, and describes the splendid impulsiveness of his generous nature. I am told that Rhodes’s favourite quotation was from Marcus Aurelius:

“Take care always to remember you are a Roman, and let every action be done with perfect and unaffected gravity, humanity, freedom and justice.”

Stead’s opinion was that Rhodes was a practical mystic of the Cromwell type. Stead was right. Rhodes was a Cromwell. He was Cromwellian in thoroughness, he was Napoleonic in audacity, and he was Nelsonic in execution.

“Let us praise famous men.” (Ecclesiasticus, chapter 44, verse 1).

From Lord Fisher to a Friend

36, Berkeley Square.

My Dear Friend,

I was asked yesterday: Could I end the War?

I said: “Yes, by one decisive stroke!”

“What’s the stroke?” I was asked.

I replied: “Never prescribe till you are called in.”

But I said this: “Winston once told me, ‘You can see Visions! That’s why you should come back.’”

For instance, even Jellicoe was against me in sending the Battle Cruisers to gobble up von Spee at the Falkland Islands! (All were against me!) Yes! and all were against me in 1904! when the Navy was turned inside out—ships, officers and men. “A New Heaven and a New Earth!” 160 ships put on the scrap heap because they could neither fight nor run away! Vide Mr. Balfour’s speech at Manchester about this “Courageous stroke of the pen!”

We now want another Courageous Stroke! And the Stroke is ready! It’s the British Navy waiting to strike! And it would end the War!

This project of mine sounds an impossibility! but so did von Spee’s annihilation! Pitt said “I walk on Impossibilities.” All the old women of both sexes would squirm at it! They equally squirmed when I did away with 19½ millions sterling of parasites in ships, officers and men, between 1904 and 1910! They squirmed when, at one big plunge, we introduced the Turbine in the Dreadnought (the Turbine only before having been in a penny steamboat). They squirmed at my introduction of the water tube Boiler, when I put the fire where the water used to be and the water where the fire used to be! And now 82 per cent. of the Horse Power of the whole world is Turbine propulsion actuated by water tube Boilers!

They squirmed when I concentrated 88 per cent. of the British Fleet in the North Sea, and this concentration was only found out by accident, and so published to the ignorant world, by Admiral Mahan in an article in The Scientific American!

And they squirm now when I say at one stroke the War could be ended. It could be!

Yours, etc.
(Signed) Fisher.

Lord Fisher to a Privy Councillor

36, Berkeley Square,
London,
Dec. 27, 1916.

My Dear Friend,

You’ve sent me a very charming letter, though I begged you not to trouble yourself to write, but as you have written and said things I am constrained to reply, lest you should be under false impressions. I have an immense regard for Jellicoe.... Callaghan I got where he was—he was a great friend of mine—but Jellicoe was better; and Jellicoe, in spite of mutinous threats, was appointed Admiralissimo on the eve of war. I just mention all this to show what I’ve done for Jellicoe because I knew him to be a born Commander of a Fleet! Like poets, Fleet Admirals are born, not made! Nascitur non fit! Jellicoe is incomparable as the Commander of a Fleet, but to prop up an effete Administration he allowed himself to be cajoled away from his great post of duty. I enclose my letter to him.

I need hardly say how private all this is, but you are so closely associated with all the wonders we effected from October 21, 1904, onwards, that I feel bound to take you into my inmost confidence. Jellicoe retorted I had praised Beatty—so I had! See my reply thereon. I told the Dardanelles Commission (why they asked me I don’t know!) that Jellicoe had all the Nelsonic attributes except one—he is totally wanting in the great gift of Insubordination. Nelson’s greatest achievements were all solely due to his disobeying orders! But that’s another story, as Mr. Kipling would say. Wait till we meet, and I’ll astonish you on this subject! Any fool can obey orders! But it required a Nelson to disobey Sir John Jervis at the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, to disregard the order to retire at Copenhagen, to go into the Battle of the Nile by night with no charts against orders, and, to crown all, to enter into the Battle of Trafalgar in a battle formation contrary to all the Sea orders of the time! Bless him! Alas! Jellicoe is saturated with Discipline! He is THE ONE MAN to command the Fleet, BUT he is not the man to stand up against a pack of lawyers clothed with Cabinet garments, and possessed with tongues that have put them where they are!

David was nodding when he said in the Psalms: “A man full of words shall not prosper on the Earth.” They are the very ones that DO prosper! For War, my dead Friend, you want a totally differently constituted mind to that of a statesman and politician! There are great exemplars of immense minds being utter fools! They weigh everything in the Balance! I know great men who never came to a prompt decision—men who could talk a bird out of a tree!

War is Big Conceptions and Quick Decisions. Think in Oceans. Shoot at Sight! The essence of War is Violence. Moderation in War is Imbecility. All we have done this war is to imitate the Germans! We have neither been Napoleonic in Audacity nor Cromwellian in Thoroughness nor Nelsonic in execution. Always, always, always “Too Late”!

I could finish this present German submarine menace in a few weeks, but I must have POWER! My plans would be emasculated if I handed them in. I must be able to say to the men I employ: “If you don’t do what I tell you, I’ll make your wife a widow and your house a dunghill!!!” (and they know I would!)

Don’t prescribe till you’re called in! Someone else might put something else in the pill!

Heaven bless you!

When people come and sympathise with me, I always reply, with those old Romans 2,000 years ago expelled:

“Non fugimus:

Nos fugamur.”

“We are not Deserters,

We are Outcasts.”

Yours, etc.
(Signed) Fisher.

From a Privy Councillor to Lord Fisher

Jan. 8th, 1917.

My Dear Fisher,

I have always thought Jellicoe one of those rare exceptions to the general rule that no great commander is ever a good administrator. I knew you had picked him out long ago to command the Grand Fleet if war came, and it is in my mind that you had told me years ago your opinion of him as a Sea Commander so that it was what I was expecting and hoping for at the time, though I was sorry for Jellicoe superseding Callaghan when the war broke out, but I remembered your old saying, “Some day the Empire will go down because it is Buggins’s turn”! At the same time, I’m not sure that any man can stand the strain of active command under present conditions for more than 2½ years. I see no sign of tiredness about Jellicoe now, but it must be almost impossible to keep at high tension so long without losing some of the spring and dash, and it did look as if a stronger man than Jackson was wanted as First Sea Lord at the Admiralty. Of course when you were First Sea Lord and Jellicoe with the Grand Fleet it was absolutely the right combination, but as they haven’t brought you back to the Admiralty I feel Jellicoe is the man to be where he is, provided his successor is the right man too. I don’t know Beatty, so can only go by what I hear of him. I can only pray that when his day of trial comes he will come up to your high standard.

I largely agree with all you say about the politicians. No doubt our great handicap in this war is that nearly all the party leaders get their positions through qualities which serve them admirably in peace time, but are fatal in war. The great art in politics in recent years has always seemed to me to be to pretend to lead, when you are really following the public bent of the moment. All sense of right and wrong is blunted, and no one stands up for what he honestly believes in but which may not at the moment be popular. If he does, he is regarded as a fool, and a “waster,” and may get out. A habit of mind is thus formed which is wholly wanting in initiative, and in war the initiative is everything. I agree with you absolutely:—“Make up your mind, and strike! and strike hard and without mercy.” We have thrown away chance upon chance, and nothing saves us but the splendid fighting material at our disposal. I doubt whether the recent changes will bring about any great change. I trust they may, but, whatever happens, neither side can go on indefinitely. Everything points to Germany’s economic condition being very bad, and there may come a crash, but meantime the submarine warfare is most serious, and no complete answer to it is yet available.

Yours very sincerely,
________________

CHAPTER IV
ECONOMY IS VICTORY

Mr. Gladstone stood by me last night. Mr. McKenna was by his side. I am not inventing this dream. It is a true story. (It is Godly sincerity that wins—not fleshly wisdom!)

A gentleman, such as you, was by way of interviewing Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone was castigating me. I was a Public Department. He said to you, who were interviewing him, that he was helpless against all the Public Departments, for he was fighting for Economy, and he gave a case to you worse than either Chepstow or Slough. I am sorry to say it was the War Office he was illustrating, as I am devoted to Mr. Churchill and would not hurt him for the world—even in a dream. It is too puerile to describe in print, but what Mr. Gladstone pointed to I have told you in conversation.

Now, the above is an Allegory.

Imagine! nearly a year after the Armistice and yet we are spending two millions sterling a day beyond an absolutely fabulous income—beyond any income ever yet produced by any Empire or any Nation!

Sweep them out!

Dr. Macnamara, a few days since, in his apologia pro vita sua excuses his Department to the public by saying that on the very day of the Armistice the Board of Admiralty sat on Economy! So they did! They sat on it!

Economy! To send Squadrons all over the globe that were not there before! The globe did without them during the War—why not now? “Oh my Sacred Aunt!” (as the French say when in an extremity). “Showing the flag,” I suppose, for that was the cry of the “baying hounds” in 1905 when we brought home some 160 vessels of war that could neither fight nor run away—and whose Officers were shooting pheasants up Chinese rivers and giving tea parties to British Consuls. How those Consuls did write! And how agitated was the Foreign Office! I must produce some of these communications directly “DORA” is abolished. Well, that’s what “showing the flag” means.

Sweep ’em out!

Gladstone was hopeless against Departments—so is now the Nation.

Dr. Macnamara may not know it, but Mr. Herbert Samuel was to have had his place. I did not know either of them, but I said to the Prime Minister “Let’s have the ‘Two Macs’!” Mind, I don’t class him with the Music Hall artist. (Tempus: Death of Campbell-Bannerman)—that epoch—I cannot forget Mr. Asquith’s kindness to me. He had telephoned to me from Bordeaux after seeing the King at Biarritz, asking me to meet him on his arrival home next night at 8.30 p.m. at 40 Cavendish Square. His motor car was leaving the door as I arrived. He told me he had seen the King, and had proposed Mr. McKenna as First Lord of the Admiralty. The King seemed to have some suspicion that I should not think Mr. McKenna a congenial spirit. I made no objection—I thought to myself that if Mr. McKenna were hostile then Tempus edax rerum. I don’t think Jonathan and David were “in it,” when Mr. McKenna and I parted on January 25th, 1910—my selected day to go and plant roses in Norfolk. I blush to quote the Latin inscription on the beautiful vase he gave me;

Joanni Fisher
Baroni Kilverstonæ
Navarchorum Principi, Ensis, Linguæ,
Stili Valde Perito,
Vel in Concilio vel in Praelio insigni,
Nihil Timenti,
Inflexibili, Indomitabili, Invincibili,[6]
Pignus Amicitiæ Sempiternae,
Dederunt Reginaldus et Pamela McKenna.
To
John
Lord Fisher of Kilverstone
First of Admirals
Skilled of Sword, Tongue & Pen
Brilliant in Council and Battle
Dreading Nought
Inflexible, Indomitable, Invincible[6]
This Token of Enduring Friendship
a Gift from
Reginald & Pamela McKenna

And, even now, when time and absence might have deadened those feelings of affection, he casts himself into the burning fiery furnace, bound with me in a trusteeship of a huge estate with only 3s. 4d. in the £ left—all that the spendthrifts leave us. “Showing the flag” and presumably resuscitating the same old game of multitudinous dockyards to minister to the ships that are “showing the flag”; and so more Chepstows and more Sloughs! And these multitudes of shipwrights superfluous in Government Dockyards who ought to be in day and night shifts making good at Private Yards the seven millions sterling of merchant vessels that Dr. Macnamara’s Government associates supinely allowed to be sent to the bottom! Those political and professional associates, who, instead of using the unparalleled British Navy of the moment as a colossal weapon for landing Russian Armies in Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein, aided by the calm and tideless waters of the Baltic, were led astray to follow the road that led to conscription and an army of Four Million Soldiers, while the Navy was described in the House of Commons as “a subsidiary service.” How Napoleon must now be chortling at his prognostication coming true, that he put forth at St. Helena, as described on page 177 of Lord Rosebery’s “Last Phase,” that the day we left the sea would be our downfall!

But this chapter is on “Economy”; and I have to tell a story here about my dear friend McKenna. He was Secretary of the Treasury; he, and an almost equal friend of mine—Mr. Runciman—were, as we all know, extremely cunning at figures. Lots of people were then looking after me—Kind friends! For instance, I remember my good friend John Burns at one Cabinet Committee meeting instructing me on a piece of blotting paper how to deal with a hostile fleet. I don’t mean to say that John Burns would not have been a first-class Admiral. To be a good Admiral, a man does not need to be a good sailor. That’s a common mistake. He wants good sailors under him. He is the Conceptionist. However, to resume. At that time I was “Pooh-Bah” at the Admiralty; the First Lord was in a trance, and the Financial Secretary had locomotor ataxy. I was First Sea Lord, and I acted for both the Financial Secretary and the First Lord in their absence. I wasn’t justified, but I did it. So I was the tria juncta in uno; and I referred, as First Sea Lord, a matter to the Financial Secretary for his urgent and favourable consideration, and he favourably commended it to the First Lord, who invariably cordially approved. It was all over in about a minute. Business buzzed!

(I’m doubtful whether this ought to come out before Dora’s abolished. That’s why I wanted these papers to be edited in the United States by some indiscreet woman, where no action for libel lies. Colonel House did ask me to go to America when I saw him in Paris last May. There is a great temptation, for the climate goes from the Equator to the Pole, and a dear American Admiral friend of mine expatiated to me on the joy of laying hold of the hand of the summer girl at Palm Beach in Florida and never letting it go until you get to Bar Harbour in the State of Maine. I have had endless invitations and most hearty words from Florida to Maine, and from Passedena to Boston, and I have as many American dear friends as I have English.)

Well! the Treasury could not make out how all those submarines were being built—where the devil the money was coming from; so these ferrets came over. I led a dog’s life, or rather a rabbit’s life, chased from hole to hole. Nothing came of it; and as an outcome of that time I left the Admiralty with 61 good submarines and 13 building. The Germans, thank God! had gone to the bottom with their first submarine, which never came up again, and the few more they had at that time were not much use.

I must tell a story now. Mind! I don’t want to run down the Treasury. The Treasury is an absolutely necessary affliction.

There was once a good Parsee ship-owner with a good Captain. But this Captain would charge his owner with the cost of his carriage from his ship to the office. Not being far, the old Parsee thought the Captain ought to walk, and if he didn’t walk then he ought to pay for the cab himself. They call the carriages “buggies” at Bombay. However, when the old Parsee had to pay the bill next month—there it was: “Buggy—so many rupees.” He told his Captain he would pay that once but never again; and not finding it in the items of the bill presented the following month he gave the Captain his cheque. As the Captain put it in his pocket he said: “Buggy’s there!” That’s what happened to the Treasury and the submarines.

I had a friend in the Accountant-General’s Department called “The Mole.” He taught me how to hide the money. I may observe I was called a “Mole.” It wasn’t a bad name. I was not seen or heard, but I was recognised by upheavals—“There is that damned fellow Fisher again, I will swear to it!” But, as David said, “Let us be abundantly satisfied” that we have such among us as McKennas and Runcimans. I should like to let those ferrets loose now. However, “Out of Evil Good comes.” Now comes a pardonable digression, I think.

Here’s a letter I got yesterday, September 9th, 1919, coming from Russia. Now suppose we had not made the very damnedest mess of Russia ever made in this world—with Lord Milner first going there and then Mr. Henderson, the head of the Labour Party, ambassadoring (as least, he says so) and this nation in every possible conceivable way alienating the Russian people—then I never could have had this magnificent letter from Russia to give you. Just observing, before I quote it: Supposing a French Army landed at Dover to help us subjugate Ireland? I guess we should all forget whether we were Tories or Carsons or Smillies, and unite to get this French army out of our Archangel, and the Entente Cordial would be “in the cart,” as the vulgar say. Well, this is the letter which does my heart good. It is from a young lad in an English man-of-war, now off St. Petersburg. He is writing of the recent defeat of the Russian fleet there:—

“There has been such a fight. I was only a looker-on. I was furious. Kronstadt was attacked by our motor boats each carrying two torpedoes” [by the way, I was vilified for introducing motor boats] “and seaplanes with destroyers backing them up” [isn’t it awful! I introduced destroyers also]. “Two Russian battleships, a Depôt ship and a Destroyer Leader were torpedoed.

“Our motor boats were MAGNIFICENT!

“I nearly cried with pride at belonging to the same Race.

“There has been nothing like it in the whole War.

“I would rather take part in a thing like that than be Prime Minister of England. You would have been so proud if you could have seen them.”

The letter is to the boy’s mother. On it is written, by him who sends it me, “The Nelson touch, I think!”

[By kind permission of “The Westminster Gazette.”

National Service or the Navy?

Sir John Fisher and Lord Roberts, 1906.

CHAPTER V
THE DARDANELLES

“UNTIL THIS DAY REMAINETH THE SAME VAIL UNTAKEN AWAY”

2 Corinthians, iii, 14.

I compared this morning early what I had formerly written on the subject of Personalities with what I said to you yesterday on the same subject in my peripatetic dictation—I can’t recognise what is in type for the same as what I spoke.

This morning I get a letter from Lord Rosebery. Lord Rosebery is, I think, in a way attached to me. In fact he must be, or I should not have drunk so much of his splendid champagne! Now you don’t call me “frisky” when I walk up and down talking to you; and although he reads the actual living words I say to you, yet when he sees the beastly thing in print he calls me “frisky”! I keep on saying this ad nauseam, to keep on hammering it not only into you but into the public at large who happen to read these words—that no printed effusion can ever represent what, when face to face, cannot help conveying conviction to the hearer. And so we come to the same old story, that the written word is an inanimate corpse. You want to have the Soul of the Man pouring out to you his personality.

And here again, when I contrasted the notes which I spoke from with what I said, again I find I don’t recognise them—Well! enough of that!

Now if anyone thinks that in this chapter they are going to see Sport and that I am going to trounce Mr. Winston Churchill and abuse Mr. Asquith and put it all upon poor Kitchener they are woefully mistaken. It was a Miasma that brought about the Dardanelles Adventure. A Miasma like the invisible, scentless, poisonous—deadly poisonous—gas with which my dear friend Brock, of imperishable memory and Victoria Cross bravery, wickedly massacred at Zeebrugge, was going (in unison with a plan I had) to polish off not alone every human soul in Heligoland and its surrounding fleet sheltered under its guns from the Grand Fleet, but every rabbit. It was much the same gas the German put into the “Inflexible” (which I commanded), in 1882 to light the engine-room. When it escaped it was scentless; instead of going up, as it ought to have done, it went down, and permeated the double-bottom, and we kept hauling up unconscious men like poisoned miners out of a coalpit. Gas catastrophe—Yes! Brock was lost to us at the massacre of Zeebrugge—lost uselessly; for no such folly was ever devised by fools as such an operation as that of Zeebrugge divorced from military co-operation on land. What were the bravest of the brave massacred for? Was it glory? Is the British Navy a young Navy requiring glory? When 25 per cent. of our Officers were killed a few days since, sinking two Bolshevik battleships, etc., and heroic on their own element, the sea, we all thank God, as we should do, that Nelson, looking down on us in Trafalgar Square, feels his spirit is still with us. But for sailors to go on shore and attack forts, which Nelson said no sailor but a lunatic would do, without those on shore of the military persuasion to keep what you have stormed, is not only silly but it’s murder and it’s criminal. Also by the time Zeebrugge was attacked, the German submarine had got far beyond a fighting radius that required this base near the English coast. As Dean Inge says: “We must hope that in the Paradise of brave men the knowledge is mercifully hid from them that they died in vain.”

Again, this is a digression—but such must be the nature of this book when speaking ore rotundo and from the fulness of a disgusted heart, that such Lions should be led by such Asses. The book can’t convey my feelings, however carefully my good friend the typewriter is taking it down. All the quill drivers, the ink spillers, and the Junius-aping journalists will jeer at you as the Editor, and say, “Why didn’t you stop him? Where’s the argument? Where’s the lucid exposition? Where’s the subtle dialectician who will talk a bird out of a tree? Where is this wonderful personality I’m told of, who fooled King Edward, and ravished virgins, and preached the Gospel (so he says)? Like Gaul, he is divided into three parts; we don’t see one of them.”

We’ll get along with the Dardanelles now. All this will make pulp for paper for the National Review.

“Imperial Cæsar dead and turned to clay

Now stops a hole to keep the wind away.”

Well, I left off at the “Miasma” that, imperceptibly to each of them in the War Council, floated down on them with rare subtle dialectical skill, and proved so incontestably to them that cutting off the enemy’s big toe in the East was better than stabbing him to the heart in the West; and that the Dardanelles was better than the Baltic, and that Gallipoli knocked spots off the Kiel Canal, or a Russian Army landed by the British Fleet on the Baltic shore of Schleswig-Holstein.

Without any doubt, the “beseechings” of the Grand Duke Nicholas in the Caucasus on January 2nd, 1915,[7] addressed to Kitchener in such soldierly terms, moved that great man’s heart; for say what you will, Kitchener was a great man. But he was a great deception, all the same, inasmuch as he couldn’t do what a lot of people thought he could do. Like Moses, he was a great Commissariat Officer, but he was not a Napoleon or a Moltke; he was a Carnot in excelsis, and he was the facile dupe of his own failings. But “Speak well of those who treat you well.” I went to him one evening at 5 p.m., with Mr. Churchill’s knowledge, and said to him as First Sea Lord of the Admiralty that if his myrmidons did not cease that same night from seducing men from the private shipyards to become “Cannon-fodder” I was going to resign at 6 p.m. I explained to him the egregious folly of not pressing on our shipbuilding to its utmost limits. He admitted the soft impeachment as to the seduction; and there, while I waited, he wrote the telegram calling off the seducers. If only that had been stuck to after I left the Admiralty, we shouldn’t be rationed now in sugar nearly a year after the Armistice, nor should we be bidding fair to become a second Carthage. We left our element, the sea, to make ourselves into a conscript nation fighting on the Continent with four million soldiers out of a population of forty millions. More than all the other nations’ was our Army.

The last words of Mr. A. G. Gardiner’s article about him who is now dictating are these: “He is fighting his last great battle. And his foe is the veteran of the rival service. For in his struggle to establish conscription Lord Roberts’s most formidable antagonist is the author of the ‘Dreadnought.’”

Well, once more resuming the Dardanelles story. These side-lights really illuminate the situation. These Armies we were raising incited us to these wild-cat expeditions. I haven’t reckoned them up, but there must have been a Baker’s Dozen of ’em going on. Now, do endeavour to get this vital fact into your mind. We are an Island. Every soldier that wants to go anywhere out of England—a sailor has got to carry him there on his back.

Consequently, every soldier that you raise or enlist, or recruit, or whatever the proper word is, unless he is absolutely part of a Lord Lieutenant’s Army, never to go out of England and only recruited, like the Militia—that splendid force!—to be called up only in case of invasion—as I say, every soldier that is recruited on any other basis means so much tonnage in shipping that has to be provided, not only to take him to the Continent; but it’s got to be kept ready to bring him back, in case of his being wounded, and all the time to take him provisions, ammunition, stores. Those vessels again have to have other vessels to carry out coal for those vessels, and those colliers have again to be supplemented by other colliers to take the place of those removed from the normal trade, and the coal mines themselves necessitate more miners or the miners’ working beyond the hours of fatigue to bring forth the extra coal; or else the commercial work of the nation gets diminished and your economic resources get crippled, and that of itself carried in extremis means finishing the war. As a matter of fact, it has nearly finished the English Nation—the crippling of our economic resources by endeavouring to swell ourselves out like the Frog in Æsop’s Fables, and become a great continental Power—forgetting the Heaven-sent gift of an incomparable Navy dating from the time of Alfred the Great, and God’s providing a breakwater 600 miles long (the British Islands) in front of the German Coast to stop the German access to the ocean, and thus by easy blockade killing him from the sea as he was killed eventually. Alas! what happened? In the House of Commons the British Navy is called a subsidiary Service. And then Lord Rosebery doesn’t like my “frisking”; and cartoons represent that I want a job; and fossil Admirals call me immodest!

Mr. Churchill was behind no one both in his enthusiasm for the Baltic project, and also in his belief that the decisive theatre of the war was beyond doubt in Northern waters; and both he and Mr. Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, magnificently responded to the idea of constructing a great Armada of 612 vessels, to be rapidly built—mostly in a few weeks and only a few extending over a few months—to carry out the great purpose; and I prepared my own self with my own hands alone, to preserve secrecy, all the arrangements for landing three great armies at different places—two of them being feints that could be turned into a reality. Also I made all the preparations, shortly before these expeditions were to start, to practise them embarking at Southampton and disembarking at Stokes Bay, so that those who were going to work the Russian Armies would be practised in the art, having seen the experiment conducted on a scale of twelve inches to the foot with 50,000 men.

(We once embarked 8,000 soldiers on board the Mediterranean Fleet in nineteen minutes, and the fleet steamed out and landed them at similar speed. Old Abdul Hamid, the Sultan, heard of it, and he complimented me on there being such a Navy. That was the occasion when a red-haired, short, fat Major, livid with rage, complained to me on the beach that a bluejacket had shoved him into the boat and said to him “Hurry up, you bloody lobster, or I’ll be ’ung!” I explained to the Major that the man would have been hanged; he was responsible for getting the boat filled and shoved off in so many seconds.)

I remember that at the War Council held on January 28th, 1915, at 11.30 a.m., Mr. Churchill announced that the real purpose of the Navy was to obtain access to the Baltic, and he illustrated that there were three naval phases. The first phase was the clearing of the outer seas; and that had been accomplished. The second phase was the clearing of the North Sea. And the third phase was the clearing of the Baltic. Mr. Churchill laid stress on the importance of this latter operation, because Germany always had been and still was very much afraid of being attacked in the Baltic. For this purpose special vessels were needed and the First Sea Lord, Lord Fisher, had designed cruisers, etc., etc., meaning the Armada. Mr. Lloyd George said to me at another meeting of the War Council, with all listening: “How many battleships shall we lose in the Dardanelles?” “A dozen!” said I, “but I prefer to lose them elsewhere.” In dictating this account I can’t represent his face when I said this.

Here I insert a letter on the subject which I wrote to Lord Cromer in October, 1916:—

36, Berkeley Square,
October 11th, 1916.

Dear Lord Cromer,

To-day Sir F. Cawley asked me to reconcile Kitchener’s statement of May 14th at the War Council that the Admiralty proposed the Dardanelles enterprise with my assertion that he (Kitchener) did it. Please see question No. 1119. Mr. Churchill is speaking, and Lord Kitchener said to him “could we not for instance make a demonstration at the Dardanelles?”

I repeat that before Kitchener’s letter of Jan. 2nd to Mr. Churchill there was no Dardanelles! Mr. Churchill had been rightly wrapped up in the splendid project of the British Army sweeping along the sea in association with the British Fleet. See Mr. Churchill at Question No. 1179.

“The advance of the (British) Army along the Coast was an attractive operation, but we could not get it settled. Sir John French wanted very much to do it, but it fell through.”

See Lord Fisher, War Council of Jan. 13th! Sir John French then present—(3 times he came over about it)—“Lord Fisher demurred to any attempt to attack Zeebrugge without the co-operation of the British Army along the coast.”

As to the Queen Elizabeth, Mr. Churchill is right in saying there was great tension between Kitchener and myself. He came over to the Admiralty and when I said “if the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ didn’t leave the Dardanelles that night I should!” he got up from the table and he left! and wrote an unpleasant letter about me to the Prime Minister! Lucky she did leave!! The German submarine prowling around for a fortnight looking for her (and neglecting all the other battleships) blew up her duplicate wooden image.

Yours, etc.,
(Signed) Fisher.

Mr. Churchill is quite correct. I backed him up till I resigned. I would do the same again! He had courage and imagination! He was a War Man!

If you doubt my dictum that the Cabinet Ministers only were members of the War Council and the rest of us voice tubes to convey information and advice, ask Hankey to come before you again and state the status!

Otherwise the experts would be the Government! Kindly read what Mr. Asquith said on Nov. 2nd, 1915, in Parliament. (See [p. 70].)

(We had constructed a fleet of dummy battleships to draw off the German submarines. This squadron appeared with effect in the Atlantic and much confused the enemy.)

Mr. Asquith also was miasma-ed; and it’s not allowable to describe the discussion that he, I, and Mr. Churchill had in the Prime Minister’s private room, except so far as to observe that Mr. Churchill had been strongly in favour of military co-operation with the fleet on the Belgian Coast, and Sir John French, on three different visits to the War Council, had assented to carrying out the operation, provided he had another Division added to his Force. This project—so fruitful as it would have been in its results at the early stage of the war—was, I understand, prevented by three deterrents: (1) Lord Kitchener’s disinclination; (2) The French didn’t want the British Army to get into Belgium; (3) The Dardanelles came along.

I objected to any Naval action on the Belgian Coast without such military co-operation. Those flat shores of the Belgian coast, enfiladed by the guns of the accompanying British Fleet, rendered that enterprise feasible, encouraging and, beyond doubt, deadly to the enemy’s sea flank. Besides preventing Zeebrugge from being fortified and the Belgian Coast being made use of as a jumping-off place for the air raids on London and elsewhere, with guns capable of ranging such an enormous distance as those mounted in the Monitors, we could have enfiladed with great effect all attacks by the Germans.

When we got to the Council table—the members having been kept waiting a considerable time—the Prime Minister gave the decision that the Dardanelles project must proceed; and as I rose from the Council table Kitchener followed me, and was so earnest and even emotional[8] that I should return that I said to myself after some delay: “Well, we can withdraw the ships at any moment, so long as the Military don’t land,” and I succumbed. I was mad on that Armada of 612 vessels, so generously fostered by Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Churchill and sustained by the Prime Minister. They were of all sorts and sizes—but alas! as they reached completion they began to be gradually perverted and diverted to purposes for which they were unfitted and employed in waters to which they were unsuited. Nevertheless they made (some of them) the Germans flee for their lives, and with such a one as the gallant Arbuthnot or the splendid Hood, who gave their lives for nothing at Jutland, we might have had another Quiberon.

To resume: I gave Lord Cromer, the Chairman of the Dardanelles Commission a précis of the Dardanelles case. It doesn’t appear in the Report of the Dardanelles Commission. I forgive him that, because, when in his prime, he did me a good deed. It is worth relating. I entreated him to cut a channel into Alexandria Harbour deep enough for a Dreadnought; and he did it, though it cost a million sterling, and thus gave us a base of incalculable advantage in certain contingencies.

I will now shortly pass in review the Dardanelles statement that I gave Lord Cromer. Those who will read this book won’t want to be fooled with figures. I give a figurative synopsis. Of course, as I told the Dardanelles Commission (Cromer thought it judicious to omit my comment, I believe), the continuation of the Dardanelles adventure beyond the first operations, confined solely to the ships of the fleet which could be withdrawn at any moment and the matter ended—the continuation, I explained to the Dardanelles Commission, was largely due to champion liars. It must ever be so in these matters. I presume that’s how it came about that two Cabinet Ministers—no doubt so fully fed up with the voice tube, as it has been described—told the nation that we were within a few yards of victory at the Dardanelles, and so justified and encouraged a continuance of that deplorable massacre. However, no politician regards truth from the same point of view as a gentleman. He puts on the spectacles of his Party. The suppressio veri and the suggestio falsi flourish in politics like the green baize tree.

Sworn to no Party—of no Sect am I:

I can’t be silent and I will not lie.

Before the insertion of the following narrative prepared by me at the time of the Dardanelles Commission I wish to interject this remark: When sailors get round a Council Board they are almost invariably mute. The Politicians who are round that Board are not mute; they never would have got there if they had been mute. That’s why for the life of me I can’t understand what on earth made David say in the Psalms “A man full of words shall not prosper on the Earth.” They are the very ones who do prosper! It shows what a wonderful fellow St. Paul was; he was a bad talker and yet he got on. He gives a bit of autobiography, and tells us that his bodily presence was weak and his speech contemptible, though his letters were weighty and powerful. However, in that case, another Gospel was being preached, where the worldly wise were confounded by the worldly foolish.

While my evidence was being taken before the Dardanelles Commission, the Secretary (Mears) was splendid in his kindness to me, and my everlasting gratitude is with the “Dauntless Three” who broke away from their colleagues and made an independent report. They were Mr. Fisher—formerly Prime Minister of Australia, (a fellow labourer), Sir Thomas Mackenzie (High Commissioner for New Zealand), and Mr. Roch, M.P. Their Report was my life-buoy; a précis of their Report, so far as it affects me and which I consider unanswerable, establishes that it is the duty of any Officer, however highly placed, to subordinate his views to that of the Government, unless he considers such a course so vitally antagonistic to his Country’s interests as to compel him to resign. I know of no line of action so criminally outrageous and subversive of all discipline as that of public wrangling between a subordinate and his superior, or the Board of Admiralty and an Admiral afloat, or the War Office and their Commander-in-Chief in the Field.

This Dardanelles Commission reminds me of another “cloudy and dark day,” as Ezekiel would describe it, when five Cabinet Ministers, at the instigation of an Admiral recently serving, held an enquiry absolutely technical and professional on matters about which not one of them could give an authoritative opinion but only an opinion which regarded political opportunism—an enquiry neither more nor less than of my professional capacity as First Sea Lord of the Admiralty. The trained mind of Mr. McKenna only just succeeded in saving me from being thrown to the wolves of the hustings. But it has inflicted a mortal wound on the discipline of the Navy. Hereafter no mutinous Admiral need despair (only provided he has political and social influence) of obtaining countenance for an onslaught against his superiors; and we may yet lose the decisive battle of the world in consequence.