Chapter XV: Some Personalities

Amongst the 13 First Lords of the Admiralty I have had to deal with (and with nine of them I was very intimately associated) I should like to record that in my opinion Lord George Hamilton and Lord Spencer had the toughest jobs, because of the constitution of their respective Boards of Admiralty; and yet neither of them received the credit each of them deserved for his most successful administration. With both of them their tact was unsurpassable. They had to deal with extremely able colleagues, and my experience is that it is not a good thing to have a lot of able men associated together. If you take a little of the best Port Wine, the best Champagne, the best Claret, and the best Hock and mix them together, the result is disastrous. So often is it with a Board of Admiralty. That’s why I have suffered fools gladly! But Lord George Hamilton and Lord Spencer had an awful time of it. To both of these (I consider) great men I am very specially beholden. Lord George Hamilton more particularly endured much on my behalf when I was Director of Naval Ordnance, fighting the War Office. It was his own decision that sent me to Portsmouth as Admiral Superintendent of the Dockyard, and thus enabled me practically to prove the wisdom and the economy of concentrating workmen on one ship like a hive of bees and adopting piece-work to the utmost limit. Cannot anyone realise that if you have your men spread over many ships building, your capital is producing no dividend as compared with getting a ship rushed and sent to sea ready to fight? I was held up as a dramatic _poseur_ because the “Dreadnought” was built in a year and a day. Yes! She was ready to fight in a year and a day. She did fire her guns. The “Inflexible,” her famous prototype in former years, which I commanded, was four or five years building. I took up the battleship “Royal Sovereign” when I went as Superintendent of Portsmouth Dockyard and got her completed within two years, and thereby saw my way to doing it in a year. And so would I have done the famous “Hush Hush” ships, as I said I would; only circumstances brought about my departure from the Admiralty, and apathy came back, and those “Hush Hush” ships consequently took more than a year to build. And some armchair quill-drivers still sling ink at ’em. And when I heard from an eye-witness how the whole lot of German cruisers did flee when they appeared and ought to have been gobbled up I rubbed my hands with malignant glee at the devastation of my pen-and-ink enemies. As usual in the war, on that occasion the business wasn’t pushed home.

To revert to my theme--I owe also a great debt to Lord George Hamilton, when at a previous stage of my career he dissuaded me from accepting an offer from Lord Rothschild, really beyond the dreams of avarice, of becoming the head of a great armament and shipbuilding combine, which accordingly fell through on my refusal. Had I gone, I’d have been a millionaire instead of a pauper as I am now; but I wouldn’t have been First Sea Lord from 1904 to 1910 and then “Sacking the Lot!” Lord George also selected me to be Controller of the Navy.

Lord Spencer called a horse after me--almost as great an honour. Lord Spencer was really a very magnificent man, and he had the attributes of his great ancestor, who selected Nelson over a great many of his seniors to go and win the Battle of the Nile. There was no one else who would have done it; and when Sir John Orde, one of the aggrieved Admirals, told the King that the selected Nelson was mad, he replied, “I wish to God he would bite you all!” My Lord Spencer had the same gift of selection--it’s the biggest gift that a man in such a position can have, and the life, the fate of his country may depend upon him. Only war finds out poltroons. Lord Spencer turned out his master, to whom he was faithfully devoted, when he saw the Navy was in danger and that Mr. Gladstone would not agree to strengthen it. His manners were superb. He satisfied that great description of what constitutes a gentleman: “He never hurt any man’s feelings.”

There’s another First Lord I have too faintly alluded to--Lord Northbrook. He also was a great man, but he was not considered so by the populace. He was a victim to his political associates--they let him in. His finance at the Admiralty was bad through no fault of his, and he was persuaded to go to Egypt, which I think was a mistake. I stayed with him, and the microscope of home revealed him to me. His conceptions were magnificent and his decisions were like those of the Medes and Persians. Of all the awful people in the world nothing is so terrible as a vacillator. I am not sure the Devil isn’t right when he says, “Tell a lie and stick to it.” Lord Northbrook also in spite of intense opposition laid hold of my hand and led me forth in the paths I glory in, of Reform and Revolution. Stagnation, in my opinion, is the curse of life. I have no fellow-feeling with those placid souls who, like a duck-pond, torpid and quiescent, live the life of cabbages. I don’t believe anybody can say, “Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven,” because it is immortally shown that strife is the secret of a good life.

As with Lord Spencer, so was it with Lord Selborne. He again, as First Lord of the Admiralty, took the unusual course of kindly coming to Malta to see me when I commanded the Mediterranean fleet (the Boer War placed England in a very critical position at that time); and though there was a great strife with the Admiralty he chose me after my three years as Commander-in-Chief to be Second Sea Lord of the Admiralty and permitted me to unfold a scheme of education which came into being on the following Christmas Day without the alteration of a comma. More than that, he benevolently spared me from the Admiralty to become Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, to see that scheme carried out. Many letters have I that that step indicated the end of my naval career. I believe to that date it always has been so, but within a year I was First Sea Lord, and never did any First Lord hold more warmly the hand of his principal adviser than Lord Selborne held mine.

There are few people living to whom I am under a greater obligation than Admiral Sir Francis Bridgeman, G.C.B. This distinguished sailor aided me in the gradual building up of the Grand Fleet. As I have said before, it had to be done unostentatiously and by slow degrees, for fear of exciting the attention of the German Admiralty and too much embroiling myself with the Admirals whose fleets had to be denuded till they disappeared, so as to come under Admiral Sir Francis Bridgeman’s command, with whom the Grand Fleet originated under the humble designation of the Home Fleet--a gathering and perpetuation of the old more or less stationary coast-guard ships scattered all round the United Kingdom and, as the old phrase was, “Grounding on their beef bones” as they swung with the tide at their anchors. In the Providence of God the animosities of the Admirals thus engendered caused the real success of the whole scheme--and what should have been as clear as crystal to the least observant onlooker was obscured by the fumes of anger exuding from these scandalized Admirals. I look back with astonishment at my Job-like conduct, but it had its compensations. I hope Sir Francis Bridgeman will forgive me for hauling him into this book--I have no other way of showing him my eternal gratitude; and it was with intense delight that I congratulated Mr. Churchill on obtaining his services to succeed Sir Arthur Wilson, the First Sea Lord, who had so magnificently adhered to the scheme I left.

Sir Arthur refused a Peerage, and he was a faithful and self-effacing friend in his room at the Admiralty those seven fateful months I was First Sea Lord during the war. It was peculiarly fortunate and providential that the two immediately succeeding First Sea Lords after my departure on January 25th, 1910, should have been the two great sailors they were--otherwise there would have been no Grand Fleet--they altered nothing, and the glacier moved along, resistless and crushing all the obstacles in its path, and now, after the war, it has passed on; the dead corpses of the foes of the scheme are disclosed, and we’ll bury them without comment.

I began these talks by solemnly declaring that I would not mention a single living name--please let it stand--it shows what one’s intention was; but one is really forced to stand up to such outstanding personalities as Sir Arthur Wilson and Sir Francis Bridgeman, and I again repeat with all the emphasis at my command that it would have been impossible to have conducted those eight great years of ceaseless reform, culminating in the production of the most incomparable fleet that ever existed, had not the two Political Administrations, four First Lords, and every member of the several Boards of Admiralty been, as I described them in public, united, determined, and progressive. Never for one instant did a single Board of Admiralty during that time lay on its oars. For to rest on our oars would not have been standing still; the malignant tide was fierce against us, and the younger Officers of the fleet responded splendidly.

On January 3rd, 1903, I wrote as follows in reply to some criticism of me as First Sea Lord:--

“Our Fleets are 50 per cent. more at sea, and we hit the target 50 per cent. more than we did two years ago.

“In the first year there were 2,000 more misses than hits!

“In the second year there were 2,000 more hits than misses!”

The very first thing I did when I returned to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord for those seven months in the first year of the war was instantly to get back Sir Percy Scott into the Fighting Arena. I had but one answer to all his detractors and to the opposition to his return:--

“_He hits the target!_”

He _also_ was maliciously maligned. I don’t mean to say that Sir Percy Scott indulges in soft soap towards his superiors. I don’t think he ever poured hot water down anybody’s back. Let us thank God he didn’t!

I have repeatedly said (and I reiterate it whenever I get the chance) that Nelson was nothing if he was not insubordinate. Nelson’s four immortal Big Fights are brilliant and everlasting testimonies to the virtues of Self-Assertion, Self-Reliance, and Contempt of Authority. But of Nelson and the Nelsonic attributes I treat in another place. (Ah! Lord Rosebery, if only you had written “Nelson’s Last Phase”! I entreated you, but without avail!) (Again a repetition!) Nelson’s _Life_ not yet written! Southey’s _Life_, meant only for schoolboys, still holds the field. W. T. Stead might have done it, for the sacred fire of Great Emotions was the calorific of Stead’s Internal Combustion Engine. Suffice it to say of Sir Percy Scott that it was he and he alone who made the first start of the Fleet’s hitting the enemy and not missing him. Why hasn’t _he_ been made a Viscount? But that is reserved for those in another sphere!

“The Tides--and Sir Frederick Treves.”--One of my greatest benefactors (he saved my life. Six doctors wanted to operate on me--he wouldn’t have it; the consequence--I’m better now than ever I was in my life) is Sir Frederick Treves, Surgeon, Orator, Writer, “Developer of the Powers of Observation.” He, this morning, September 16th, 1919, gives me something to think about. It has relation to my dear and splendid friend Sir Charles Parsons, President of the British Association and inventor of the Turbine, who said the other day at Bournemouth that our coal bids fair to fail and we must seek other sources of power. Considering that Sir Charles invented the Turbine--derided by everyone as a box of tricks, and it now monopolises 80 per cent. of the horse-power of the world--we ought to listen to him. His idea is to dig a twelve-mile hole into the earth to get hold of power. Now Sir Frederick in his letter this morning uses these words:

“_England is an Island._ We are surrounded on all sides with the greatest source of power in the world--the _Tides_.

“There is enough force in the Tides to light and heat the whole country, _and to run all its railways_. It is running to waste while we are bellowing for coal.”

I know exactly what the Royal Society will say to Sir Frederick Treves. The Royal Society, not so many years ago, said through one of its most distinguished members that the aeroplane was a physical impossibility. When I said this to Sir Hiram Maxim he placed his thumb to his nose and extended his fingers; and, as I have remarked elsewhere, aeroplanes are now as plentiful as sparrows. So do not let us put Sir Frederick Treves in the waste paper basket. He’s a great man. When Lord Lister and my dear friend Sir Thomas Smith were beholding him operating on King Edward at the time when his illness stopped his Coronation--even those two wonderful surgeons held their breath at Treves’s astounding skill and confidence. He kept on, and saved King Edward’s life. There was no “Not running risks” with him. He snatched his King from death. The others both thought Death had won, and they both exclaimed!

Sir Frederick won’t see this until he reads it in his presentation copy of this book, or he wouldn’t have it.

And then he is so choice in his educational ideas. Here’s a lovely morsel, which I commend to Schoolmasters (Curse ’em! they ruined Osborne). Sir Frederick says:--

“Our present system of education is on a par with the Training of
Performing Dogs, they’re merely taught tricks! and Trick antics do
not help a boy much in the serious business of life. There is no
attempt to get at the mind of a boy, and still less any attempt to
find out his particular abilities. The only thing is, Is he good
at Mental Acrobatics? A very fine book on ‘The New Education’[17]
was published in the Autumn of last year, 1918. It shows up the
wasteful absurdities of the present Educational System. Of course,
no attention has been paid to it, because it is so simple, so
evident, and so human.... Years are spent in teaching a boy Latin
Verses, but never a moment to teach him ‘_How to develop powers of
Observation_.’”

I could tell my readers instances of Sir Frederick’s powers in this last regard; and the medical students during the many years he was their Lecturer could all of them do Sir Frederick greater justice than I can.

“_God bless Sir Frederick Treves!_”

Of all the famous men I have known, Lord Kelvin had the greatest brain. He went to sea with me in many new ships that I commanded. Once, in a bleak March east wind at Sheerness I found him on deck on a high pedestal exposed to the piercing blast watching his wonderful compass, and he had only a very thin coat on. I said: “For goodness sake, Sir William, come down and put on a great coat.” He said: “No, thank you, I am quite warm. I’ve got several vests on.” His theory was that it was much warmer wearing many thin vests than one thick one, as the interstices of one were filled up by the next one, and so on. I explained this afterwards, as I sat one day at lunch next to the Emperor of Russia, when he asked me to explain my youth and good health, and I hoped that he would follow Lord Kelvin’s example, as I did. Lord Kelvin got this idea of a number of thin vests instead of one thick one from the Chinese, who, in many ways, are our superiors.

For instance, a Chinaman, like an ancient Greek or Roman, maintains that the liver is the seat of the human affections. We believe that the heart is. So a Chinese always offers his hand and his liver to the young lady of his choice. Neither do they ever kiss each other in China. Confucius stopped it because the lips are the most susceptible portion of the human body to infection. When two Chinese meet, they rub their knees with their hands, and say “Ah” with a deep breath. A dear friend of mine went to the Viceroy of Nankin to enquire how his newly-raised Army was getting on with the huge consignment of magnificent rifles sent out from England for its use. The Chinese Viceroy told my friend he was immensely pleased with these rifles, and the reports made to him showed extraordinary accuracy, as the troops hit the target every time. The Viceroy sent my friend up in a Chinese gunboat to see the Army. When my friend landed he was received by the Inspector-General of Musketry, who was a peacock feather Mandarin, and taken to see the soldiers firing. To my friend’s amazement the soldiers were firing at the targets placed only a few hundred yards off, and he explained to the Mandarin that these wonderful rifles fitted with telescopic sights were meant for long ranges, and their accuracy was wonderful. The Mandarin replied to him: “Look here! my orders from the Viceroy are that every man in the army should hit the target, because these rifles are so wonderfully good, and so they do, and the Viceroy is very pleased at my reports.” And he added: “You know, we go back 2,000 years before your people in our knowledge of the world.”

Lord Kelvin had a wonderful gift of being able to pursue abstruse investigations in the hubbub of a drawing room full of visitors. He would produce a large green book out of a gamekeeper’s pocket he had at the back of his coat, and suddenly go ahead with figures. I had an interesting episode once. Sir William Thomson, as he then was, had come with me for the first voyage of a new big cruiser that I commanded. I had arranged for various responsible persons to report to me at 8 a.m. how various parts of the ship were behaving. One of them reported that a rivet was loose, and there was a slight leak. I said casually: “I wonder how much water would come in if the rivet came out altogether.” Sir William was sitting next me at breakfast, very much enjoying eggs and bacon, and he asked the Officer: “How big is the rivet?” and whereabouts it was, etc. The Officer left, and Sir William went on with his eggs and bacon, and I talked to Sir Nathaniel Barnaby on the other side of me, who was the designer of the ship that we were in. Presently, Sir William, in a mild voice, never having ceased his eggs and bacon, said so much water would come in. Sir N. Barnaby thereupon worked it out on paper and said to Sir William: “You made a good guess.” He replied: “I didn’t guess. I worked it out.”

The Midshipmen idolised Lord Kelvin, and they were very intimate with him. I heard one of them, who was four-foot-nothing, explain to Sir William how to make a magnet. Sir William listened to the Midshipman’s lecture on magnetism with the greatest deference, and gave the little boy no idea of what a little ass he was to be talking to the greatest man on earth on the subject of magnetism. The same little boy took the time for him in observing the lighthouse flashes, and Sir William wrote a splendid letter to _The Times_ pointing out that the intervals of darkness should be the exception, and the flashes of light the rule, in a lighthouse, whereupon the Chief Engineer of the Lighthouse Department traversed Sir William’s facts. The little boy came up to Sir William and asked him if he had read the letter, and he hadn’t, so he told him of it and then asked Sir William if he would like him to write to _The Times_ to corroborate him. Sir William thanked him sweetly, but said he would take no notice, as they would alter the flashes, and so they did.

This little boy was splendid. He played me a Machiavellian trick. We had an ass one night as Officer of the Watch, and in the middle watch I was nearly jerked out of my cot by a heavy squall striking the ship. I rushed up on deck (raining torrents) and we got in what was left of the sails, and I came down soaked through and bitterly cold, and on the main deck I met my young friend, the little Midshipman, with a smoking hot bowl of cocoa. I never enjoyed anything more in my life, and I blessed the little boy, but it suddenly occurred to me that he was as dry as a bone. I said: “How is it you are dressed?” He said: “I am Midshipman of the watch.” I said: “The devil you are! How is it you aren’t wet?” “Well, sir,” he said, “I thought I should be best doing my duty by going below and making you a bowl of cocoa.” I felt I had sold myself, like Esau, for a mess of pottage. He was a splendid boy, and he wrote me periodically till he died. He was left a fortune. He was turned out of the Navy for knocking his Captain down. I received a telegram to say that he was ill and delirious and talking of me only, and almost immediately afterwards a telegram came to say he was dead.

Sir Nathaniel Barnaby, the eminent Director of Naval Construction at the Admiralty, was also a great man, but he never had recognition. He was not self-assertive. He was as meek as Moses, and he was a saint. It was he conceived the wonder of the time--the “Inflexible”; and I was her first Captain. He went out in her with me to the Mediterranean. We had an awful gale in the Bay of Biscay. Sir Nathaniel nearly died with sea-sickness. I was cheering him up, and he whispered in reply: “Fools build houses for wise men to live in. Wise men build ships for fools to go in.”

If ever there was a great Christian, he was. After he retired he devoted his whole life to Sunday schools, not only in this country, but in America. There was some great scheme, of which he gave me particulars at the time, of a vast association of all Sunday schools wherever the English tongue is spoken. Perhaps it is in being now--I don’t know; but it was a fine conception that on some specified day throughout the world every child should join in some hymn and prayer for that great idea of John Bright’s--the Commonwealth of Free Nations, all speaking the same grand old English tongue. I was too busy ever to follow that up, as I would have liked to have done, and been his missionary.

A letter which he wrote to me in 1910, and a much earlier note of mine to him, which he enclosed with it, are interesting, and I give them here:

_Letter from Sir Nathaniel Barnaby, K.C.B. (formerly Chief Constructor of the Navy) to Lord Fisher._

MORAY HOUSE,
LEWISHAM, S.E.
_15th January, 1910_

MY DEAR ADMIRAL,

I suppose the enclosed brief note must have been written by
you to me over a quarter of a century ago. You were meditating
“Dreadnoughts” even then and finding in me the opposition on the
ground of “the degradation of our other Ironclads” through the
introduction of the “18-knot ‘Nonsuch.’”

I have said to you before that I love a man who knows his own mind,
and insists on getting his way. I have therefore no complaint to
make.

In a note dated two days earlier I see you say, “Bother the money!
if we are all agreed that will be forthcoming.”

And they accuse you of cheeseparing and starving the Navy!

It was I that stood for economy--see enclosed, on the principal
events affecting and indicating Naval Policy, 1866–1884, drawn up
by me for Mr. Campbell-Bannerman.

See also the other side of me in a letter to the Peace Society
People, and see a little hymn written for children to “Russian
National Anthem” and now widely sung.

With sincere respect and good wishes,

Yours always,
(Signed) NATHANIEL BARNABY.

Please return your note to me; nothing else.

This was the old letter of mine which he enclosed:--

_From Lord Fisher to Sir N. Barnaby in 1883._

_January 25th._

I have delayed sending you this letter hoping to find copy of a
brief article I wrote on H.M. Ironclad “Nonsuch” of 18 knots,
after seeing your design A; I can’t find it, and have written
for the original, which I will send for your amusement. I don’t
think your argument is a sound one as to the “degradation of our
other ironclads by the construction of an 18-knotter.” Isn’t the
principle right to make each succeeding ironclad an improvement and
as perfect as you can?

THERE IS NO PROGRESS IN UNIFORMITY!!

We’ve had enough of the “Admiral” class of ship. Now try your hand
on a “Nonsuch” (of vast speed!).

In violent haste,
Ever yours,
(Sgd.) J. A. F.

“Build few, and build fast,
Each one better than the last.”

Two of Sir Nathaniel Barnaby’s great successors in that arduous and always thankless post of Director of Naval Construction are Sir Philip Watts and Sir Eustace Tennyson-D’Eyncourt. These two great men have each of them done such service as should have brought them far greater honour than as yet they have received. The “Dreadnought” could not have been born but for Sir Philip Watts. I commend to all who wish to have a succinct account of the ships of the British Navy that formed the line of battle on the outbreak of war on the 4th August, 1914, to read the paper delivered by Sir Philip Watts at the Spring Meeting of the Naval Architects on the 9th April, 1919, when a very excellent Sea Officer with more brains than most people I have met presided--being the Marquis of Bristol. And it was a great delight to me that he commanded the “Renown,” my favourite ship, to bring to England King Alfonso--an equally admired hero of mine. If ever there was a brave man it is King Alfonso.

My other scientific hero besides Sir Philip Watts is Sir Eustace D’Eyncourt. He also was the practical means, besides his wonderful professional genius, of bringing forth what are known as the “Hush Hush” ships on account of the mystery surrounding their construction; and notwithstanding the armchair “Know-alls” who have done their best to blast their reputation, they achieved--the five of them--a phenomenal success. Sir Eustace D’Eyncourt also gave us those incomparable Monitors, with their bulges under water, which were “given away” through the unmitigated folly of the Censors, who permitted a newspaper correspondent to describe how he had seen men, like St. Peter, walking on the water--they were walking on the protuberance which extended under the surface as the absolute protection against submarines; and when an old first-class cruiser called the “Grafton” had been so made submarine-proof, the captain of her, after receiving a torpedo fired at him at right angles and hitting him amidships, reported to the Admiralty that she went faster than before, simply because her hull proper had not been touched; the submarine had only blown away the submarine obstruction that Sir Eustace had fitted to her. Has he been made a lord? Personally I should say the tanks could never have existed without him; of that I am quite sure. Sir Philip Watts and Sir Eustace D’Eyncourt are enshrined in my heart.

Previously in this chapter I mentioned Mr. Gladstone. I sat next to him at dinner once. At the other side of him was a very beautiful woman, but she was struck dumb by awe of Mr. Gladstone, so he turned round to me and asked me if I had ever been in China. Yes, I had. And he asked me who were the best missionaries. I said the Roman Catholics were the most successful as they wore the Chinese dress, were untrammelled by families, so they got better amongst the people in the interior, but furthermore in their chapels they represented our Saviour and His Apostles with pigtails and dressed as Chinamen. Yes, he said, he remembered that, and he told me the name of the Head of the Roman Catholic Mission, whose name I had forgotten, and said to me that the Pope considered he had gone too far in that respect, and had recalled him. That had happened some twenty years previously, and I had forgotten all about it. Someone said what a pity that all that is now being said is being lost. Mr. Gladstone said: “Nothing is lost. Science will one day take off the walls of this room what we have been saying.” This was years before the gramophone and the dictaphone and the telephone. He told us a great deal about Abraham and pigs, and why Abraham was so dead against them, and how he, Gladstone, had been driven by Daniel O’Connell in a four-in-hand, and how the Bishops in his early days were so much handsomer than now. One Bishop he specially named was called “The Beauty of Holiness.” When he left, he asked me to walk home with him, which I did. Mrs. Gladstone said, seated inside the brougham which was waiting at the door: “Come in, William.” He said: “No, I am going to walk with this young man.” It was midnight, and Piccadilly was quite alive. He was living with Lady Frederick Cavendish, I think, at Carlton Gardens. We were nearly run over, as he was regardless of the traffic. I remember his saying: “Do right, and you can never suffer for it.” I thought of that when, in my own case later on, it was “Athanasius contra Mundum.” I was urged only to attack one vested interest at a time, but I said, “No, if you kick everyone’s shins at the same time they won’t trouble about their neighbours,” and it succeeded; but alas! I gave up one thing, which was the real democratic pith and marrow, the Free Education of the Naval Officer, and a competence from the moment of entry, and open to all. King Edward said to me about this: “You’re a Socialist.” I said that a white shirt doesn’t imply the best brain. We have forty million to select from, and we restrict our selection to about one-fortieth of the population.

I here relate an episode which made a deep impression on me and one never effaced. At the time of Gladstone’s death I was looking at his picture in a shop window. Two working men were doing the same. The one said to the other: “That man died poor, but could have died rich, had he used his knowledge as Prime Minister to make investments quite lawfully; but he didn’t!”

It really is a very fine thing in the public men of this nation.

I have always worshipped Abraham Lincoln. I have elsewhere related how he never argued with Judge or Jury or anyone else, but always told a story, thus following that great and inestimable example in Holy Writ: “And without a parable spake he not unto them.” But one wishes it were more known how great were his simple views. His sole idea of a Christian Church was to preach the Saviour’s condensed statement “to love God and your Neighbour!” He said that summed up all religion. He gloried in having been himself a hired labourer and believed in a system which allowed labourers “to strike” when they wanted to, and did not oblige them to labour whether you pay them or not. He said: “I do not believe in a law to prevent a man getting rich (that would do more harm than good), so while we do not propose any war upon Capital we do wish to allow the humblest an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. I want every man to have a chance to better his condition.” And what Lincoln says of diligence is very good: “The leading rule for the man of every calling is DILIGENCE! Whatever piece of business you have in hand, before stopping do all the labour pertaining to it which can be done.”

That most moving account of Lincoln’s simple eloquence at the graves of Gettysburg is a most touching episode. The thousands listening to him never uttered a sound. There was a dead silence, when he stopped speaking. He left thinking himself a failure. It was the success of his life. A great orator just before him had moved the multitude to cheer unboundedly! but after Lincoln their feelings made them dumb.

While on personalities, I should like to say a little on one of the best friends I ever had and in my opinion the greatest of all journalists. Lord Morley once told me that he had never known the equal of W. T. Stead in his astounding gift of catching the popular feeling. He was absolute integrity and he feared no man. I myself have heard him tackle a Prime Minister like a terrier a rat. I have known him go to a packed meeting and scathe the whole mob of them. He never thought of money; he only thought of truth. He might have been a rich man if he hadn’t told the truth. I know it. When he was over sixty he performed a journalistic feat that was wondrous. By King Edward’s positive orders a cordon was arranged round the battle-cruiser “Indomitable,” arriving late at night at Cowes with the Prince of Wales on board, to prevent the Press being a nuisance. Stead, in a small boat, dropped down with the tide from ahead and swarmed up a rope ladder under the bows, about 30 feet high and then along a sort of greasy pole, known to sailors as the lower boom, talked to one of the Officers, who naturally supposed he couldn’t be there without permission; and the _Daily Mail_ the next morning had the most perfect digest I have ever read of perhaps one of the most wonderful passages ever made. This big battle cruiser encumbered with the heaviest guns known, and with hundreds and hundreds of tons of armour on her side, beat the “Mauretania,” the greyhound of the seas, built of gingerbread, carrying no cargo, and shaped for no other purpose than for speed and luxury.

Of course no other paper had a word.

Stead always told me he would die in his boots. Strife was his portion, he said. I am not sure that my friend Arnold White would not have shot him at sight in the Boer War. Stead was a pro-Boer, and so was I. I simply loved Botha, and Botha gave me great words. He said: “English was the business language of the globe”--that’s good! Of course every genius has a strain of queerness. Does not the poet say: “Great wits to madness often are allied?” I remember a book which had a great circulation, entitled “The Insanity of Genius.” I very nearly wrote a letter to _The Times_ only I was afraid they might think _me_ mad, and I was afraid that Admiral Fitzgerald might not think me modest (see his letter in _The Times_ of Sept. 8th, 1919). This was my letter to _The Times_:--

“Genius is not insanity, it only means the man is before his time. That’s all.”

That was the whole of the letter.

There was a very great scientist (he is a very great friend of mine and he discovered something I can’t remember the name of) who said: “A man must be mad to think of flying machines!” and he lived to see them as plentiful as sparrows.

Without saying a word to me or even letting me know, in a few hasty hours Stead wrote in the “Review of Reviews” in February, 1910, the most extraordinarily accurate _résumé_ of every date and name connected with my career. It would have taken any other man a month. However, he made one great mistake in it. He only spoke in it, like all other things that have been said of me, of “The full corn in the ear!” What really is a man’s life is the endurance and the adversity and the non-recognition and the humiliating slights and the fighting morning, noon and night, of early life. That brings fortune. I like that word “fortune.” Those inspired men who translated the Great Bible never said a thing “happened,” they always said it “fortuned.”

I here insert a letter kindly lent me by Lord Esher. As it was written on the spur of the moment and out of the abundance of the heart, I give it verbatim. Esher loved Stead as much as I did. I knew it, and that’s why I wrote to him. We felt a common affliction:--

_April 22, 1912._ HOTEL EXCELSIOR, NAPLES.

This loss of dear old Stead numbs me! Cromwell and Martin Luther
rolled into one. And such a big heart. Such great emotions. You
must write something. _All I’ve read quite inadequate._ The
telegrams here say he was to the forefront with the women and
children, putting them in the boats! _I can see him!_ and probably
singing “Hallelujah,” and encouraging the ship’s band to play
cheerfully. He told me he would die in his boots. So he has. _And
a fine death._ As a boy he had threepence a week pocket money. One
penny bought Shakespeare in weekly parts, the other two pennies
to his God for Missions. And the result was he became editor of
a big newspaper at 22! And he was a Missionary himself all his
life. Fearless even when alone, believing in his God--the God of
truth--and his enemies always rued it when they fought him. He
was an exploder of “gas-bags” and the terror of liars. He was
called a “wild man” because he said “Two keels to one.” He was at
Berlin--the High Personage said to him: “Don’t be frightened!”
Stead replied to the All Highest: “Oh, no! we won’t! _for every
Dreadnought you build we will build two!_” _That_ was the genesis
of the cry “Two keels to one.” I have a note of it made at the time
for my “Reflections.” But, my dear friend, put your concise pen to
paper for our Cromwellian Saint. He deserves it.

Yours always,
FISHER.

“You cannot do anyone more good than by trying unsuccessfully to do him an injury,” was one of the aphorisms of Lord Dalling (Sir Henry Bulwer); and it occurred to me forcibly on one occasion when I went to stay with my very great friend, Henry Labouchere (the proprietor of _Truth_). On the way I had been reading a peculiarly venomous attack on me in his paper; and when he greeted me as affectionately as ever, I showed it to him, saying: “Don’t put your arm on my shoulder! Read that damned thing there!” Labouchere glanced at it and replied, “Where would you have been if I hadn’t persistently maligned you?”

When I was with him at his villa at Florence, he used to smoke the most beastly cigarettes at ten a penny, yet he left over a million sterling, and was generous to absurdity to those he loved.

He had none but Italian servants; he told me he was always extremely polite to them for the knife came so easy to them. He said he didn’t realise this until, after he had had some words with an English friend, his Italian gardener, who had overheard the altercation, asked Labouchere if he would like him (the gardener) to deal with his friend, and he tapped the stiletto in his waistband.

His own wit was as ready as his gardener’s stiletto. On one occasion he was at Cologne railway station, and the Custom House Officer was turning his portmanteau inside out. Labouchere had a telegraph form in his pocket; he wrote out a telegram with a stylographic pen and handed it to the official who was standing behind the Custom House Officer and told him it was a Government telegram. This was the telegram:

PRINCE BISMARCK,
BERLIN.

Can’t dine with you to-night. Missed train through a damned ass of
a Custom House Officer. Will let you have his name.

LABOUCHERE, Cologne.

They offered him a special train. Labouchere had never seen Bismarck in his life. This was the occasion on which Labouchere was reprimanded by the Foreign Office for his delay in taking up his appointment as attaché at St. Petersburg. His excuse was that the money allowed him only permitted his travelling by railway as far as Cologne; the rest of the way he walked.

This book would be incomplete if I did not draw attention to the great debt the nation owes to three men yet unmentioned in this volume.

Mr. George Lambert, M.P., twice refused office and sacrificed his political prospects and with a glorious victory sustained the whole Government effort to kick him out of Parliament; but he conquered with a magnificent majority of over two thousand! Why?

Because after serving for over seven years in the Admiralty he could speak of his own knowledge that the War administration and the fighting Sea Policy were shamefully effete.

The Recording Angel will mark down opposite Mr. Lambert’s name: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!” But may he also have his reward here and now, as many years of good work here below may lie between him and Heaven as yet.

Commodore Hugh Paget Sinclair is another “Stalwart” of the War. His business was to provide the officers and men to man the Fleet--imagine the stupendous task that was his!

_We never wanted for Officer or Man!_

He is now Director of Naval Intelligence; and may his ascent in the Navy be what is his splendid due!

Sir Alfred Yarrow I select for mention, for without him Mesopotamia would have been a bigger crime than it was, and throughout all ages it will be branded for gross and culpable and criminal ineptitude. If I was asked to name the Capturer of Bagdad I would unhesitatingly reply it was Sir Alfred Yarrow.

The Navy has not had its due credit for the Capture of Bagdad. If Sir Alfred Yarrow with his usual astounding push, and without regard to red tape or thanks or recognition, had not sent those splendid light-draught gunboats of his to Mesopotamia, packed up in bits like portmanteaux, then Bagdad would not have been ours. The Viceroy of India sent us (acting on the advice he had received) the wrong draught of water. We ignored the Viceroy and all his crew. It took _eighteen_ days to get this pressing vital business through the Government Departments concerned. It took us _one_ day to accomplish the whole procedure, with Sir Alfred Yarrow, and we chucked all the Departments. So 24 light-draught gunboats grew up like Jonah’s Gourd, which came up in a night (Jonah, iv, 10).

* * * * *

I append a memorandum compiled from the Official papers:--

_History of Provision of 24 Light-draught Gunboats for Mesopotamia._

* * * * *

_Note._--These Vessels played a great part in the capture of Bagdad.

* * * * *

January 9th, 1915.--Telegram from Viceroy to India Office that
Admiralty be asked to provide 4 gunboats--draught 4½ feet for
Tigris.[18]

January 11th, 1915.--India Office asked Admiralty to meet Viceroy’s
wishes.

January 29th, 1915.[19]--Admiralty Departments suggested various
types. War Staff proposed 3 from Egypt be sent.

January 29th, 1915.--Lord Fisher ordered 24 light-draught
gunboats. In order to save time, Captain [now Rear-Admiral Sir S.
S.] Hall, R.N., (Lord Fisher’s Secretary) was directed by Lord
Fisher “_to co-operate with Mr. Yarrow[20] and carry the operation
through without reference to Admiralty Departments or any other
Departments_.”

January 29th, 1915.--_Conference held. Design settled._[21]

January 30th, 1915.--{Captain Hall toured the country
February 1st, 1915.--{for likely firms to construct
{the 24 gunboats.

February 2nd, 1915.[22]--Proposals made for placing orders approved
by Lord Fisher and First Lord, and orders were placed as follows:--

12 Small by Yarrow.
4 Large by Barclay Curle.
2 Large by Lobnitz.
2 Large by Ailsa Shipbuilding Co.
2 Large by Wood Skinner.
2 Large by Sunderland Shipbuilding Co.

February 8th, 1915.--Captain Hall was appointed Commodore-in-Charge
of the Submarine Service, but was directed by Lord Fisher to
continue supervision of the provision of 24 gunboats.

Sir Alfred Yarrow ought (like Mr. Schwab) to have been made a Duke, and I wrote to Sir John Jellicoe, when he was First Sea Lord, and told him so.

The history of the Flotillas of light-draught gunboats built both for Mesopotamia and the Danube will ever be associated with the good service done by Sir Alfred Yarrow, and for which he was only made a Baronet. Those built for the Tigris led our Army to Bagdad and far beyond, and were at times unsupported far ahead of the military force; and without any question whatever without them the Mesopotamian muddle could never have emerged into a glorious victory. The speed with which these vessels were constructed and despatched in small parcels to Mesopotamia and there put together in an extemporary dockyard arranged by Sir Alfred Yarrow’s staff was as much a feature as any other part of their production. It necessitated masses of natives of different religious persuasions being gathered together to assist the skilled artizans in bolting the pieces together and launching them on the Tigris. Their differing hours of prayer were a disturbing element in the rapidity of the construction; but my splendid friend the foreman from the Scotstoun Yard of Messrs. Yarrow contrived a prayer compromise. The Danube Flotilla arranged for with a number of other builders was equally remarkable; and Commodore (now Admiral) Bartolomé wrote me a commendatory letter of their good service there.

I must also mention Commodore (now Admiral) Sir S. S. Hall, but for whose continual journeys from shipyard to shipyard these vessels would never have been delivered on the scene of action in the time required.

Within six months all these Flotillas were thought of--designed--built--and in service, and nothing gave me intenser delight than the visit I paid to these craft as they were all built and then taken to pieces for transit to their destination in packages that any motor car could have transported.

The world at large can have little conception of the remarkability of those comparatively large hulls with good speed and practically drawing but a few inches of water--the propellers (which were too large in diameter for the depth of water) being made by an ingenious device to revolve in a well above the water-line, the water being drawn up by suction. I thought to myself as I viewed these miracles of ingenuity and rapidity: “England can never succumb.”