Chapter I: Preface

Napoleon at St. Helena told us what all Englishmen have ever instinctively felt--that we should remain a purely Maritime Power; instead, we became in this War a Conscript Nation, sending Armies of Millions to the Continent. If we stuck to the Sea, said Napoleon, we could dictate to the World; so we could. Napoleon again said to the Captain of the British Battleship “Bellerophon”: “Had it not been for you English, I should have been Emperor of the East, but wherever there was water to float a ship, we were sure to find you in the way.” (Yes! we had ships only drawing two feet of water with six-inch guns, that went up the Tigris and won Bagdad. Others, similar, went so many thousand miles up the Yangtsze River in China that they sighted the Mountains of Thibet. Another British Ship of War so many thousand miles up the Amazon River that she sighted the Mountains of Peru, and there not being room to turn she came back stern first. In none of these cases had any War Vessel ever before been seen till these British Vessels investigated those waters and astounded the inhabitants.)

Again, Napoleon praised our Blockades (Les Anglais bloquent très bien); but very justly of our Diplomacy he thought but ill. Yes, alas! What a Diplomacy it has been!!! If our Blockade had been permitted by the Diplomats to have been effective, it would have finished the War at once. Our Diplomats had Bulgaria in their hands and lost her. It was “Too Late” a year after to offer her the same terms as she had asked the year before. We “kow-towed” to the French when they rebuffed our request for the English Army to be on the Sea Flank and to advance along the Belgian Coast, supported by the British Fleet; and then there would have been no German Submarine War. At the very beginning of the War we deceived the German Ambassador in London and the German Nation by our vacillating Diplomacy. We wrecked the Russian Revolution and turned it into Bolshevism.

I mention these matters to prove the effete, apathetic, indecisive, vacillating Conduct of the War--the War eventually being won by an effective Blockade.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I
PAGE
EARLY YEARS 1

CHAPTER II

FURTHER MEMORIES OF KING EDWARD AND OTHERS 24

CHAPTER III

THE BIBLE, AND OTHER REFLECTIONS 38

CHAPTER IV

EPISODES 50

CHAPTER V

DEMOCRACY 69

CHAPTER VI

PUBLIC SPEECHES 79

CHAPTER VII

THE ESSENTIALS OF SEA FIGHTING 88

CHAPTER VIII

JONAH’S GOURD 97

CHAPTER IX

NAVAL PROBLEMS 127

CHAPTER X

NAVAL EDUCATION 156

CHAPTER XI

SUBMARINES 173

CHAPTER XII

NOTES ON OIL AND OIL ENGINES 189

CHAPTER XIII

THE BIG GUN 204

CHAPTER XIV

SOME PREDICTIONS 211

CHAPTER XV

THE BALTIC PROJECT 217

CHAPTER XVI

THE NAVY IN THE WAR 225

POSTSCRIPT 249

APPENDIX I

LORD FISHER’S GREAT NAVAL REFORMS 251