Chapter IV: Episodes

I.--MR. GLADSTONE’S FINAL RESIGNATION.

I was Controller of the Navy when Lord Spencer was First Lord of the Admiralty and Sir Frederck Richards was First Sea Lord. Mr. Gladstone, then Prime Minister, was at the end of his career. I have never read Morley’s “Life of Gladstone,” but I understand that the incident I am about to relate is stated to have been the cause of Mr. Gladstone resigning--and for the last time. I was the particular Superintending Lord at the Board of Admiralty, who, as Controller of the Navy, was specially responsible for the state and condition of the Navy; and it was my province, when new vessels were required, to replace those getting obsolete or worn out. Sir Frederick Richards and myself were on the very greatest terms of intimacy. He had a stubborn will, an unerring judgment, and an astounding disregard of all arguments. When anyone, seeking a compromise with him, offered him an alternative, he always took the alternative as well as the original proposal, and asked for both. Once bit, twice shy; no one ever offered him an alternative a second time.

However, he had one great incapacity. No one could write a more admirable and concise minute; but he was as dumb as Moses. So I became his Aaron. The moment arrived when that magnificent old patriot, Lord Spencer, had to choose between fidelity to his life-long friend and leader, Mr. Gladstone, and his faithfulness to his country. Sir Frederick Richards, the First Sea Lord, had convinced him that a certain programme of shipbuilding was vitally and urgently necessary. Mr. Gladstone would not have it. Sir Frederick Richards and myself, in quite a nice way, not quite point-blank, intimated that the Sea Lords would resign. (My bread and cheese was at stake, but I did it!) Lord Spencer threw in his lot with us, and conveyed the gentle likelihood to Mr. Gladstone; whereupon Sir William Harcourt and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman were alternately turned on to the three of us (Lord Spencer, Sir F. Richards and myself) sitting round a table in Lord Spencer’s private room. I loved Sir William Harcourt; he was what might be called “a genial ruffian,” as opposed to Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, who, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, was a perfect beast, without a single redeeming feature that I ever found out. Sir William Harcourt always started the conversazione by insulting Lord Spencer (quite in a friendly way); then he would say to Sir Frederick Richards, “I always thought that one Englishman was equal to three Frenchmen, and according to this table of ships required, which has been presented to the Prime Minister, it takes three Englishmen to manage one Frenchman.” Old Richards would grow livid with anger; he wanted to say, “It’s a damned lie!” but he couldn’t get the proper words out!

He had an ungovernable temper. I heard him once say to one of the principal Officers in his ship: “Here; don’t you look sulky at me, I won’t have it!” There was a famous one-legged cabman at Portsmouth whom Sir Frederick Richards hired at Portsmouth railway station by chance to drive him to the Dockyard. He didn’t recognise the man, but he was an old ship-mate who had been with him when Sir Frederick Richards commanded a brig on the coast of Africa, suppressing the Slave Trade--he led them all a dog’s life. The fare was a shilling, and ample at that; and as old Richards got out at the Admiral’s door he gave the cabman five shillings, but the cabby refused it and said to old Richards: “You _drove_ me for nothing on the Coast of Africa, I will drive you for nothing now,” and he rattled off, leaving old Richards speechless with anger. He used to look at Sir William Harcourt in exactly the same way. I thought he would have apoplexy sometimes.

Dear Lord Spencer was pretty nearly as bad in his want of lucid exposition; so I usually did Aaron all through with Sir William Harcourt, and one of the consequences was that we formed a lasting friendship.

When I was made a Lord, Stead came to my house that very morning and said he had just had a message from Sir William Harcourt (who had then been dead for some years), saying how glad Sir William was; and the curious thing was that five minutes afterwards I got a letter from his son, now Lord Harcourt, congratulating me on my Peerage, which had only been made known an hour before. I think Stead said Sir William was in Heaven. I don’t think he ever quite knew where the departed were!

Campbell-Bannerman was a more awkward customer.

But it was all no use. We got the ships and Mr. Gladstone went.

II.--THE GREAT LORD SALISBURY’S BROTHER-IN-LAW.

It really is very sad that those three almost bulky volumes of my letters to Lord Esher--which he has so wonderfully kept--could not all have been published just as they are. This is one of the reasons for my extreme reluctance, which still exists, for these “Memories” and “Records” of mine being published in my lifetime. When I was dead there could be no libel action! The only alternative is to have a new sort of “Pilgrim’s Progress” published--the whole three volumes--and substitute Bunyan names. But that would be almost as bad as putting their real names in--no one could mistake them!

I think I have mentioned elsewhere that Lord Ripon, when First Lord, whom I had never met, had a design to make me a Lord of the Admiralty, but his colleagues would not have it and called me “Gambetta.” Lord Ripon said he had sent for me because someone had maligned me to him as “a Radical enthusiast.” Well, the upshot was that in 1886 I became Director of Ordnance of the Navy; and after a time I came to the definite conclusion that the Ordnance of the Fleet was in a very bad way, and the only remedy was to take the whole business from the War Office, who controlled the Sea Ordnance and the munitions of sea war. A very funny state of affairs!

Lord George Hamilton was then First Lord and the Great Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister. Lord Salisbury’s brother-in-law was the gentleman at the War Office who was solely responsible for the Navy deficiencies, bar the politicians. When they cut down the total of the Army Estimates, he took it off the Sea Ordnance. He had to, if he wanted to be on speaking terms with his own cloth. I don’t blame him; I expect I should have done the same, more particularly as I believe in a Citizen Army--or, as I have called it elsewhere, a Lord-Lieutenant’s Army. (The clothes were a bit different; but Lord Kitchener’s Army was uncommonly like it.) Lord George Hamilton, having patiently heard me, as he always did, went to Lord Salisbury. Lord George backed me through thick and thin. The result was a Committee--the Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, Chairman; W. H. Smith, Secretary for War; Lord George Hamilton, First Lord of the Admiralty; the Director of Ordnance at the War Office, and myself. It was really a very remarkably unpleasant time. I had an awful bad cold--much worse than General Alderson, the Prime Minister’s brother-in-law--and Lord Salisbury never asked after it, while he slobbered over Alderson. I just mention that as a straw indicating which way the wind blew. The result, after immense flagellations administered to the Director of the Sea Ordnance, was that the whole business of the munitions of war for the Navy was turned over to the Admiralty, “lock, stock and gun barrel, bob and sinker,” and by Herculean efforts and the cordial co-operation of Engelbach, C.B., who had fought against me like a tiger, and afterwards helped like an Angel, and of Sir Ralph Knox, the Accountant-General of the Army, a big deficit, in fact a criminal deficit, of munitions for the Fleet was turned over rapidly into a million sterling of surplus.

They are nearly all dead and gone now, who worked this enormous transfer, and I hope they are all in Heaven.

This story has a lovely sequel; and I forgave Lord Salisbury afterwards for not asking after my cold when, in 1899, many years after, the Hague Peace Conference came along and he submitted my name to Queen Victoria as the Naval Delegate, with the remark that, as I had fought so well against his brother-in-law, there was no doubt I should fight at the Peace Conference. So I did, though it was not for Peace; and M. de Staal, who was a great friend of mine, and who was the President of the Conference, told me that my remarks about boiling the crews of hostile submarines in oil when caught, and so forth, were really unfit for publication. But W. T. Stead tells that story infinitely better than I can. It is in the “Review of Reviews” for February, 1910.

But there is another providential sequel to the events with which I began this statement. I made great friends at the Peace Conference with General Gross von Schwarzhoff and Admiral von Siegel, the Military and Naval German Delegates, and I then (in 1899) imbibed those ideas as to the North Sea being our battle ground, which led to the great things between 1902 and 1910.

III.--SHIP-BUILDING AND DOCKYARD WORKERS.

I have been asked to explain how I got rid of 6,000 redundant Dockyard workmen, when Mr. Childers nearly wrecked his Government by turning out but a few hundred. Well, this was how it was done. We brought home some 160 ships from abroad that could neither fight nor run away; enough men were thus provided for the fighting portion of the crews for all the new ships then lying in the Dockyards, which were not only deteriorating in their hulls and equipment for want of care, but were inefficient for war because officers and men must have practice in the ship they fight as much as the Bisley shot with his rifle, the jockey with his race-horse and the chef with his sauces. It is practice that makes perfect. The original plan for mobilising the Navy for war was that on the outbreak of war you disorganised the ships already fully manned and efficient by taking a portion of the trained crew, thus impairing the efficiency of that ship, and putting them into the un-manned ships and filling up both the old and the new--the former efficient ships and those in the dockyards--with men from the Reserve. So the whole Navy got disorganised. And that was what they called “Preparing for War!” By what Mr. Balfour called a courageous stroke of the pen, in his speech at Manchester, when he was Prime Minister, every vessel in the Fleet by the new system had its fighting crew complete.

Those who were to fill up the hiatus were the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. The brains were there; only the beef had to come, and the beef might have been taken from the Army.

When are we going to have the great Army and Navy Co-operative Society, which I set forth to King Edward in 1903--that the Army should be a Reserve for the Navy? When shall we be an amphibious nation? This last war has made us into a conscript Nation.

Well, to revert to the subject of how we got rid of the 6,000 redundant dockyard workmen. When that mass of Officers and men set free by the scrapping of the 160 ships that couldn’t fight nor run away came back to Chatham, Portsmouth, Devonport, Pembroke, and Queenstown, then in those dockyard towns the tradesmen had the time of their lives, for the money that had flowed into the pockets of the Chinese, the Chileans, the Peruvians, the Boers, the Brazilians, made the shopkeepers of the dockyard towns into a mass of Liptons, so that when the 6,000 Dockyard workers tried, as they had done in the time of yore (in the time of Childers), to get the dockyard tradespeople to agitate and turn out their Members of Parliament, the tradespeople simply replied, “You be damned!” and I arranged to find congenial occupation for these redundant dockyard workmen in private yards where they were much needed.

When I became Admiral Superintendent of Portsmouth Dockyard, I took another drastic step in concentrating all the workmen then leisurely building several different ships, and put them all like a hive of bees on to one ship and extended piece-work to the utmost limit that was conceivable. The result was that a battleship which would have taken three years to build was built in one year; for the work of building a ship is so interlaced, when they are working by piece-work especially, that if one man does not work his fellow workmen cannot earn so much, so this piece-work helps the overseers because the men oversee each other.

But there is another great principle which this hides. The one great secret of the fighting value of a battleship is to get her to sea quickly:--

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

You will come across some idiots whose minds are so deliciously symmetrical that they would prefer ten tortoises to one greyhound to catch a hare, and it was one of the principal articles of the ancient creed that you built ships in batches. They strained at the gnat of uniformity and so swallowed the camel of inferiority. No progress--they were a batch.

IV.--“JOLLY AND HUSTLE.”

I have just been asked by an alluring, though somewhat elusive friend, to describe to you quite an excellent illustration of those famous words in “Ecclesiastes” “Cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days.” That’s the text this alluring friend suggested to me to exemplify. For myself, I prefer the more heavenly text where the Scripture says: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” It was quite an angel that I had to do with, and he ate my bread as follows:--

One day, when I was Admiral in North America, I received a telegram: “The President of the Grand Trunk Railway with forty distinguished American friends was arriving in about an hour’s time on some business connected with railway affairs, and could they be permitted to see the battleship ‘Renown.’” The “Renown” was my flagship. I sent a reply to the next station their special train was stopping at, asking them to lunch on board on their arrival at 1 p.m. I sent for Monsieur Augé, my wonderful chef, who on the produce of his service with me afterwards set up a restaurant in Paris (he really was excellent--but so extravagant!) and told him: “Lunch for forty, in an hour’s time.” All he said was “Oui, Monsieur,” and he did it well! I myself being really amazed.

The Company greatly enjoyed themselves. I had some wonderful champagne obtained from Admiral McCrea--of immortal memory as regards that requisite--which effectively seconded M. Augé’s magnificent lunch.

Years after--it was in March, 1902--I was in a serious dilemma as to the completion of the necessary buildings at Osborne for the new scheme of entry of Officers to be inaugurated by the King in person, who was to open the new establishment on the fourth day of August following. Every effort had failed to get a satisfactory contract, when after a prolonged but fruitless discussion, I was sitting thinking what the devil I should do, when an Officer came in to see me on some business and mentioned casually that he had just come from lunching at the Carlton and had happened to overhear a man at an adjacent table say that he would give anything to see Sir John Fisher, as he had given him--with many others--the very best lunch he had ever had in his life. I sent the Officer back to the Carlton to bring him. On his arrival in my room I didn’t remember him, but he at once thanked me--not for seeing the “Renown” and all the other things--but only for the lunch. He said he belonged to St. Louis and was over in England on business. He had completed a big hotel in three months, which no one else would contract to build under three years.

Then I thought of that angel whom I had entertained unawares; certainly the bread that was cast came back all right. I explained my difficulty to him--I had all the particulars. He said he had his American staff over here, who had been working at the Hotel, and he would attend with the contract and the drawings in forty-eight hours. And he did. The contract was signed, and King Edward opened the buildings on August 4th.

An expert of our own who participated in the final proceedings asked the American gentleman’s foreman how he did it, and especially how he had managed that hotel in the three months. I overheard the American’s answer: “Well,” he said, “this is how our boss does it; when he is a-laying of the foundations he is a-thinking of the roof.” “What is his name?” said the English expert. “Well,” replied the American, “his name is Stewart, but we always call him ‘JOLLY & HUSTLE.’” “Oh!” said the English expert, “Why that name?” “Well,” he says, “I will tell you. There’s not one of his workmen, not even the lower grades, gets less than fifteen shillings a day, and as much as he likes to eat and drink--free of cost. Well, that’s _jolly_. But we has to work sixteen hours a day--that’s _hustle_.”

So when the defences of the Humber came into my mind and no contractor could be got for so gigantic a business, I telegraphed for “Jolly & Hustle,” and when he came over and said he would do it and that he was going to bring everything, from a pin up to a pile-driver, from America, it made the contractors at home reconsider the position--and they did the work.

V.--“BUYING UP OPPORTUNITIES.”

The words I take to head this section are as applicable to the affairs of common life as they are to religion, with reference to which they were originally spoken.

What these words signify is that Faith governs all things. Victories on Earth have as their foundation the same saving virtue of Faith.

One great exercise of Faith is “Redeeming the Time,” as Paul says. (I’m told the literal meaning of the original Greek is “buying up opportunities.”) Most people from want of Faith won’t try again. Lord Kelvin often used to tell me of his continuous desire of “redeeming the time.” Even in dressing himself he sought every opportunity of saving time (so he told me) in thinking of the next operation. However his busy brain sometimes got away from the business in hand, as he once put his necktie in his pocket and his handkerchief round his neck. (Another wonderfully clever friend of mine, who used to think in the Differential Calculus, I once met immaculately dressed, but he had his trousers over his arm and not on.) And yet I am told he was an extraordinarily acute business man. Every sailor owes him undying gratitude for his “buying up opportunities” in the way he utilised a broken thigh, which compelled him to go in a yacht, to invent his marvellous compass and sounding machine. At the Bombardment of Alexandria the firing of the eighty ton guns of the “Inflexible” with maximum charges, which blew my cap off my head and nearly deafened me, had no effect on his compasses, and enabled us with supreme advantage to keep the ship steaming about rapidly and so get less often hit whilst at the same time steering the ship with accuracy amongst the shoals. So it was with the ancient sounding machine: one had to stop the ship to sound, and it was a laborious operation and inaccurate. Lord Kelvin devised a glass tube which by the height of the discoloration gave you the exact depth, no matter how fast the ship was going; and the beauty of it was you kept the tubes as a register.

It was an immense difficulty getting the Admiralty to adopt Lord Kelvin’s compass. I was reprimanded for having them on board. I always asked at a Court-Martial, no matter what the prisoner was being tried for, whether they had Lord Kelvin’s compass on board. It was only ridicule that got rid of the old Admiralty compass. At the inquiry the Judge asked me whether the Admiralty compass was sensitive (I was a witness for Lord Kelvin). I replied, “No, you had to kick it to get a move on.” But what most scandalised the dear old Fossil who then presided over the Admiralty compass department was that I wanted to do away with the points of the compass and mark it into the three hundred and sixty degrees of the circle (you might as well have asked them to do away with salt beef and rum!). There could then never be any mistake as to the course the ship should steer. However, a landsman won’t understand the beauty of this simplicity, and the “Old Salts” said at that time “There he is again--the d--d Revolutionary!”

But to revert to “buying up opportunities”: I know no more signal instance of the goodness of Paul’s advice both to the Ephesians and Colossians in things temporal as in things spiritual than as exemplified by the Gunnery Lieutenant of the “Inflexible” in discovering a fracture in one of her eighty-ton guns. He was always thinking ahead in everything--“Buying up Opportunities.”

After the Bombardment of Alexandria we two were walking along the shore; he stopped and said, “Hullo! that’s a bit of one of our shell, and it burst in the bore of the gun.” As there were no end of pieces of burst shell about, which had exploded in striking the fort, I said, “How do you know it is?” He pointed to the marks of the rifling on the shell, which showed that it had burst in the bore and had been pressed into the grooves of the rifling, instead of being rotated by the copper band on its passage through the bore. Then he put his hand in his pocket, took out his clinometer, laid it on the marks of the rifling on the bit of burst shell; and the rifling of our eighty-ton guns having an increasing spiral, he calculated the exact spot in the gun where the shell had burst. And when he got on board he had himself shoved up the bore of the gun holding a piece of hot gutta percha, like that with which the dentist takes the impression of your mouth for a set of false teeth, and brought me out the impression of where the gun had been cracked by the explosion of the shell. Younghusband was his name--perhaps the most gifted man I ever met, but, as unusual with genius, he was not indolent and was always practising himself in seizing opportunities. When the constituted authorities came to inspect the gun, though Younghusband put the broken bit of shell before them, they took a long time to find that crack. One night at Portsmouth someone told Younghusband, who was having his third glass of port after dinner, that he was too fat to walk. For a considerable bet he got up there and then and walked seventy-two miles to London. Younghusband never went to any school in his life; he never left home; he never had a governess or a tutor. He was taught by his mother.

VI.--HOW THE GREAT WAR WAS CARRIED ON.

Six weeks after I left the Admiralty on May 22nd, 1915--that deplorable day, the particulars of which I am not at present at liberty to mention--I received most cordial letters from both Mr. Asquith and Mr. Balfour welcoming me to fill a Post of great magnitude.

The Czar, The Grand Duchess Olga, and Sir John Fisher.]

I am impelled to digress here for a few moments to tell a very excellent story of Dean Hole (famous for the cultivation of roses). He said to his Curate one day, “I am sick of hearing the name of that poor man whom we pray for every Sunday; just say ‘the prayers of the Congregation are requested for a member of the Congregation who is grievously ill.’” Next Sunday the Curate said at the usual place in Divine Service, “The prayers of the Congregation are requested for a gentleman whose name I’m not at liberty to mention!” That’s my case in regard to what happened between Saturday, May 15th, and Saturday, May 22nd, during which time I received communications which I hold in my hand at this moment, and which some day when made public will be just astonishing! I am advised that the Law does not permit even an outline of them to be given.

I was invited by Mr. Balfour to preside over an Assemblage of the most Eminent Men of Science for War purposes; the chief point was the German Submarine Menace. Also we had to consider Inventions, as well as Scientific Research.

My three Super-Eminent Colleagues of the Central Committee of this great Scientific Organisation were very famous men:--

(1) Sir J. J. Thomson, O.M., President of the Royal Society and now Master of Trinity. I am told (and I believe it) a man unparalleled in Science.

(2) The Hon. Sir Charles Parsons, K.C.B., the Inventor of the Turbine, which has changed the whole art of Marine Engineering, and enabled us to sink Admiral von Spee. We couldn’t have sunk von Spee without Parsons’s Turbine, as those two great Fast Battle-Cruisers “Invincible” and “Inflexible” could not have steamed otherwise 14,000 miles without a hitch (there and back). They only arrived at the Falkland Islands a few hours before Admiral von Spee.

(3) Sir George Beilby, F.R.S., one of the greatest of Chemists, who, if we don’t take care, will give us a smokeless England, by getting rid of coal in its present beastly form, and turning it into oil and fertilisers, dyes, etc., etc. The Refuse he sells to the Poor fifty per cent. cheaper than coal and without smoke or ashes.

The Advisory Panel of other Distinguished Men was as famous as these Magi. There were also many Eminent Associates.

I felt extreme diffidence in occupying the Chair; however, I put it to them all in the famous couplet of the French author who, in annexing the thoughts of other people, took this couplet as the text of his book:--

“I have cull’d a garland of flowers,
Mine only is the string that binds them.”

I said to them all at our first Assemblage: “Gentlemen, You are the Flowers, I am the String!”

You would have thought that such a Galaxy of Talent would have been revered, welcomed, and obeyed--on the contrary, it was derided, spurned, and ignored.

The permanent “Expert Limpets” did for us! All the three First Lords at the Admiralty whom we dealt with in succession were most cordial and most appreciative, but all three were equally powerless. Just a couple or so of instances will suffice to illustrate the reason why we at last said to Sir Eric Geddes:--

“Ave Geddes Imperator!
“Morituri te Salutant.”

(1) The chief object of this magnificent Scientific
Organisation being to counter the German Submarine Menace, we
naturally asked for a Submarine to experiment with. The answer
was “one could not be spared.”

(2) We asked to be furnished with all the details of the
destruction of German Submarines that had already taken place,
which of course lay at the root of further investigation. This
was denied us!

(3) A “Submarine Detector” was developed under the auspices
of the Central Committee by May, 1916. A year was allowed to
elapse before it was taken up; and even then its progress was
cancelled because nothing more than a laboratory experiment
with a competing invention came to the notice of the “Limpets.”

(4) The Scientific Members of our Association had conceived
and practically demonstrated a most astoundingly simple method
of discovering the passage of German Submarines. It was termed
“The Loop Detection” scheme. It was turned down--And then two
years afterwards was violently taken up, with astoundingly
successful results.

I think I have said enough. And really, after all, what is the good of raking up the past?

I have had two pieces of advice given me referring to the trials I had experienced. One was:--

“When sinners entice thee, consent thou not!--
But take the name and address for future reference.”

And the other was:--“Fear less--hope more; eat less--chew more; whine less--breathe more (deep breathing); talk less--say more; hate less--love more, and all good things are yours.”