Chapter IX: Recapitulation of Deeds and Ideas

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears!”

We have arranged that in this book you (to whom I am dictating) are to insert a _réchauffé_ of my fugitive writings and certain extracts from the three bulky volumes of my letters to Lord Esher, which he has so very kindly sent me.

All, then, that I have to say in this chapter will be a summing up of all that is in my opinion worth saying, and you are going to be responsible for the rest. My judgment is that the British Public will be sick of it all long before you come to the end of your part. One can have too much jam. Nor do you seem inclined to put in all the “bites.” For instance, it was told King Edward, who warned me of what was being said, that my moral character was shocking. No woman will ever appear against me at the Day of Judgment. One dear friend of mine attributed all his life’s disasters to kissing the wrong girl. I never even did that. However, there is no credit in my morality and early piety. For I ever had to work from 12 years old for my daily bread, and work hard, so the Devil never had a “look in.” I love Dr. Watts, he is so practical.

“And Satan finds some mischief still.
For idle hands to do.”

Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who wrote that Classic, “Holy Living and Dying,” who had a nagging wife who made him flee from home and youthful lusts, said “That no idle rich healthy man could possibly go to Heaven.” No doubt it is difficult for such a one. You will remember the Saviour told us that the Camel getting through the eye of a needle is more likely. Usually, earthly judgments on heavenly subjects are wrong. Observe Mary Magdalene, and the most beautiful Collect for her Saint’s Day which was in our First Prayer Book of 1540. This was later expunged by the sacerdotal, pharisaic, self-righteous mandarins of that period. The judgments of this world are worse than the judgments of God. When David was offered three forms of punishment--Famine or the Sword or Pestilence--he chose the pestilence, saying, “Let us now fall into the hands of the Lord; for his mercies are great; and let me not fall into the hand of man.” At the moment of making this note of which I am speaking I am looking at two very beautiful old engravings I rescued from the room here allotted to the Presbyterian Minister! One of them is the “Woman Taken in Adultery” and the other is “Potiphar’s Wife”! My host tells me it was a pure accident that these pictures came to be in the Minister’s room; but such events happen to Saints. Wasn’t there “The Scarlet Letter”--that wonderful book by Hawthorne?

I observe in passing how wonderfully well these Presbyterians do preach. Our hosts have a beautiful Chapel in the house, and they have got a delightful custom of selecting one from the Divines of Scotland to spend the week-end here. Their sermons so exemplify what I keep on impressing on you--that the printed word is a lifeless corpse. Can you compare the man who reads a sermon to the man who listens to one saturated with holiness and enthusiasm speaking out of the abundance of the heart? No doubt there is tautology, but there’s conviction. Two qualities rule the world--_emotion and earnestness_. I have said elsewhere, with them you can move far more than mountains; you can move multitudes. It’s the personality of the soul of man that has this immortal influence. Printed and written stuff is but an inanimate picture--a very fine picture sometimes, no doubt, but you get no aroma out of a picture. Fancy seeing the Queen of Sheba herself, instead of only reading of her in Solomon’s print! And those Almug trees--“And there came no such Almug trees, nor were seen until this day.”

To a friend I was once adoring St. Peter (I love his impetuosity)--I am illustrating how earthly judgments are so inferior to heavenly wisdom. St. John, who was a very much younger man, out-ran Peter. Up comes Peter, and dashes at once into the Sepulchre. Those men in war who get there and then don’t do anything--_Cui bono_? A fleet magnificent, five times bigger than the enemy, and takes no risks! A man I heard of--his wife, separated from him, died at Florence. He was on the Stock Exchange. They telegraphed, “Shall we cremate, embalm, or bury?” “Do all three,” he replied, “take no risks!” Some of our great warriors want the bird so arranged as to be able to put the salt on its tail. But I was speaking of my praising St. Peter. What did my friend retort (the judgment of this world, mind you!)? “Peter, Sir! he would be turned out of every Club in London!” So he would! Thank God, we have a God, so that when our turn comes we shall be forgiven much because we loved much.

From this Christian homily I return to what I rather vainly hope is my concluding interview.

Before beginning--one of my critics writes to _The Times_ saying I am not modest--I never said I was. However, next day, Sir Alfred Yarrow mentions perhaps the most momentous thing I ever did--that is the introduction of the Destroyer; and the day following Sir Marcus Samuel writes that I am the God-father of Oil--and Oil is going to be the fuel of the world. Sir George Beilby is going to turn coal into Oil. He has done it. Thank God! we are going to have a smokeless England in consequence, and no more fortified coaling stations and peripatetic coal mines, or what coal mines were. And then, I was going to give some more instances, but that’s enough “_to point the moral and adorn the tale_.”

“SEEKEST THOU GREAT THINGS FOR THYSELF? SEEK THEM NOT!” (THE PROPHET JEREMIAH.)

You have given me a list of subjects which you think require elucidation in regard to my past years--a _résumé_ especially of the incidents which claim peculiar notice between 1902 and 1910; and you ask me to add thereto such episodes from the past as will enlighten the reader as to how it came about that those big events between 1902 and 1910 were put in motion.

It’s a big order, in a life of some sixty years on actual service--with but three weeks only unemployed, from the time of entry into the Navy to the time of Admiral of the Fleet.

I begin by being heartfelt in my thankfulness to a benign Providence for being capable yesterday, September 13th, 1919, of enjoying suet pudding and treacle with a pleasure equal to that which I quite well remember, of having suet pudding and treacle on July 4th, 1854, when I went on board H.M.S. “Victory,” 101 guns, the flagship at Trafalgar of Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson. Yes! my thankfulness, I hope, is equal to but hardly as wonderful as that of the almost toothless old woman who, being commiserated with, replied: “_Yes, I only ’as two left; but thank God they meet!_” So I say, to express the same thankfulness with all my heart for the years that remain to me, though I have all my teeth--or nearly all--notwithstanding that I have not had even one single “thank you” for anything that I have done since King Edward died. Nevertheless, I thank that same God as the old woman thanked, Who don’t let a sparrow fall without a purpose and without knowledge.

I have no doubt the slight has done me a lot of good!

I thought at the age of nineteen, when I was Acting Captain of H.M.S. “Coromandel,” that I never could again be so great. Please look at my picture then. It’s a very excellent one--rather pulled down at the corners of the mouth even then. (The child is father to the man.) And though now nearly as old as Dandolo I don’t feel any greater than at 19. Dandolo after an escapade at the Dardanelles similar to mine, became conqueror of Byzantium at 80 years of age. And Justinian’s two Generals, Belisarius and Narses, were over 70. Dolts don’t realise that the brain improves while the body decays--provided of course that the original brain is not that of a congenital idiot, or of an effete poltroon who never will run risks.

“Risks and strife” are the bread of Life to a growing brain.

I beg the reader of this dictation to believe that, whatever he may hear to the contrary (and he probably will), though swaggering as I did just now at suet-puddening at 79 as efficiently as at nineteen, yet I do daily realise what that ancient monk wrote in the year 800, when he studied the words of Job--that “Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time” compared to eternity, and death may be always near the door; and no words are more beautiful in connection therewith than when a parting friend at the moment of departure makes us say: “Teach us who survive in this and other like daily spectacles of mortality to see how frail and uncertain our own condition is.”

First of all in this Recapitulation comes back to me a prophecy I ventured at that age of 19 I have just mentioned--that the next great war that we should have at sea would be a war of young men. And how beautifully this is illustrated by the letter received only a few days ago from that boy in Russia (see Chapter IV) where two battleships were sent to the bottom and the British sailors in command were only Lieutenants. And in passing one cannot help paying a tribute to the Subalterns on shore. General Sir Henry Rawlinson said lately: “Those who really won the war were the young Company Leaders and the Subalterns,” and pathetic was the usual Gazette notice of those killed:

“Second Lieutenants _unless otherwise mentioned_.”

There was little “otherwise!” So has it been in the Navy, at Zeebrugge and elsewhere.

There is, however, a very splendid exception--when all hands, old and young, went to the bottom; and that is in the magnificent Merchant Navy of the British Nation. Seven million tons sank under these men, and the record of so many I’ve seen who were saved was: “Three times torpedoed.” And remember! for them no Peerage or Westminster Abbey. They didn’t even get paid for the clothes they lost, and their pay stopped the day the ship was sunk. Except in the rare cases where the shipowner was the soul of generosity, like my friend Mr. Petersen, who paid his men six months or a year to do nothing after such a catastrophe. But we go with Mr. Havelock Wilson: “We hope to change all that.” For who is going to deny, when we all stand up for them, that the Merchant Navy shall be incorporated in the Navy of the Nation and with all the rights and money and rank and uniform and widows’ pensions and pensions in old age? All this has to come; and I am Mr. Havelock Wilson’s colleague in that matter, as he was mine in that wonderful feeding and clothing of our thousands of British Merchant sailor prisoners, who didn’t, for some damned red tape reason, come within the scope of the millions of money in that enormous Prince of Wales’s Fund, and the Red Cross.

Somebody will have to be a martyr, perhaps it’s me. And I expect I am going to be burnt at the stake for saying these things; but in those immortal words of the past “I shall light the candle!” Isn’t it just too lovely--when Bishop Latimer, as the flames shot up around him at the stake in Oxford in A.D. 1555, cried to his brother Bishop, equally burning:

“Play the man, Master Ridley! We shall this day light such a candle
by God’s Grace in England as I trust shall never be put out.”

So may it be in our being burnt for the sake of the great Merchant Navy that saved our country!

* * * * *

As regards the years 1902 to 1910, the first conceptions of these great changes stole upon me when I perceived in that great Fleet in the Mediterranean how vague were the views as to fighting essentials. For instance, in one of the lectures to the Mediterranean Fleet Officers I set forth a case of so dealing with a hostile fleet that we should ourselves first of all deliberately and in cold blood sacrifice several of our fastest cruisers. Why?

To delay the flying enemy by the wounding of his hindermost ships. Possibly a ruthless German Admiral might leave a “Blücher” to her fate; but not so our then probable and chivalrous foe! The most shocking description I have ever read of the horrors of war was that detailed by one of the crew of the “Blücher” as he describes Beatty’s salvoes gradually approaching the “Blücher” and falling near in the water, and then the hell when these salvoes arrived, immediately extinguishing the electric light installation, till all below between decks was pitchy darkness only lighted up by the bursting shells as they penetrated and massacred the crew literally by hundreds, who, huddled up together in the “Blücher’s” last moments, were hoping behind the thickest armour to escape destruction.

I saw that the plan of sacrificing vessels in the pursuit of an enemy seemed a new feature to my hearers; and yet it was as old as the hills. And another “eye-opener” I had--in the inability to realise so obvious a fact as, alas! was somewhat the case in the North Sea recently--that you need not be afraid of a mine field; for where the enemy goes you can go, if you keep in his wake, that is. In close regard with this matter, I am an apostle of “End-on Fire,” for to my mind broadside fire is peculiarly stupid. To be obliged to delay your pursuit by turning even one atom from your straight course on to a flying enemy is to me being the acme of an ass. And, strange to say, in connection with this I, only yesterday, September 13th, 1919, got a letter from Admiral Weymouth--a most excellent letter, delightfully elaborating with exceptional acuteness this very idea, which came along so long ago as 1900, when the first thought of the “Dreadnought” came into my brain, when I was discussing with my excellent friend, Mr. Gard, Chief Constructor of Malta Dockyard, the vision of the “Dreadnought.”

I greatly enjoyed years ago overhearing a lady describe to another lady, when crossing over to Ryde, a passing Ryde passenger steamer (just built and differing very greatly from the one we were on board of) as a Battleship. And she wasn’t far out as to what a battleship should be. The enterprise of the Ryde Steam Packet Company had just produced that vessel, which went just as fast astern as she did ahead. In fact, she had no stern. There was a bow at each end and a rudder at each end and screws at each end; so they never had any bother to turn round. Now when you go to Boulogne or Folkestone, I don’t know how much time you don’t waste fooling around to go in stern first, so as to be able to come out the right way; and having escaped sea-sickness so far, I myself have found that the last straw. Let us hope every ship now built after this Chapter will be a “Double-Ender.” But in this world you are a lunatic if you go too fast.

Take now the submarines. They began by diving head first to get below water; and in the beginning some stuck their noses in the mud and never came up again, and in the shallow waters of the North Sea this limited the dimension of the submarine. But now there’s no more diving. A lunatic hit by accident on the idea of sinking the ship horizontally; so there is no more bother about the metricentric problems, and all the vagaries of Stabilities. No limit to size!

This sort of consideration brought into one’s mind that a great “Education” was wanted; and that we wanted “Machinery Education,” both with officers and men; and also that the education should be the education of common sense. My full idea of Osborne was, alas! emasculated by the schoolmasters of the Nation; but it is yet going to spread. As sure as I am now dictating to you, the practical way of teaching is “_Explanation, followed by Execution_.” Have a lecture on Optics in the morning: make a telescope in the afternoon. Tell the boys in the morning about the mariner’s compass and the use of the chart; and in the afternoon go out and navigate a Ship.

Similarly, with the selection of boys for the Navy, I didn’t want any examination whatsoever, except the boy and his parents being “vetted,” and then an interview with the boy to examine his personality (his _soul_, in fact); and not to have an article in the Navy stuffed by patent cramming schoolmasters like a Strasburg goose. A goose’s liver is not the desideratum in the candidate. The desideratum was: could we put into him the four attributes of Nelson:--

I. Self reliance.

(If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will.)

II. Fearlessness of Responsibility.

(If you shiver on the brink you’ll catch cold, and possibly not
take the plunge.)

III. Fertility of Resource.

(If the traces break, don’t give it up, get some string.)

IV. Power of initiative.

(Disobey orders.)

AIRCRAFT.

Somewhere about January 15th, 1915, I submitted my resignation as First Sea Lord to Mr. Churchill because of the supineness manifested by the High Authorities as regards Aircraft; and I then prophesied the raids over London in particular and all over England, that by and by caused several millions sterling of damage and an infinite fright.

I refer to my resignation on the aircraft question with some fear and trembling of denials; however, I have a copy of my letter, so it’s all right. I withdrew my resignation at the request of Authority, because Authority said that the War Office and not the Admiralty were responsible and would be held responsible. The aircraft belonged to the War Office; why on earth couldn’t I mind my own business? I didn’t want the Admiralty building and our wireless on the roof of it to be bombed; so it _was_ my business (the War Office was as safe as a church, the Germans would never bomb that establishment!).

Recently I fortuned to meet Mr. Holt Thomas, and he brought to my recollection what was quite a famous meeting at the Admiralty. Soon after I became First Sea Lord on October 31st, 1914, I had called together at the Admiralty a Great Company of all interested in the air; for at that moment I had fully satisfied myself that small airships with a speed of fifty miles an hour would be of inestimable value against submarines and also for scouting purposes near the coast. _So they proved._

Mr. Holt Thomas was a valued witness before the Royal Commission on Oil and Oil Engines, of which I was Chairman (a sad business for me financially--I only possessed a few hundred pounds and I put it into Oil--I had to sell them out, of course, on becoming Chairman of the Oil Commission, and what I put those few hundreds into caused a disappearance of most of those hundreds, and when I emerged from the Royal Commission the oil shares had more than quintupled in value and gone up to twenty times what they were when I first put in).

Through Mr. Holt Thomas we obtained the very important evidence of the French inventor of the Gnome engine--that wonderful engine that really made aeroplanes what they now are. His evidence was of peculiar value; and so also was that of Mr. Holt Thomas’s experience; and the result of the Admiralty meeting on aircraft was that we obtained from Mr. Holt Thomas an airship in a few weeks, when the experience hitherto had been that it took years; and a great number of this type of aircraft were used with immense advantage in the war. I remember so well that the very least time that could be promised with every effort and unstinted money, was three months (but Mr. Holt Thomas gave a shorter time). In three _weeks_ an airship was flying over the Admiralty at 50 miles an hour (“there’s nothing you can’t have if you want it enough”), and now we’ve reached the Epoch--prodigious in its advent--when positively the Air commands and dominates both Land and Sea; and we shall witness quite shortly a combination in one Structure of the Aeroplane, the Airship, the parachute, the common balloon, and an Aerial Torpedo, which will both astound people by its simplicity and by its extraordinary possibilities, both in War and Commerce (the torpedo will become cargo in Commerce). The aeroplane has now to keep moving to live--but why should it? The aerial gyroscopic locomotive torpedo suspended by a parachute has a tremendous significance.

And let no one think like the ostrich that burying one’s head in the sand will make Invention desist. At the first Hague Peace Conference in 1899, when I was one of the British Delegates, huge nonsense was talked about the amenities of war. War has no amenities, although Mr. Norman Angell attacked me in print for saying so. It’s like two Innocents playing singlestick; they agree, when they begin, not to hit hard, but it don’t last long! Like fighting using only one fist against the other man with two; the other fist damn soon comes out! The Ancient who formulated that “All’s fair in love and war” enunciated a great natural principle

“_War is the essence of violence._”

“_Moderation in War is imbecility._”

“_HIT FIRST. HIT HARD. KEEP ON HITTING._”

The following Reports and letter will illustrate this history of my efforts in this direction:--

Lord Fisher returned to the Admiralty on October 30th, 1914.

38 S.S. airships were at once ordered--single engine type. Six
improved type.

Before Lord Fisher left the Admiralty, a design of a double-engine
type was got out, and subsequently another 32 airships were ordered.

CIRCULAR LETTER issued by Lord Fisher in 1914 when First Sea Lord:--

Lord Fisher desires to express to all concerned his high
appreciation of the service rendered by those who carried out the
recent daring raid on Lake Constance.

He considers that the flight mentioned, made over 250 miles
of enemy country of the worst description, is a fine feat of
endurance, courage, and skill, and reflects great credit on all who
took part in the raid, and through them on the Air Service to which
they belong.

* * * * *

The following précis of correspondence is inserted because contributory to Lord Fisher’s resignation. He had previously written to Mr. Churchill, resigning on the ground of the disregard of his warnings respecting the Aircraft menace:--

An Official Secret German Dispatch, obtained from a German Source, dated December 26th, 1914:--

The General Staff of the German Army are sending aircraft to attack French fortified places. Full use to be made of favourable weather conditions for attack of Naval Zeppelins against the East Coast of England with the exception of London. The attack on London will follow later combined with the German Army Airships.

* * * * *

Précis of History of Rigid Airships of Zeppelin Type.--

Lord Fisher, when First Sea Lord, in December, 1908, instructed Admiral Bacon to press for the construction of rigid airships for naval purposes at the meetings of a Sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence, which held its first meeting in December, 1908, after many meetings at which Admiral Bacon presented the naval point of view with much lucidity. The Committee recommended on January 28th, 1909, the following:--

(_a_) The Committee are of opinion that the dangers to which we might be exposed by developments in aerial navigation cannot be definitely ascertained until we ourselves possess airships.

(_b_) _There are good grounds for assuming that airships will prove of great value to the Navy for scouting and possibly for destructive purposes._[12] From a military point of view they are also important.

(_c_) A sum of £35,000 should be included in the Naval Estimates for the purpose of building an airship of a rigid type. The sum alluded to should include the cost of all preliminary and incidental expenses.

(_d_) A sum of £10,000 should be included in Army Estimates for continuing experiments with navigable balloons of a non-rigid type, and for the purchase of complete non-rigid airships and their component parts.

_January 28th, 1909._

Approved by Committee of Imperial Defence, _February 25th, 1909_.

And nothing more was done till I came back to Admiralty on October 30th, 1914!

Letter from Admiral Sir S. Eardley Wilmot, formerly Superintendent of Ordnance Stores, Admiralty:--

THE OLD MALT HOUSE,
MARLOW,
_August 13th, 1916_.

DEAR LORD FISHER,

Having given us splendid craft to fight on and under the sea, I
wish you would take up the provision of an air fleet. There is
going to be a great development of air navigation in the future and
all nations will be at it. With our resources and wealth we can
take and keep the lead if we like.

As a modest programme to start with we might aim at 100 air
battleships and 400 air cruisers: all on the “lighter than air”
principle.

I met a young fellow who had been in the Jutland action and asked
him how the 15-inch guns did. “Splendidly,” he said--“They did
nearly all the real execution.” I hear the Germans have got 17-inch
guns which is what I anticipated, but they won’t get ahead of us in
that time tho’ we can’t yet snuff out their Zepps, thanks to you
know who.

Yours sincerely,
(Signed) S. EARDLEY WILMOT.

_Note._--More than a year before I got this letter I had got a
20-inch gun ready to be built for a new type of Battle Cruiser!

In temporary command of “Coromandel” in China.]

THE SUBMARINE MINE

As quite a young Lieutenant, with extraordinary impudence I told
the then First Sea Lord of the Admiralty that the Hertz German
Submarine Mine, which I had seen a few days before in Kiel
Harbour, would so far revolutionise sea warfare as possibly to
prevent one fleet pursuing another, by the Fleet that was flying
dropping submarine mines in its wake; and certainly that sudden sea
operations of the old Nelsonic type would seriously be interfered
with. He very good humouredly sent me away as a young desperado, as
he remembered that I had been a lunatic in prophesying the doom of
masts and sails, which were still then magnificently supreme, and
the despised engineer yet hiding his diminished head had to keep
the smell of oily oakum away from the noses of the Lords of the
ship.

That same Hertz mine in all its essentials remains still “The King
of Mines,” and if only in those years immediately preceding the war
we had manufactured none else, instead of trying to improve on it,
we should have bagged no end of big game. But as it was, our mines
were squibs; the enemy’s ship always steamed away and got into
harbour, while ours always went down plump.

The Policy of the Submarine Mine favoured us, but our authorities
couldn’t see it. I printed in three kinds of type:

(1) Huge capitals; (2) Italics; (3) big Roman block letters the
following words, submitted to the authorities very early in the
war--

“Sow the North Sea with Mines on such a huge scale that Naval
Operations in it become utterly impossible.”

_So you nip into the Baltic with the British Fleet._

That British Mining Policy blocked the North Sea entrance to the
Kiel Canal--that British Mining Policy dished the neutrals. When
the neutrals got blown up you swore it was a German mine--it was
the Germans who began laying mines; and a mine, when it blows
you up, don’t hand you a ticket like a passport, saying what
nationality it is. In fact, our mines were so damned bad they
couldn’t help believing it was a German mine. But I might add
I think they would have sunk any Merchant ship, squibs though
they were; and I may add in a parenthesis this British policy of
submarine mines for the North Sea would have played hell with the
German submarines, not so much blowing them up but entangling their
screws.

Well, at the last--_longo intervallo_--towards the close of the
war, being the fifteenth “Too Late” of Mr. Lloyd George’s ever
memorable and absolutely true speech, the British Foreign Office
did allow this policy, and the United States sent over mines in
thousands upon thousands, and we’re still trying to pick ’em up, in
such vast numbers were they laid down!

_We really are a very peculiar people.
Lions led by Asses!_

I bought a number of magnificent and fast vessels for laying down these mines in masses--no sooner had I left the Admiralty in May, 1915, they were so choice that they were diverted and perverted to other uses.

But perhaps the most sickening of all the events of the war was the neglect of the Humber as the jumping-off place for our great fast Battle Cruiser force, with all its attendant vessels--light Cruisers, Destroyers, and Submarines, and mine-layers, and mine-sweepers--for offensive action at any desired moment, and as a mighty and absolute deterrent to the humiliating bombardment of our coasts by that same fast German Battle Cruiser force. The Humber is the nearest spot to Heligoland; and at enormous cost and greatly redounding to the credit of the present Hydrographer of the Navy, Admiral Learmonth (then Director of Fixed Defences), the Humber was made submarine-proof, and batteries were placed in the sea protecting the obstructions, and moorings laid down behind triple lines of defence against all possibility of hostile successful attack.

However, I had to leave the Admiralty before it was completed and the ships sent there; and then the _mot d’ordre_ was Passivity; and when the Germans bombarded Scarborough and Yarmouth and so on, we said to them _à la Chinois_, making great grimaces and beating tom-toms; “If you come again, look out!” But the Germans weren’t Chinese, and they came; and the soothing words spoken to the Mayors of the bombarded East Coast towns were what Mark Twain specified as being “spoke ironical.”

I conclude this Chapter with the following words, printed in the early autumn of 1914:--

“By the half-measures we have adopted hitherto in regard to
Open-Sea Mines we are enjoying neither the one advantage nor the
other.”

That is to say, when the Germans at the very first outbreak of war departed from the rules of the Hague Conference against the type of mine they used, we had two courses open to us: there was the moral advantage of refusing to follow the bad lead, or we could seek a physical advantage by forcing the enemies’ crime to its utmost consequences. We were effete. We were pusillanimous, and we were like Jelly-fish.

_And we “Waited and See’d.”_