John Fisher, 1st Viscount Fisher of Kimpton

“ But Great Britain does not build to a naval strength that can be determined a priori; she builds simply and solely to maintain the command of the sea against other Powers. For this end the Admiralty must have its hands free to determine from year to year what the shipbuilding requirements are. But, again, this does not mean that our efforts must be spasmodic, that because foreign Powers lay down six ships one year and none the next, therefore we must do the same. ”

“ You see he knows so exactly how the Cabinet will be actuated....
There are great risks. Both political sides unscrupulous....
P.S.—Wasn’t it the Emperor Diocletian who doffed the Imperial Purple to plant cabbages? and d—d fine cabbages, no doubt! So don’t blackguard me for leaving the Admiralty of my own free will, to plant roses!
* * * * * 1910.
Feb. 18th.
... Things look ugly.... However, I’m a pure outsider! There will be desperate efforts to supplant Wilson, so I hear from trustworthy quarters. But McKenna will be the real loss to the Navy. ”

“ In April 1905, when Lord Selborne left the Admiralty to become governor-general of South Africa, Fisher found in Earl Cawdor a new chief no less enthusiastic in support of his reforms. These changes had proceeded with great rapidity for such a conservative service as the royal navy, and a storm of criticism arose both in parliament and in the press. Nothing daunted, Fisher determined that, before the conservative government, which was visibly tottering to its fall, went out of office, a general statement of the Admiralty’s naval policy in the many fields of its operation should be published. ”

“ I suppose the coming Supplementary Estimates and also types of new ships about which I am in deadly antagonism with every living soul at the Admiralty, and one of the consequences has been that a great Admiralty official has got the boot!!! So Winston is right when he writes to me this morning that in all vital points I have had my way! He adds: “The Future of the Navy rests in the hands of men in whom your confidence is as strong as mine ... and no change of Government would carry with it any change of policy in this respect.” ”

“ Peter, the youngest of the trio, was only 16 months old at the time of his arrival and of course had no personal recollection of the experience of the first winter, but in his little history he has given some of the recollections of his elders which are of great interest. (It may be noted, in passing, that the eldest son of Peter Fisher, the Hon. Charles Fisher, was attorney general of the province and later a judge of the supreme court; he was one of the fathers of Responsible Government and left his impress in the pages of our history.) ”

“ Yes, that is so, and we are going to keep the British Navy at that strength, vide ten “Dreadnoughts” built and building, and not one German “Dreadnought” commenced last May. But we don’t want to parade all this to the world at large. Also we might have Parliamentary trouble. A hundred and fifty members of the House of Commons have just prepared one of the best papers I have ever read, shewing convincingly that we don’t want to lay down any new ships at all because we are so strong. My answer is: We can’t be too strong. ”

“ John, of Bodmin, 3; four generations of, 4 Fisher, Mr. John Arbuthnot, 5 Fisher, Sir Robert, of Packington, 3 Fisher, Sir Robert, 4 Fisher, William, father of Lord Fisher, 261 Fisher, Mary, wife of Lord Aylesford, 3 Fisher motto, the, 2 Fiume, 256 “Fleet Street” conspiracy, a, 101 Foch, Marshal, 246 Forgiveness, 49 “Free Tank Day,” a, 22 Frederick the Great and the Seven Years’ War, 217, 218 Freedom of the seas nonsense, 75 French, Lord, 247 Friedland-Eylau campaign, 221 Friend, Lord Fisher’s letter to a, 76 Fushishima, Prince, 227 G Gallifet, General, 31 Gard, Mr., 128 Gardiner, Mr. ”

“ The London Water Companies are greatly assisted by the Greenwich rainfall observations, but they pay nothing for them, neither do they supply the Admiralty with water gratuitously.
It is fitting that the British Empire should possess a National Observatory, but it is not equitable that Naval funds should bear the whole expense.
When criticism is directed against the magnitude of the Navy Estimates, it rarely happens that the critic takes the trouble to ascertain of what Items the Votes are made up ”

“ The former tendency had been for ships to accumulate defects until they went into dock, when their stay was accordingly prolonged, and the longer they were in dockyard hands the more work was provided for the officials and workmen, so that there was a double incentive to spend money. In the following memorandum, Lord Fisher insists that this drain upon the limited funds available for the Navy must stop, and explains how the Admiralty meant to discriminate between vessels which it was essential to keep thoroughly efficient and others which were not worth any, or so much, money for repairs. ”

“ See Lord Fisher, War Council of Jan. 13th! Sir John French then present— (3 times he came over about it) —“Lord Fisher demurred to any attempt to attack Zeebrugge without the co-operation of the British Army along the coast.”
As to the Queen Elizabeth, Mr. Churchill is right in saying there was great tension between Kitchener and myself. He came over to the Admiralty and when I said “if the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ didn’t leave the Dardanelles that night I should!” he got up from the table and he left! and wrote an unpleasant letter about me to the Prime Minister! Lucky she did leave!! ”

“ 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. ”

“ I have been 61 years in the service of my country, and I leave my record in the hands of my countrymen. The Prime Minister said yesterday that Mr. Churchill had said one or two things which he had better not have said, and that he necessarily and naturally left unsaid some things which will have to be said. I am content to wait. It is unfitting to make personal explanations affecting national interests when my country is in the midst of a great war.”
Lord Fisher, having delivered his brief statement, immediately left the House. ”

“ The preparation of these lectures was the starting-point in his own mind of a great scheme of administrative reform to fit the navy for defending the Empire, under the new conditions of modern science and the changing aspect of foreign relations. The Earl of Selborne, who had become first lord of the Admiralty at the end of 1900, paid a visit to Malta and the Mediterranean fleet in the summer of 1901. Fisher laid before him an outline of his projected reforms ”

“ Winston Churchill became First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Fisher had retired from the position of First Sea Lord which he had occupied from October 21st, 1904, to January 25th, 1910, amidst great turmoil all the time. During Lord Fisher’s tenure of office as First Lord, vast Naval reforms were carried out, including the scrapping of some 160 ships of no fighting value, and great naval economies were effected, and all this time (except for one unhappy lapse when Mr. Churchill resisted the additional ‘Dreadnought’ building programme) Mr. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But its “guiding” power is England’s all-in-all, if only its sufficiency and efficiency could be digested.
I had an immense talk with McKenna.... He was “dead on” for your Committee. Of course the Ideal was your being President, but I suppose the “Shifting Man” as President, according to the subject and the Department concerned, has its merits and advantages.
* * * * * 1910.
April 8th.
Old Stead’s letter in Standard on 2 keels to 1 is unsurpassable! It ought to be circulated in millions as a leaflet!... What d—d fools the Tories are not to swallow it whole—the 2 keels to 1!... ”

“ Whilst jealous for maintenance of Naval power, no Admiral or Sea Lord did more to improve conditions of life on the lower deck than did Jacky Fisher. Retired from active service, his multiform commissions under hatches, to-night his body has gone aloft to a seat in Peers' Gallery. There he heard expounded biggest Navy vote submitted since days of the "Great Harry." Exceptionally swollen by provision for reserves of oil fuel, a new departure, for which he in his capacity as Chairman of a Royal Commission has, as Winston testified, been chiefly responsible. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Purging the Navy of obsolete vessels, 139 et seq. Q Queen Alexandra, her kindly disposition, 26; 28, 29, 268 Queen Elizabeth, 135 Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia, 34 Queen Victoria, 30, 55 R Rambodde, Ceylon, Lord Fisher’s birthplace, 255 Redesdale, Lord, 25, 26 Redmond, John, 31 Redmond, William, 31 Redundant dockyard workmen, discharge of, 56, 57 Resentment, 46 Retrospect, a (July, 1906) , 150 et seq. Reval, 268 Rhodes, Cecil, 28 Richards, Sir Frederick, 50, 51; cabman’s retort to, 52; 264 Ridley, Bishop, 211 Riga, 236 Ripon, Lord, 53 Roberts, Lord, 36 Robertson, Mr. ”

“ I was so saturated with the importance of this fact that I spoke to Kitchener about it when the War commenced, but we did not give Bulgaria what she wanted, and when, a year afterwards, she was offered the same terms it was too late.
A great Bank always, I believe, has a travelling inspector who visits all the branches. We want such a personage to visit all our representatives in foreign lands, and see what they have done for England in the previous year. ”

“ The British Nation floats on the British Navy! So we must have no doubt whatever about its fighting supremacy and its instant readiness for war! To ensure this and at the same time to effect the economy which the finances of the country render imperative there must be drastic changes! To carry these out we must have the three R’s! We must be Ruthless, Relentless, Remorseless! We must tell interested people whose interests are going to be ignored that what the Articles135 of War have said since the time of Queen Elizabeth is truer than ever! ”

“ I always explained to them I was Lord Esher’s facile dupe and Sir George Clarke’s servile copyist, and thereby avoided odium personally (I was getting all the odium I wanted from the Admirals!) .
As usual, when we reported, the Government didn’t appreciate those inestimable words “Totus Porcus” (No Government—anyhow no English Government—ever166 yet went “the whole hog”—“Compromise” is the British God!) .14
1903 [Sir John Fisher, Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth] .
... My humble idea is that “men are everything and material nothing” whether it’s working the War Office or fighting a fleet! ”

“ Probyn, Sir Dighton, 20 Q Queen Alexandra, 12, 20, 198, 238 Queen Victoria, 156, 157 R Rawlinson, Sir Henry, 119 Redesdale, Lord, letter to Lord Fisher, 14 Reich, Herr von, on “Dreadnoughts,” 14 et seq. Reid, Sir George, 199 Reval, 231 et seq. Rhodes, Cecil, 34, 35 Richmond, Captain, 104 Ridley, Bishop, 120 Roberts, Lord, 53, 183 Roch, Mr. W. F., 62 Rodney, Admiral, 163 Roon, Count von, 229 Roosevelt, Mr., 23 Rosebery, Lord, 27, 44, 49, 55, 138, 158, 162, 248 Rothschild, Lord, 244 Rousseau, M., 187 294Rozhdestvensky, Admiral, 107 Runciman, Mr. Walter, 44 Russia, Emperor of, 191, 251 S St. ”

“ No—the Admiralty Policy is sound, consistent and irrefutable, which is never to exceed the normal number of Dockyard workmen as now fixed by the recent Committee, and have such a great margin of Naval strength—such as we now possess—as admits of a leisurely and economical refit of ships without extravagant overtime or inefficient hustling of work. Therefore, what it comes to is this:—The Admiralty decide what vessels they require first and what defects and repairs in those vessels are most material, and they give orders accordingly. ”

“ Six weeks after I left the Admiralty on May 22nd, 1915—that deplorable day, the particulars of which I65 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.
A Group on Board H.M.S. “Standard,” 1909.
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 ”