RECORDS
[Illustration:
_Photo J. Russell and Sons._
1882. CAPTAIN OF H.M.S. “INFLEXIBLE.”]
RECORDS
BY
ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET
LORD FISHER
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON NEW YORK TORONTO
MCMXIX
_Preamble_
The main purpose of this second book is obvious from its title. It’s
mostly a collection of “Records” confirming what has already been
written, and relates almost exclusively to years after 1902. As Lord
Rosebery has said so well, “The war period in a man’s life has its
definite limits”; and that period is what interests the general reader,
and for that reason all attempt at a biography has been discarded.
In our present distress we certainly want badly just now Nelson’s
“Light from Heaven”! Nelson had what the Mystics describe as his
“seasons of darkness and desertion.” His enfeebled body and his mind
depressed used at times to cast a shade on his soul, such as we now
feel as a Nation, but (if I remember right) it is Southey who says that
the Sunshine which succeeded led Nelson to believe that it bore with it
a prophetic glory, and that the light that led him on was “Light from
Heaven.” We don’t see that “Light” as yet. But England never succumbs.
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