Baron John Arbuthnot Fisher Fisher

“ 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.” ”

“ Winston Churchill and abuse Mr. Asquith and put it all upon poor Kitchener they are woefully mistaken. It was a Miasma that brought about the Dardanelles Adventure. A Miasma like the invisible, scentless, poisonous—deadly poisonous—gas with which my dear friend Brock, of imperishable memory and Victoria Cross bravery, wickedly massacred at Zeebrugge, was going (in unison with a plan I had) to polish off not alone every human soul in Heligoland and its surrounding fleet sheltered under its guns from the Grand Fleet, but every rabbit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Is the British Navy a young Navy requiring glory? When 25 per51 cent. of our Officers were killed a few days since, sinking two Bolshevik battleships, etc., and heroic on their own element, the sea, we all thank God, as we should do, that Nelson, looking down on us in Trafalgar Square, feels his spirit is still with us. But for sailors to go on shore and attack forts, which Nelson said no sailor but a lunatic would do, without those on shore of the military persuasion to keep what you have stormed, is not only silly but it’s murder and it’s criminal. ”

“ Why I so hate a book, and those articles in The Times, and even the letters, is that the printed word never can convey the virtue of the soul. The aroma is not there—it evaporates when printed—a scentless product, flat and stale like a bad bottle of champagne. It is like an embalmed corpse. Personality, which is the soul of man, is absent from the reader. It is a man’s personality that is the living thing, and in the other world that is the thing you will meet. ”

“ And that George Washington was the precursor of that magnificent conception of John Bright in his speech of the ages when he foretold a great Commonwealth—yes a great Federation—of all those speaking the same tongue—that tongue which is the “business” tongue of the world—as it expresses in fewer words than any other language what one desires to convey! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Sultan is the most important personage in the whole world for England. He lifts his finger, and Egypt and India are in a blaze of religious disaffection. That great American, Mr. Choate, swore to me before going to the Hague Conference that he would side with England over submarine mines and other Naval matters, but Germany has diplomatically collared the United States absolutely at The Hague.
The only thing in the world that England has to fear is Germany, and none else.
We have no idea, at the Foreign Office, of coping with the German propaganda in America. ”

“ As you say, it must be proclaimed in the most public and most authoritative manner that direct and indirect trade between Great Britain, including every part of the British Empire, and Germany must cease in time of war.... When war does come “Might is Right!” and the Admiralty will know what to do! Nevertheless, it is a most serious drawback not making public to the world beforehand what we mean by War! It is astounding how even very great men don’t understand War! You must go to the Foreigner to appreciate our Surpassing Predominance as a Nation. ”

“ The Admiralty should never engage itself to lock up a single vessel even—not even a torpedo-boat, or submarine—anywhere on any consideration whatever. The whole principle of Sea fighting is to be free to go anywhere with every d—d thing the Navy possesses. The Admiralty should engage to do their best but to reserve entire freedom of action. ”

“ Our Battleships draw too much water to get close into the German Coast and harbours (we have to build ours big to go all over the world with great fuel endurance) . But the German Admiralty is going, is indeed obliged, to spend twelve and a half million sterling in dredging so as to allow these existing ships of ours to go and fight them in their own waters when before they could not do so. It was, indeed, a Machiavellian interference of Providence on our behalf that brought about the evolution of the “Dreadnought.” ”

“ Every telescope in the fleet (and there are myriads) is looking at the Admiral as he goes to the topmost and best vantage spot on board his flag ship to see the enemy, and sees him alone outlined against the sky—neither time nor room for a staff around him, and if there were they’d say, “It’s not the Admiral who is doing it,” and be demoralized accordingly—fatal to victory. In the fleet the Admiral’s got to be like Nelson—“the personal touch” so that “any silly ass can’t be an Admiral” ”

“ In his two years off Toulon Nelson only made £6,000 of prize money, while it was a common thing for the Captain of a single man-of-war off the Straits of Gibraltar to make a haul of £20,000, and Prize-Money Admirals in crowds basked in Bath enriched beyond the dreams of avarice. Nelson practically died a pauper.
Now this is another big digression which I must apologise for, but that’s the damnable part of a book. If one could walk up and down and talk to someone, it never strikes them as incongruous having a digression. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Our ancestors insisted on all churchyards being planted with yew trees to make bows. There you are! It’s a home product! Not like those damn fools who get their oil from abroad! And I have now the Memorandum with me delivered to me when I was Controller of the Navy by a member of the Board of Admiralty desiring to build 16 sailing ships! Again, didn’t the Board of Admiralty issue a solemn Board Minute that wood floated and iron sank? So what a damnable thing to build iron ships! Wasn’t there another solemn Board Minute that steam was damnable and fatal to the supremacy of the British Navy? ”

“ 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. ”

“ ECONOMY IS VICTORY
Mr. Gladstone stood by me last night. Mr. McKenna was by his side. I am not inventing this dream. It is a true story. (It is Godly sincerity that wins—not fleshly wisdom!)
A gentleman, such as you, was by way of interviewing Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone was castigating me. I was a Public Department. He said to you, who were interviewing him, that he was helpless against all the Public Departments, for he was fighting for Economy, and he gave a case to you worse than either Chepstow or Slough. ”

“ When the Sea Lords sit round the Board of Admiralty they can talk about anything, because they’ve been in every type of vessel and every branch of their Profession. Again, in a good regiment the promotion is slow because the officers stick to it. In a bad regiment the promotion is rapid because everyone wants to leave it. Then, finally, I submitted the idea of the Army and Navy being incorporated in one great Service. There is no going aloft now—a ship can be manned by soldiers with equal efficiency as by sailors. ”

“ So much so on the German side, she said, that the German Fleet did not consider itself ready to fight till two months before the battle of Jutland, and the Germans till then lived in a constant fever of trepidation. These were the questions she heard. “‘Why do the English not attack? Will the English attack to-morrow?’3 These questions we asked ourselves hourly. We felt like crabs in the process of changing their shells. Apparently our secret never oozed out.” She put the inefficiency of the German Fleet all down to Tirpitz, and said that if any man deserved hanging it was he. ”

“ Germany has got Sweden in her pocket, and they will divide Denmark between them in a War against Russia and England, and unless our Offensive is quick and overwhelming Germany will close the Baltic just as effectually as Turkey locks up the Black Sea with the possession of the Dardanelles.
“Russia and Turkey are the two Powers, and the only two Powers, that matter to us as against Germany, and that we have eventually to fight Germany is just as sure as anything can be, solely because she can’t expand commercially without it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The hound keeps baying at the moon but gets no answer from her, and she continues silently her mighty influence in causing the tides of the earth, such a mighty influence as I have seen in the Bay of Fundy, and on the coast of Arcadia where the tide rises some 40 feet—you see it like a high wall rolling in towards you on the beach! ”

“ She had the thickest armour, the biggest guns, and the largest of everything beyond any ship in the world. A man could crawl up inside the bore of one of her guns. Controversy had raged round her. The greatest Naval Architects of the time quarrelled with each other. Endless inventions were on board her, accumulated there by cranks in the long years she took building. A German put a new type of gas into the engine room, which was lovely, and no smell, so bright, so simple! ”

“ We have thrown away chance upon chance, and nothing saves us but the splendid fighting material at our disposal. I doubt whether the recent changes will bring about any great change. I trust they may, but, whatever happens, neither side can go on indefinitely. Everything points to Germany’s economic condition being very bad, and there may come a crash, but meantime the submarine warfare is most serious, and no complete answer to it is yet available. ”

“ Either you or Clarke have made a splendid observation that a rotten system may be run effectively by good men but duffers would spoil the work of the Angel Gabriel!... If we don’t get in men who will enthusiastically adopt our scheme and work with us, LET US THROW UP AT ONCE! as we shall only have an awful fiasco and I (for one) don’t want to go down with my grey hairs to the grave sorrowing and discredited! Therefore I suggest to you that we should agree on our men and run them at once! Like fighting the French Fleet! ”

“ They weigh everything in the Balance! I know great men who never came to a prompt decision—men who could talk a bird out of a tree!
War is Big Conceptions and Quick Decisions. Think in Oceans. Shoot at Sight! The essence of War is Violence. Moderation in War is Imbecility. All we have done this war is to imitate the Germans! We have neither been Napoleonic in Audacity nor Cromwellian in Thoroughness nor Nelsonic in execution. Always, always, always “Too Late”!
I could finish this present German submarine menace in a few weeks, but I must have POWER! ”

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

“ In January, 1906, King Edward sent me to see Mr. Beit, who had been recently received by the German Emperor at Potsdam. The Emperor said to Beit that ‘England wanted war: not the King—not, perhaps, the Government; but influential people like Sir John Fisher.’ He said Fisher held that because the British Fleet was in perfect order, and the German Fleet was not ready, England should provoke war. Beit said he had met Fisher at Carlsbad, and had long talks with him, and that what he said to him did not convey at all the impression gathered by His Imperial Majesty. ”

“ The First Sea Lord and the Chief Admiral afloat have got to be Siamese twins. And when the war comes, the Naval War Staff at the Admiralty, listening every moment to the enemy’s wireless messages (if he dare use it) , enables the First Sea Lord to let his twin at sea know exactly what is going on. He takes in the wireless, and not necessarily the Admiral afloat, on account of the far greater power of reception in a land installation as compared with that on a ship. ”

“ I think Lord Rosebery was right—Nelson being slighted has led to his greater appreciation.
Again—even a greater slight, a slight he feels more—when he looks down from his monument in Trafalgar Square, does he see anywhere those splendid Captains of his? But let alone those Captains of his—does he see anywhere a single Admiral? Not one. And yet who made England what she is? Those splendid Sea Heroes are in very deed “England’s forgotten worthies”! Yes! ”

“ 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. ”

“ The whole of our Destroyers and Submarines are absolutely efficient and ready for instant battle and are fully manned, except a portion of the Destroyers, which have four-fifths of their crew on board. Quite enough for instant service, and can be filled up under an hour to full crew. And they are all of them constantly being exercised.
There is one more piece of information I have to give: Admiral Tirpitz, the German Minister of Marine, has just stated, in a secret official document, that the English Navy is now four times stronger than the German Navy. ”

“ My friend was American Ambassador at Constantinople when I was Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet—you know it was a ticklish time then, at the worst of the Boer War and the British Navy kept the Peace! That old Sultan [Abdul Hamid] told me so, and gave me a 500-guinea diamond star, bless him! and he called Lord Salisbury a d—d fool for having left him in the lurch and for having said that “England had put her money on the wrong horse” in backing Turkey. The Turks being the one people in the whole world to be England’s fast (and if put to it) only friend! ”

“ I objected to any Naval action on the Belgian Coast without such military co-operation. Those flat shores of the Belgian coast, enfiladed by the guns of the accompanying British Fleet, rendered that enterprise feasible, encouraging and, beyond doubt, deadly to the enemy’s sea flank. Besides preventing Zeebrugge from being59 fortified and the Belgian Coast being made use of as a jumping-off place for the air raids on London and elsewhere, with guns capable of ranging such an enormous distance as those mounted in the Monitors, we could have enfiladed with great effect all attacks by the Germans. ”