THE NAVY IN THE WAR 225
POSTSCRIPT 249
APPENDIX I
LORD FISHER’S GREAT NAVAL REFORMS 251
APPENDIX II
SYNOPSIS OF LORD FISHER’S CAREER 259
INDEX 271
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1882. CAPTAIN OF H.M.S. “INFLEXIBLE” _Frontispiece_
_Facing page_
KING EDWARD VII. AND THE CZAR, 1909 16
TWO PHOTOGRAPHS OF KING EDWARD VII. AND SIR JOHN
FISHER ON BOARD H.M.S. “DREADNOUGHT” ON HER
FIRST CRUISE 33
PHOTOGRAPH, TAKEN AND SENT TO SIR JOHN FISHER BY THE
EMPRESS MARIE OF RUSSIA, OF A GROUP ON BOARD H.M.S.
“STANDARD,” 1909 48
A GROUP ON BOARD H.M.S. “STANDARD,” 1909 65
A GROUP ON BOARD H.M.S. “STANDARD,” 1909 80
A GROUP AT LANGHAM HOUSE. PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN AND
SENT TO SIR JOHN FISHER BY THE EMPRESS MARIE OF
RUSSIA 97
SIR JOHN FISHER GOING ON BOARD THE ROYAL YACHT 112
SIR JOHN FISHER AND SIR COLIN KEPPEL (CAPTAIN OF THE
ROYAL YACHT) 129
“THE DAUNTLESS THREE,” PORTSMOUTH, 1903 160
SOME SHELLS FOR 18-INCH GUNS 177
LORD FISHER’S PROPOSED SHIP, H.M.S. “INCOMPARABLE,”
SHOWN ALONGSIDE H.M.S. “DREADNOUGHT” 208
THE SUBMARINE MONITOR M 1 240
RECORDS
CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS
Of all the curious fables I’ve ever come across I quite think the idea
that my mother was a Cingalese Princess of exalted rank is the oddest!
One can’t see the foundation of it!
“The baseless fabric of a vision!”
My godfather, Major Thurlow (of the 90th Foot), was the “best man” at
my mother’s wedding, and very full of her beauty then--she was very
young--possibly it was the “Beauté du diable!” She had just emerged
from the City of London, where she was born and had spent her life!
One grandfather had been an officer under Nelson at Trafalgar, and
the other a Lord Mayor! He was Boydell, the very celebrated engraver.
He left his fortune to my grandmother, but an alien speculator (a
scoundrel) robbed her of it. My mother’s father had, I believe, some
vineyards in Portugal, of which the wine pleased William the Fourth,
who, I was told, came to his counting house at 149, New Bond Street, to
taste it! Next door Emma, Lady Hamilton, used to clean the door steps!
She was housemaid there.
I don’t think the Fishers at all enjoyed my father (who was a Captain
in the 78th Highlanders) marrying into the Lambes! The “City” was
abhorred in those days, and the Fishers thought of the tombs of
the Fishers in Packington Church, Warwickshire, going back to the
dark ages! I, myself, possess the portrait of Sir Clement Fisher,
who married Jane Lane, who assisted Charles the Second to escape by
disguising his Majesty as her groom and riding behind him on a pillion
to Bristol.
The Fishers’ Baronetcy lapsed, as my ancestor after Sir Clement
Fisher’s death wouldn’t pay £500 in the nature of fees, I believe. I
don’t think he had the money--so my uncle told me. This uncle, by name
John Fisher, was over 60 years a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford,
and told me the story of an ancestor who built a wing of Balliol at
Oxford, and they--the College Authorities--asked him whether they might
place some inscription in his honour on the building! He replied:
“Fisher--non amplius,”
(but someone else told me it was:--
“Verbum non amplius Fisher!”)
My uncle explained that his ancestor only meant just to put his name,
and that’s all.
But the College Authorities put it all on:
“_Fisher!_ Not another blessed word is wanted.”
One of my ancestors changed his motto and took these words (I have them
on a watch!):--
“Ubi voluntas--ibi piscatur.”
(We fish where we like).
A Poacher, I suppose! or was there a “double entendre”?
I’m told in the old days you could change your motto and your crest as
often as you liked, but not your coat of arms!
A succession of ancestors went and dwelt at Bodmin, in Cornwall--all
clergymen down to my grandfather, who was Rector of Wavendon, in Bucks,
where is a tablet to his brother, who was killed close to the Duke of
Wellington at Waterloo, and who ordered his watch to be sent to my
uncle’s relatives with the dent of the bullet that killed him, and that
watch I now have.
My uncle was telling this story at a _table d’hôte_ at Brussels a
great many years afterwards, and said he had been unable to identify
the spot, when an old white-haired gentleman at the table said he had
helped to bury him, and next day he took him to the place.
I remember a Dean glancing at me in a Sermon on the Apostles, when he
said the first four were all Fishers!
On the death of Sir Robert Fisher of Packington in 1739, a number of
family portraits were transferred apparently to the Rev. John Fisher
of Bodmin, born January 27th, 1708. The three principal portraits are
a previous Sir Robert Fisher, his son Sir Clement Fisher, who died
1683, and Jane Lane, his wife. Another portrait is a second Sir Clement
Fisher, son of the above and of Jane Lane. This Sir Clement Fisher died
1709, and was succeeded by his only brother, Sir Robert Fisher, who
died A.D. 1739, one year before his niece, Mary Fisher, wife of Lord
Aylesford. All these portraits were transmitted in direct inheritance
to Sir John Fisher. The four generations of Reverend John Fishers of
Bodmin, commencing with John Fisher born 1708, were none of them in a
position to incur the heavy expenses involved for their assumption of
the Baronetcy. They were descended from a brother of the Sir Robert
Fisher who lived before the year A.D. 1600.
I was born in 1841, the same year as King Edward VII. There was never
such a healthy couple as my father and mother. They never married
for money--they married for love. They married very young, and I was
their first child. All the physical advantages were in my favour, so
I consider I was absolutely right, when I was nine months old, in
refusing to be weaned.
“She walks in beauty like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meets in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow’d to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.”
These lines were written by Lord Byron of my godmother, Lady Wilmot
Horton, of Catton Hall, Burton-on-Trent. She was still a very beautiful
old lady at 73 years of age when she died.
One of her great friends was Admiral Sir William Parker (the last of
Nelson’s Captains), and he, at her request, gave me his nomination for
entering the Navy. He had two to give away on becoming Port Admiral at
Plymouth. He gave the other to Lord Nelson’s own niece, and she also
filled in my name, so I was doubly nominated by the last of Nelson’s
Captains, and my first ship was the “Victory” and it was my last! In
the “Victory” log-book it is entered, “July 12th, 1854, joined Mr. John
Arbuthnot Fisher,” and it is also entered that Sir John Fisher hauled
down his flag on October 21st, 1904, on becoming First Sea Lord.
A friend of mine (a yellow Admiral) was taken prisoner in the old
French War when he was a Midshipman ten years old, and was locked
up in the fortress of Verdun. He so amused me in my young days by
telling me that he gave his parole not to escape! as if it mattered
what he did when he was only four foot nothing! And he did this, he
told me, in order to learn French; and when he had learned French,
to talk it fluently, he then cancelled his parole and was locked up
again and then he escaped; alone he did it by filing through the iron
bars of his prison window (the old historic method), and wended his
way to England. I consider this instance a striking testimony to the
inestimable benefit of sending little boys to sea when they are young!
What splendid Nelsonic qualities were developed!
But it was quite common in those days of my old yellow Admiral for
boys to go to sea even as young as seven years old. My present host’s
grandfather went to sea as a Midshipman at seven years old! Afterwards
he was Lord Nelson’s Signal Midshipman, his name was Hamilton, and his
grandson was Midshipman with me in two ships. He is now the 13th Duke
of Hamilton! It is interesting as a Nelsonic legend that the wife of
the 6th Duke of Hamilton (she was one of the beautiful Miss Gunnings;
she was the wife of two Dukes and the mother of four) peculiarly
befriended Emma, Lady Hamilton, and recognised her, as so few did then
(and, alas! still fewer now), as one of the noblest women who ever
lived--one mass of sympathy she was!
The stories of what boys went through then at sea were appalling. I
have a corroboration in lovely letters from a little Midshipman who
was in the great blockade of Brest by Admiral Cornwallis in 1802. This
little boy was afterwards killed just after Trafalgar. He describes
seeing the body of Nelson on board ship on its way to Portsmouth. This
little Midshipman was only eleven years old when he was killed! This is
how he describes the Midshipman’s food: “We live on beef which has been
ten or eleven years in a cask, and on biscuit which makes your throat
cold in eating it owing to the maggots, which are very cold when you
eat them! like calves-foot jelly or blomonge--being very fat indeed!”
(It makes one shudder!) He goes on again: “We drink water the colour of
the bark of a pear tree with plenty of little maggots and weevils in
it, and wine, which is exactly like bullock’s blood and sawdust mixed
together”; and he adds in his letter to his mother: “I hope I shall not
learn to swear, and by God’s assistance I hope I shall not!” He tried
to save the Captain of his Top (who had been at the “Weather earing”)
from falling from aloft. This is his description: “The hands were
hurried up to reef topsails, and my station is in the foretop. When
the men began to lay in from the yards (after reefing the topsails)
one of them laid hold of a slack rope, which gave way, and he fell out
of the top on deck and was dashed to pieces and very near carried
me out of the top along with him as I was attempting to lay hold of
him to save him!!!” Our little friend the Midshipman was eight years
old at this time! What a picture! this little boy trying to save the
sailor huge and hairy! His description to his mother of Cornwallis’s
Fleet is interesting: “We have on board Admiral Graves, who came in his
ten-oared barge, and as soon as he put his foot on shipboard the drums
and fifes began to play, and the Marines and all presented their arms.
We are all prepared for action, all our guns being loaded with double
shot. We have a fine sight, which is the Grand Channel Fleet, which
consists of 95 sail of the line, each from 120 down to 64 guns.”
That is the Midshipman of the olden day, and one often has misgivings
that the modern system of sending boys to sea much older is a bad
one, when such magnificent results were produced by the old method,
more especially as in the former days the Captain had a more paternal
charge of those little boys coming on board one by one, as compared
with the present crowd sent in batches of big hulking giants, some of
them. However, there is more to learn now than formerly, and possibly
it’s impossible (all the entrance examination I had to pass was to
write out the Lord’s Prayer, do a rule of three sum and drink a glass
of sherry!); but one would like to give it a trial of sending boys to
sea at nine years old. Our little hero tried to save the life of the
Captain of his Top when he was only eight years old! Still, the Osborne
system of Naval education has its great merits; but it has been a
grievous blow to it, departing from the original conception of entry
at eleven years of age.
However, the lines of the modern Midshipman are laid in pleasant
places; they get good food and a good night’s rest. Late as I came to
sea in 1854, I had to keep either the First or Middle Watch every night
and was always hungry! Devilled Pork rind was a luxury, and a Spanish
Onion with a Sardine in the Middle Watch was Paradise!
In the first ship I was in we not only carried our fresh water in
casks, but we had some rare old Ship’s Biscuit supplied in what were
known as “bread-bags.” These bread-bags were not preservative; they
were creative. A favourite amusement was to put a bit of this biscuit
on the table and see how soon all of it would walk away. In fact one
midshipman could gamble away his “tot” of rum with another midshipman
by pitting one bit of biscuit against another. Anyhow, whenever you
took a bit of biscuit to eat it you always tapped it edgeways on the
table to let the “grown-ups” get away.
The Water was nearly as bad as the Biscuit. It was turgid--it was
smelly--it was animally. I remember so well, in the Russian War
(1854–5), being sent with the Watering Party to the Island of Nargen
to get fresh water, as we were running short of it in this old Sailing
Line of Battleship I was in (there was no Distilling Apparatus in those
days). My youthful astonishment was how on earth the Lieutenant in
charge of the Watering Party discovered the Water. There wasn’t a lake
and there wasn’t a stream, but he went and dug a hole and there was
the water! However, it may be that he carried out the same delightful
plan as my delicious old Admiral in China. This Admiral’s survey of the
China Seas is one of the most celebrated on record. He told me himself
that this is how he did it. He used to anchor in some convenient
place every few miles right up the Coast of China. He had a Chinese
Interpreter on board. He sent this man to every Fishing Village and
offered a dollar for every rock and shoal. No rock or shoal has ever
been discovered since my beloved Admiral finished his survey. Perhaps
the Lieutenant of the Watering Party gave Roubles!
I must mention here an instance of the Simple Genius of the Chinese.
A sunken ship, that had defied all European efforts to raise her,
was bought by a Chinaman for a mere song. He went and hired all the
Chinamen from an adjacent Sponge Fishery and bought up several Bamboo
Plantations where the bamboos were growing like grass. The way they
catch sponges is this--The Chinaman has no diving dress--he holds his
nose--a leaden weight attached to his feet takes him down to where the
sponges are--he picks the sponges--evades the weight--and rises. They
pull up the weight with a bit of string afterwards. The Chinese genius
I speak of sent the men down with bamboos, and they stuck them into the
sunk ship, and soon “up she came”; and the Chinaman said:
“Ship hab Bamboo--
No hab Water!”
It’s a pity there’s no bamboo dodge for Sunk Reputations!
An uncle of mine had a snuff box made out of the Salt Beef, and it was
french-polished! That was his beef--and ours was nearly as hard.
There were many brutalities when I first entered the Navy--now
mercifully no more. For instance, the day I joined as a little boy I
saw eight men flogged--and I fainted at the sight.
Not long ago I was sitting at luncheon next to a distinguished author,
who told me I was “a very interesting person!” and wanted to know what
my idea of life was, I replied that what made a life was not its mature
years but the early portions when the seed was sown and the blossom
so often blasted by the frost of unrecognition. It was then that the
fruit of after years was pruned to something near the mark of success.
“Your great career was when you were young,” said a dear friend to me
the other day. I entered the Navy penniless, friendless and forlorn.
While my mess-mates were having jam, I had to go without. While their
stomachs were full, mine was often empty. I have always had to fight
like hell, and fighting like hell has made me what I am. Hunger and
thirst are the way to Heaven!
When I joined the Navy, in 1854, the last of Nelson’s Captains was the
Admiral at Plymouth. The chief object in those days seemed to be, not
to keep your vessel efficient for fighting, but to keep the deck as
white as snow and all the ropes taut. We Midshipmen were allowed only
a basin of water to wash in, and the basin was inside one’s sea-chest;
and if anyone spilt a drop of water on the deck he was made to
holy-stone it himself. And that reminds me, as I once told Lord Esher,
when I was a young First Lieutenant, the First Sea Lord told me that
_he_ never washed when he went to sea, and he didn’t see “why the Devil
the Midshipmen should want to wash now!” I remember one Captain named
Lethbridge who had a passion for spotless decks; and it used to put him
in a good temper for the whole day if he could discover a “swab-tail,”
or fragment of the swabs with which the deck was cleaned, left about.
One day he happened to catch sight of a Midshipman carefully arranging
a few swab-tails on deck in order to gratify “old Leather-breeches’”
lust for discovering them! And as for taut ropes, many of my readers
will remember the old story of the lady (on the North American station)
who congratulated the Captain of a “family” ship (officered by a set of
fools) because “the ropes hung in such beautiful festoons!”
There was a fiddler to every ship, and when the anchor was being
weighed, he used to sit on the capstan and play, so as to keep the
men in step and in good heart. And on Sundays, everyone being in full
dress, epaulettes and all, the fiddler walked round the decks playing
in front of the Captain. I must add this happened in a Brig commanded
by Captain Miller.
After the “Victory,” my next ship was the “Calcutta,” and I joined it
under circumstances which Mr. A. G. Gardiner has narrated thus:--
“One day far back in the fifties of last century a sailing ship
came round from Portsmouth into Plymouth Sound, where the fleet
lay. Among the passengers was a little midshipman fresh from
his apprenticeship in the ‘Victory.’ He scrambled aboard the
Admiral’s ship, and with the assurance of thirteen marched up
to a splendid figure in blue and gold, and said, handing him a
letter: ‘Here, my man, give this to the Admiral.’ The man in
blue and gold smiled, took the letter, and opened it. ‘Are you
the Admiral?’ said the boy. ‘Yes, I’m the Admiral.’ He read
the letter, and patting the boy on the head, said: ‘You must
stay and have dinner with me.’ ‘I think,’ said the boy, ‘I
should like to be getting on to my ship.’ He spoke as though
the British Navy had fallen to his charge. The Admiral laughed,
and took him down to dinner. That night the boy slept aboard
the ‘Calcutta,’ a vessel of 84 guns, given to the British Navy
by an Indian merchant at a cost of £84,000. It was the day of
small things and of sailing-ships. The era of the ironclad and
the ‘Dreadnought’ had not dawned.”
I think I must give the first place to one of the first of my Captains
who was the seventh son of the last Vice-Chancellor of England, Sir
Lancelot Shadwell. The Vice-Chancellor used to bathe in the Thames
with his seven sons every morning. My Shadwell was about the greatest
Saint on earth. The sailors called him, somewhat profanely, “Our
Heavenly Father.” He was once heard to say, “Damn,” and the whole ship
was upset. When, as Midshipmen, we punished one of our mess-mates for
abstracting his cheese, he was extremely angry with us, and asked us
all what right we had to interfere with his cheese. He always had the
Midshipmen to breakfast with him, and when we were seasick he gave us
champagne and ginger-bread nuts. As he went in mortal fear of his own
steward, who bossed him utterly, he would say: “I think the aroma has
rather gone out of this champagne. Give it to the young gentlemen.” The
steward would reply: “Now you know very well, Sir, the aroma _ain’t_
gone out of this ’ere champagne”; but all the same we got it. He always
slept in a hammock, and I remember he kept his socks in the head clews
ready to put on in case of a squall calling him suddenly on deck. I
learned from him nearly all that I know. He taught me how to predict
eclipses and occultations, and I suppose I took more lunar observations
than any Midshipman ever did before.
Shadwell’s appearance on going into a fight I must describe. We went up
a Chinese river to capture a pirate stronghold. Presently the pirates
opened fire from a banana plantation on the river bank. We nipped
ashore from the boats to the banana plantation. I remember I was armed
to the teeth, like a Greek brigand, all swords and pistols, and was
weighed down with my weapons. We took shelter in the banana plantation,
but our Captain stood on the river bank. I shall never forget it. He
was dressed in a pair of white trousers, yellow waistcoat and a blue
tail coat with brass buttons and a tall white hat with a gold stripe
up the side of it, and he was waving a white umbrella to encourage us
to come out of the bananas and go for the enemy. He had no weapon of
any sort. So (I think rather against our inclinations, as the gingall
bullets were flying about pretty thick) we all had to come out and go
for the Chinese.
Once the Chinese guns were firing at us, and as the shell whizzed over
the boat we all ducked. “Lay on your oars, my men,” said Shadwell;
and proceeded to explain very deliberately how ducking delayed the
progress of the boat--apparently unaware that his lecture had stopped
its progress altogether!
His sole desire for fame was to do good, and he requested for himself
when he died that he should be buried under an apple tree, so that
people might say: “God bless old Shadwell!” He never flogged a man in
his life. When my Captain was severely wounded, I being with him as his
Aide-de-Camp (we landed 1,100 strong, and 463 were killed or wounded),
he asked me when being sent home what he could do for me. I asked him
to give me a set of studs with his motto on them: “Loyal au mort,” and
I have worn them daily for over sixty years. When this conversation
took place, the Admiral (afterwards Sir James Hope, K.C.B.) came to
say good-bye to him, and he asked my Captain what he could do for him.
He turned his suffering body towards me and said to the Admiral: “Take
care of that boy.” And so he did.
Admiral Hope was a great man, very stern and stately, the sort of man
everybody was afraid of. His nickname was composed of the three ships
he had commanded: “Terrible ... Firebrand ... Majestic.” He turned to
me and said: “Go down in my boat”; and everyone in the Fleet saw this
Midshipman going into the Admiral’s boat. He took me with him to the
Flagship; and I got on very well with him because I wrote a very big
hand which he could read without spectacles.
He promoted me to Lieutenant at the earliest possible date, and sent
me on various services, which greatly helped me.
My first chance came when Admiral Hope sent me to command a vessel in
Chinese waters on special service. His motto was “Favouritism is the
secret of efficiency,” and though I was only nineteen he put me over
the heads of many older men because he believed that I should do what I
was told to do, and carry out the orders of the Admiral regardless of
consequences. And so I did, although I made all sorts of mistakes and
nearly lost the ship. When I came back everyone seemed to expect that I
should be tried by Court-Martial; but the Admiral only cared that I had
done what he wanted done; and then he gave me command of another vessel.
The Captain of the ship I came home in was another sea wonder, by name
Oliver Jones. He was Satanic; yet I equally liked him, for, like Satan,
he could disguise himself as an angel; and I believe I was the only
officer he did not put under arrest. For some reason I got on with him,
and he made me the Navigating Officer of the ship. He told me when I
first came on board that he thought he had committed every crime under
the sun except murder. I think he committed that crime while I was with
him. He was a most fascinating man. He had such a charm, he was most
accomplished, he was a splendid rider, a wonderful linguist, an expert
navigator and a thorough seaman. He had the best cook, and the best
wines ever afloat in the Navy, and was hospitable to an extreme. Almost
daily he had a lot of us to dinner, but after dinner came hell! We
dined with him in tail coat and epaulettes. After dinner he had sail
drill, or preparing the ship for battle, and persecution then did its
utmost.
Once, while I was serving with him, we were frozen in out of sight
of land in the Gulf of Pechili in the North of China. And there were
only Ship’s provisions, salt beef, salt pork, pea soup, flour, and
raisins. Oliver Jones was our Captain, or we wouldn’t have been frozen
in. The Authorities told him to get out of that Gulf and that’s why
he stayed in. I never knew a man who so hated Authority. I forget how
many degrees below zero the thermometer was, and it was only by an
unprecedented thaw that we ever got out. And with this intense cold he
would often begin at four o’clock in the morning to prepare for battle,
and hand up every shot in the ship on to the Upper Deck, then he’d
strike Lower Yards and Topmasts (which was rather a heavy business),
and finish up with holystoning the Decks, which operation he requested
all the Officers to honour with their presence. And when we went to Sea
we weren’t quite sure where we would go to (I remember hearing a Marine
Officer say that we’d got off the Chart altogether). Till that date I
had never known what a delicacy a seagull was. We used to get inside an
empty barrel on the ice to shoot them, and nothing was lost of them.
The Doctor skinned them to make waistcoats of the skins--the insides
were put on the ice to bait other seagulls, and a rare type of onion we
had (that made your eyes water when you got within half a mile of them)
made into stuffing got rid of the fishy taste.
[Illustration: KING EDWARD VII. AND THE CZAR, 1909.]
On the way home he landed me on a desert island to make a survey.
He was sparse in his praises; but he wrote of me: “As a sailor, an
officer, a Navigator and a gentleman, I cannot praise him too highly.”
Confronted with this uncommon expression of praise from Oliver Jones,
the examiners never asked me a question. They gave me on the spot a
first-class certificate.
This Captain Oliver Jones raised a regiment of cavalry for the Indian
Mutiny and was its Colonel, and Sir Hope Grant, the great Cavalry
General in the Indian Mutiny, said he had never met the equal of Oliver
Jones as a cavalry leader. He broke his neck out hunting.
When I was sent to the Hythe School of Musketry as a young Lieutenant,
I found myself in a small Squad of Officers, my right hand man was a
General and my left hand man a full Colonel. The Colonel spent his time
drawing pictures of the General. (The Colonel was really a wonderful
Artist.) The General was splendid. He was a magnificent-looking man
with a voice like a bull and his sole object was Mutiny! He hated
General Hay, who was in Command of the Hythe School of Musketry. He
hated him with a contemptuous disdain. In those days we commenced
firing at the target only a few hundred yards off. The General never
hit the target once! The Colonel made a beautiful picture of him
addressing the Parade and General Hay: “Gentlemen! my unalterable
conviction is that the bayonet is the true weapon of the British
Soldier!” The beauty of the situation was that the General had been
sent to Hythe to qualify as Inspector-General of Musketry. After
some weeks of careful drill (without firing a shot) we had to snap
caps (that was to get our nerves all right, I suppose!); the Sergeant
Instructor walked along the front of the Squad and counted ten copper
caps into each outstretched hand. At that critical moment General Hay
appeared on the Parade. This gave the General his chance! With his
bull-like voice he asked General Hay if it was believable after these
weeks of incessant application that we were going (each of us) to be
entrusted with ten copper caps! When we were examined _vivâ voce_ we
each had to stand up to answer a question (like the little boys at
a Sunday School). The General was asked to explain the lock of the
latest type of British Rifle. He got up and stated that as he was
neither Maskelyne and Cooke nor the Davenport Brothers (who were the
great conjurers of that time) he couldn’t do it. Certainly we had some
appalling questions. One that I had was, “What do you pour the water
into the barrel of the rifle with when you are cleaning it?” Both my
answers were wrong. I said, “With a tin pannikin or the palm of the
hand.” The right answer was “_with care_”! Another question in the
written examination was, “What occurred about _this_ time?” Only one
paragraph in the text-book had those words in it “About _this_ time
there occurred, etc.”! All the same I had a lovely time there; the
British Army was very kind to me and I loved it. The best shot in the
British Army at that date was a confirmed drunkard who trembled like
a leaf, but when he got his eye on the target he was a bit of marble
and “bull’s eyes” every time! So, as the Scripture says, never judge
by appearance. Keble, who wrote the “Christian Year,” was exceedingly
ugly, but when he spoke Heaven shone through; so I was told by one who
knew him.
It’s going rather backwards now to speak of the time when I was a
Midshipman of the “Jolly Boat” in 1854, in an old Sailing Line of
Battleship of eighty-four guns. I think I must have told of sailing
into Harbour every morning to get the Ship’s Company’s beef (gale or no
gale) from Spithead or Plymouth Sound or the Nore. We never went into
harbour in those days, and it was very unpleasant work. I always felt
there was a chance of being drowned. Once at the Nore in mid-winter all
our cables parted in a gale and we ran into the Harbour and anchored
with our hemp cable (our sole remaining joy); it seemed as big round as
my small body was then, and it lay coiled like a huge gigantic serpent
just before the Cockpit. Nelson must have looked at a similar hemp
cable as he died in that corner of the Cockpit which was close to it.
All Battleships were exactly alike. You could go ashore then for forty
years and come on board again quite up to date. On our Quarter Deck
were brass Cannonades that had fired at the French Fleet at Trafalgar.
No one but the Master knew about Navigation. I remember when the Master
was sick and the second Master was away and the Master’s Assistant had
only just entered the Navy, we didn’t go to Sea till the Master got out
of bed again. There was a wonderfully smart Commander in one of the
other Battleships who had the utmost contempt for Science; he used to
say that he didn’t believe in the new-fangled sighting of the guns,
“Your Tangent Sights and Disparts!” What he found to be practically the
best procedure was a cold veal pie and a bottle of rum to the first man
that hit the target. We have these same “dears” with us now, but they
are disguised in a clean white shirt and white kid gloves, but as for
believing in Engineers--“Sack the Lot”!
It is very curious that we have no men now of great conceptions who
stand out above their fellows in any profession, not even the Bishops,
which reminds me of a super-excellent story I’ve been told in a letter.
My correspondent met by appointment three Bishops for an expected
attack. Before they got to the business of the meeting, he said, “Could
their Lordships kindly tell him in the case of consecrated ground how
deep the consecration went, as he specially wanted to know this for
important business purposes.” They wrangled and he got off his “mauvais
quart d’heure.” My correspondent explained to me that his old Aunt (a
relation of Mr. Disraeli) said to him when he was young “Alfred, if you
are going to have a row with anyone--_always you begin_!”
I come to another episode of comparatively early years.
Yesterday I heard from a gentleman whom I had not seen for thirty-eight
years, and he reminded me of a visit to me when I was Captain of the
“Inflexible.” I was regarded by the Admiral Superintendent of the
Dockyard as the Incarnation of Revolution. (What upset him most was
I had asked for more water-closets and got them.) This particular
episode I’m going to relate was that I wanted the incandescent light.
Lord Kelvin had taken me to dine with the President of the Royal
Society, where for the first time his dining table was lighted with
six incandescent lamps, provided by his friend Mr. Swan of Newcastle,
the Inventor in this Country of the Incandescent light, as Mr. Edison
was in America (it was precisely like the discovery of the Planet
Neptune when Adams and Leverrier ran neck and neck in England and
France). After this dinner I wrote to Mr. Swan to get these lamps for
the “Inflexible,” and he sent down the friend who wrote me the letter
I received yesterday (Mr. Henry Edmunds) and we had an exhibition to
convert this old fossil of an Admiral Superintendent.
Here I’ll put in Mr. Henry Edmunds’s own words:--
At last we got our lamps to glow satisfactorily; and at that
moment the Admiral was announced. Captain Fisher had warned me
that I must be careful how I answered any questions, for the
Admiral was of the stern old school, and prejudiced against
all new-fangled notions. The Admiral appeared resplendent in
gold lace, and accompanied by such a bevy of ladies that I was
strongly reminded of the character in “H.M.S. Pinafore” “with
his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts.” The Admiral
immediately asked if I had seen the “Inflexible.” I replied
that I had. “Have you seen the powder magazine?” “Yes! I have
been in it.” “What would happen to one of these little glass
bubbles in the event of a broadside?” I did not think it would
affect them. “How do you know? You’ve never been in a ship
during a broadside!” I saw Captain Fisher’s eye fixed upon me;
and a sailor was dispatched for some gun-cotton. Evidently
everything had been ready prepared, for he quickly returned
with a small tea tray about two feet long, upon which was a
layer of gun-cotton, powdered over with black gun-powder. The
Admiral asked if I was prepared to break one of the lamps over
the tray. I replied that I could do so quite safely, for the
glowing lamp would be cooled down by the time it fell amongst
the gun-cotton. I took a cold chisel, smashed a lamp, and let
it fall. The Company saw the light extinguished, and a few
pieces of glass fall on the tray. There was no flash, and
the gun-powder and gun-cotton remained as before. There was
a short pause, while the Admiral gazed on the tray. Then he
turned, and said to Lord Fisher, “We’ll have this light on the
‘Inflexible.’”
And that was the introduction of the incandescent light into
the British Navy.
Talking about water-closets, I remember so well long ago that one of
the joys on board a Man-of-War on Christmas Day was having what was
called a “Free Tank,” that is to say, you could go and get as much
fresh water as ever you liked, all other days you were restricted, so
much for drinking and so much for washing. The other Christmas Joy was
“Both sides of the ‘Head’ open”! What that meant was that right in the
Bows or Head of the Ship were situated all the Bluejackets’ closets,
and on Christmas Day all could be used! “all were free.” Usually only
half were allowed to be open at a time. It was a quaint custom, and I
always thought outrageous. “Nous avons changé tout cela.”
When I was out in the West Indies a French Frigate came into the
Harbour with Yellow Fever on board. My Admiral asked the Captain of
the English Man-of-War that happened to be there what kindness he had
shown the French Frigate on arrival? He said he had sent them the keys
of the Cemetery. This Captain always took his own champagne with him
and put it under his chair. I took a passage with him once in his Ship,
he had a Chart hanging up in his cabin like one of those recording
barometers, which showed exactly how his wine was getting on. When he
came to call on the Admiral at his house on shore, he always brought a
small bundle with him, and after his Official visit he’d go behind a
bush in the garden and change into plain clothes! All the same, this is
the stuff that heroes are made of. Heroes are always quaint.
CHAPTER II.
FURTHER MEMORIES OF KING EDWARD AND OTHERS
King Edward paid a visit to Admiralty House, Portsmouth, 19th February
to 22nd February, 1904, while I was Commander-in-Chief there; and after
he had left I received the following letter from Lord Knollys:--
BUCKINGHAM PALACE,
_22nd February, 1904._
MY DEAR ADMIRAL,
I am desired by the King to write and thank you again for your
hospitality.
His Majesty also desires me to express his great appreciation
of all of the arrangements, which were excellent, and they
reflect the greatest credit both on you and on those who worked
under your orders.
I am very glad the visit was such a great success and went off
so well. The King was evidently extremely pleased with and
interested in everything.
Yours sincerely,
KNOLLYS.
I can say that I never more enjoyed such a visit. The only thing was
that I wasn’t Master in my own house, the King arranged who should
come to dinner and himself arranged how everyone should sit at table;
I never had a look in. Not only this, but he also had the Cook up in
the morning. She was absolutely the best cook I’ve ever known. She was
cheap at £100 a year. She was a remarkably lovely young woman. She died
suddenly walking across a hay field. The King gave her some decoration,
I can’t remember what it was. Some little time after the King had
left--one night I said to the butler at dinner, “This soup was never
made by Mrs. Baker; is she ill?” The butler replied, “No, Sir John,
Mrs. Baker isn’t ill, she has been invited by His Majesty the King to
stay at Buckingham Palace.” And that was the first I had heard of it.
Mrs. Baker had two magnificent kitchenmaids of her own choosing and
she thought she wouldn’t be missed. I had an interview with Mrs. Baker
on her return from her Royal Visit, and she told me that the King had
said to her one morning before he left Admiralty House, Portsmouth,
that he thought she would enjoy seeing how a Great State Dinner was
managed, and told her he would ask her to stay at Buckingham Palace or
Windsor Castle to see one! Which is only one more exemplification of
what I said of King Edward in my first book, that he had an astounding
aptitude of appealing to the hearts of both High and Low.
My friends tell me I have done wrong in omitting countless other little
episodes of his delightful nature.
“One touch of nature makes the whole world kin!”
This is a sweet little episode that occurred at Sandringham. The King
was there alone and Lord Redesdale and myself were his only guests.
The King was very fond of Redesdale, and rightly so. He was a most
delightful man. He and I were sitting in the garden near dinner time,
the King came up and said it was time to dress and he went up in the
lift, leaving Redesdale in the garden. Redesdale had a letter to write
and rushed up to his bedroom to write the letter behind a screen
there was between him and the door; the door opened and in came the
King, thinking he had left Redesdale in the garden, and went to the
wash-hand-stand and felt the hot water-can to see if the water was hot
and went out again. Perhaps his water had been cold, but anyhow he came
to see if his guest’s was all right.
On another occasion I went down to Sandringham with a great party, I
think it was for one of Blessed Queen Alexandra’s birthdays (I hope
Her Majesty will forgive me for telling a lovely story presently about
herself). As I was zero in this grand party, I slunk off to my room to
write an important letter; then I took my coat off, got out my keys,
unlocked my portmanteau and began unpacking. I had a boot in each hand;
I heard somebody fumbling with the door handle and thinking it was the
Footman whom Hawkins had allocated to me, I said “Come in, don’t go
humbugging with that door handle!” and in walked King Edward, with a
cigar about a yard long in his mouth. He said (I with a boot in each
hand!) “What on earth are you doing?” “Unpacking, Sir.” “Where’s your
servant?” “Haven’t got one, Sir.” “Where is he?” “Never had one, Sir;
couldn’t afford it.” “Put those boots down; sit in that arm chair.”
And he went and sat in the other on the other side of the fire. I
thought to myself, “This is a rum state of affairs! Here’s the King of
England sitting in my bedroom on one side of the fire and I’m in my
shirt sleeves sitting in an armchair on the other side!”
“Well,” His Majesty said, “why didn’t you come and say, ‘How do you
do’ when you arrived?” I said, “I had a letter to write, and with so
many great people you were receiving I thought I had better come to
my room.” Then he went on with a long conversation, until it was only
about a quarter of an hour from dinner time, and I hadn’t unpacked! So
I said to the King, “Sir, you’ll be angry if I’m late for dinner, and
no doubt your Majesty has two or three gentlemen to dress you, but I
have no one.” And he gave me a sweet smile and went off.
All the same, he could be extremely unpleasant; and one night I had to
send a telegram for a special messenger to bring down some confounded
Ribbon and Stars, which His Majesty expected me to wear. I’d forgotten
the beastly things (I’m exactly like a Christmas Tree when I’m dressed
up). One night when I got the King’s Nurse to dress me up, she put the
Ribbon of something over the wrong shoulder, and the King harangued
me as if I’d robbed a church. I didn’t like to say it was his Nurse’s
fault. Some of these Ribbons you put over one shoulder and some of them
you have to put over the other; it’s awfully puzzling. But the King was
an Angel all the same, only he wasn’t always one. Personally I don’t
like perfect angels, one doesn’t feel quite comfortable with them. One
of Cecil Rhodes’s secretaries wrote his Life, and left out all his
defects; it was a most unreal picture. The Good stands out all the more
strikingly if there is a deep shadow. I think it’s called the Rembrandt
Effect. Besides, it’s unnatural for a man not to have a Shadow, and
the thought just occurs to me how beautiful it is--“The Shadow of
Death”! There couldn’t be the Shadow unless there was a bright light!
The Bright Light is Immortality! Which reminds me that yesterday I
read Dean Inge’s address at the Church Congress the day before on
Immortality. If I had anything to do with it, I’d make him Archbishop
of Canterbury. I don’t know him, but I go to hear him preach whenever I
can.
The Story about Queen Alexandra is this. My beloved friend Soveral,
one of King Edward’s treasured friends, asked me to lunch on Queen
Alexandra’s sixtieth birthday. After lunch all the people said
something nice to Queen Alexandra, and it came to my turn, I said
to Her Majesty, “Have you seen that halfpenny newspaper about your
Majesty’s birthday?” She said she hadn’t, what was it? I said these
were the words:--
“The Queen is sixty to-day!
May she live till she looks it!”
Her Majesty said “Get me a copy of it!” (Such a thing didn’t exist!)
About three weeks afterwards (Her Majesty has probably forgotten all
about it now, but she hadn’t then) she said, “Where’s that halfpenny
newspaper?” I was staggered for a moment, but recovered myself and
said “Sold out, Ma’am; couldn’t get a copy!” (I think my second lie
was better than my first!) But the lovely part of the story yet
remains. A year afterwards she sent me a lovely postcard which I much
treasure now. It was a picture of a little girl bowling a hoop, and Her
Majesty’s own head stuck on, and underneath she had written:--
“May she live till she looks it!”
I treasure the remembrances of all her kindnesses to me as well as
that of her dear Sister, the Dowager Empress of Russia. The trees they
both planted at Kilverstone are both flourishing; but strange to say
the tree King Edward planted began to fade away and died in May, 1910,
when he died--though it had flourished luxuriantly up till then. Its
roots remain untouched--and a large mass of “Forget-me-nots” flourishes
gloriously over them.
* * * * *
For very many consecutive years after 1886 I went to Marienbad in
Bohemia (eight hundred miles from London and two thousand feet above
the sea and one mass of delicious pine woods) to take the waters there.
It’s an ideal spot. The whole place is owned by a Colony of Monks,
settled in a Monastery (close by) called Tepl, who very wisely have
resisted all efforts to cut down the pine woods so as to put up more
buildings.
I had a most serious illness after the Bombardment of Alexandria
due to bad living, bad water, and great anxiety. The Admiral (Lord
Alcester) had entrusted me (although I was one of the junior Captains
in the Fleet) with the Command on shore after the Bombardment. Arabi
Pasha, in command of the Rebel Egyptian Army, was entrenched only a few
miles off, and I had but a few hundreds to garrison Alexandria. For the
first time in modern history we organised an Armoured Train. Nowadays
they are as common as Aeroplanes. Then it excited as much emotion
as the Tanks did. There was a very learned essay in the _Pall Mall
Gazette_.
I was invalided home and, as I relate in my “Memories,” received
unprecedented kindness from Queen Victoria (who had me to stay at
Osborne) and from Lord Northbrook (First Lord of the Admiralty), who
gave me the best appointment in the Navy. I always have felt great
gratitude also to his Private Secretary at that time (Admiral Sir Lewis
Beaumont). For three years I had recurrence of Malarial Fever, and
tried many watering places and many remedies all in vain. I went to
Marienbad and was absolutely cured in three weeks, and never relapsed
till two years ago, when I was ill again and no one has ever discovered
what was the matter with me! Thanks be to God--I believe I am now as
well as I ever was in all my whole life, and I can still waltz with joy
and enjoy champagne when I can get it (friends, kindly note!).
At Marienbad I met some very celebrated men, and the place being so
small I became great friends with them. If you are restricted to a
Promenade only a few hundred yards long for two hours morning and
evening, while you are drinking your water, you can’t help knowing each
other quite well. How I wish I could remember all the splendid stories
those men told me!
Campbell-Bannerman, Russell (afterwards Chief Justice), Hawkins
(afterwards Lord Brampton), the first Lord Burnham, Labouchere (of
_Truth_), Yates (of the _World_), Lord Shand (a Scottish Judge),
General Gallifet (famous in the Franco-German War), Rumbold (Ambassador
at Vienna), those were some of the original members. Also there
were two Bevans (both delightful)--to distinguish them apart, they
called the “Barclay Perkins” Bevan “poor” Bevan, as he was supposed
to have only two millions sterling, while the other one was supposed
to have half a dozen! (That was the story.) I almost think I knew
Campbell-Bannerman the best. He was very delightful to talk to. I have
no Politics. But in after years I did so admire his giving Freedom
to the Boers. Had he lived, he would have done the same to Ireland
without any doubt whatever. Fancy now 60,000 British soldiers quelling
veiled Insurrection and a Military Dictator as Lord Lieutenant and
Ireland never so prosperous! I have never been more moved than in
listening to John Redmond’s brother, just back from the War in his
Soldier’s uniform, making the most eloquent and touching appeal for
the Freedom of Ireland! _It came to nothing._ I expect Lord Loreburn
(who was Campbell-Bannerman’s bosom friend) will agree with me that had
Campbell-Bannerman only known what a literally overwhelming majority he
was going to obtain at the forthcoming Election, he would have formed
a very different Government from what he did, and I don’t believe we
should have had the War. King Edward liked him very much. They had a
bond in their love of all things French. I don’t believe any Prime
Minister was ever so loved by his followers as was Campbell-Bannerman.
Sir Charles Russell, afterwards Chief Justice, was equally delightful.
We were so amused one day (when he first came to Marienbad) by the Head
Waiter whispering to us that he was a cardsharper! The Head Waiter told
us he had seen him take a pack of cards out of his pocket, look at
them carefully, and then put them back! Which reminds me of a lovely
incident in my own career. I had asked the Roman Catholic Archbishop to
dinner; he was a great Saint--we played cards after dinner. We sat down
to play--(one of my guests was a wonderful conjurer). “Hullo!” I said,
“Where are the cards gone to?” The conjurer said, “It doesn’t matter:
the Archbishop will let us have the pack of cards he always carries
about in his pocket”! The Holy Man furtively put his hand in his pocket
(thinking my friend was only joking!) and dash it! there they were! I
never saw such a look in a man’s face! (He thought Satan was crawling
about somewhere.)
Lord Burnham was ever my great Friend, he was also a splendid man.
I should like to publish his letters. I have spoken of Labouchere
elsewhere. As Yates, of the _World_, Labouchere, and Lord Burnham
(those three) walked up and down the Promenade together (Lord
Burnham being stout), Russell called them “The World, the Flesh, and
the Devil.” I don’t know if it was original wit, but it was to me.
[Illustration: TWO PHOTOGRAPHS OF KING EDWARD VII. AND SIR JOHN FISHER
ON BOARD H.M.S. “DREADNOUGHT” ON HER FIRST CRUISE.]
Old Gallifet also was splendid company; he had a silver plate over part
of his stomach and wounds all over him. I heard weird stories of how he
shot down the Communists.
Sir Henry Hawkins I dined with at some Legal Assemblage, and as we
walked up the Hall arm in arm all the Law Students struck up a lovely
song I’d never heard before: “Mrs. ’enry ’awkins,” which he greatly
enjoyed. On one occasion he told me that when he was still a Barrister,
he came late into Court and asked what was the name of the Barrister
associated with him in the Case? The Usher or someone told him it was
Mr. Swan and he had just gone out of the Court. (I suppose he ought to
have waited for Sir Henry.) Anyhow Sir Henry observed that he didn’t
like him “taking liberties with his Leda.” I expect the Usher, not
being up in Lemprière’s Dictionary, didn’t see the joke!
Dear Shand, who was very small of stature, was known as the “Epitome
of all that was good in Man.” He reeked with good stories and never
told them twice. Queen Victoria fell in love with him at first sight
(notwithstanding that she preferred big men) and had him made a Lord.
She asked after his wife as “Lady Shand”; and, being a Scottish Law
Lord, he replied that “Mrs. Shand was quite well.” There are all sorts
of ways of becoming a Lord.
Rumbold knocked the man down who asked him for his ticket! He wasn’t
going to have an Ambassador treated like that (as if he had travelled
without a ticket!)
As the Czechs hate the Germans, I look forward to going back to my
beloved Marienbad once more every year. The celebrated Queen of Bohemia
was the daughter of an English King; her name was Elizabeth. The
English Ambassador to the Doge of Venice, Sir Henry Wootton, wrote
some imperishable lines in her praise and accordingly I worshipped at
Wootton’s grave in Venice. The lines in his Poem that I love are:--
“You Common People of the Skies,
What are You, when the Moon shall rise?”
In dictating the Chapter on “Some Personalities,” that appears in
my “Memories,” I certainly should not have overlooked my very good
friend Masterton-Smith (Sir J. E. Masterton-Smith, K.C.B.). I can only
say here (as he knows quite well) that never was he more appreciated
by anyone in his life than by me. Numberless times he was simply
invaluable, and had his advice been always taken, events would have
been so different in May 1915!
I have related in “Memories” how malignancy went to the extent not
only of declaring that I had sold my country to the Germans (so
beautifully denied by Sir Julian Corbett), but also that I had formed
“Syndicates” and “Rings” for my own financial advantage, using my
official knowledge and power to further my nefarious schemes for making
myself quickly rich! I have denied this by the Income Tax Returns--and
I have also explained I am still poor--very poor--because one-third of
my pension goes in income tax and the remaining two-thirds is really
only one-third because of depreciation of the pound sterling and
appreciation of food prices!
But let that pass. However, I’ve been told I ought to mention I had
another very brilliant opportunity of becoming a millionaire in A.D.
1910, but declined. And also it has been requested of me to state the
fact that never in all my life have I belonged to any company of any
sort beyond possessing shares, or had any place of profit outside the
Navy. That is sufficiently definite, I think, to d----n my enemies and
satisfy my friends.
My finances have always been at a low ebb (even when a
Commander-in-Chief), as I went on the principle of “whatever you do,
do it with all your might,” and there is nothing less conducive to
“the fighting efficiency of a Fleet and its instant readiness for
war” than a Stingy Admiral! The applications for subscriptions which
were rained upon me I countered with this inestimable memorandum in
reply, invented by my sympathetic Secretary:--“The Admiral deeply
regrets being unable to comply with your request, and he deplores the
reason--but his Expenditure is in excess of his Receipts.” I always
got sympathy in return, more especially as the Local Applicants were
largely responsible for the excess of expenditure.
At an early period of my career I certainly did manage on very little,
and it is wonderful what a lot you can get for your money if you think
it over. I got breakfast for tenpence, lunch for a shilling and dinner
for eighteen pence and barley water for nothing and a bed for three
and sixpence (but my bedroom had not a Southern aspect). The man I
hired a bedroom from was like a Father to me, and I have never had such
a polish on my shoes. (I remember saying to a German Boots, pointing
to my badly-cleaned shoes, “Spiegel!”--looking-glass; he took away
the shoes and brought them back shining like a dollar. Hardly anyone
will see the joke!) But what I am most proud of is that, financial
necessity once forcing me to go to Marienbad quite alone, I did a three
weeks’ cure there, including the railway fare and every expense, for
twenty-five pounds. I don’t believe any Economist has ever beaten this.
I preserve to this day the details of every day’s expenditure, which
I kept in a little pocket-book, and read it all over only a couple of
days ago, without any wish for past days.
I recall with delight first meeting my beloved old friend, Sir Henry
Lucy; he had with him Sir F. C. Gould, who never did a better service
to his country than when he portrayed me as an able seaman asking the
Conscriptionists (in the person of Lord Roberts) whether there was no
British Navy. The cartoon was reproduced in my “Memories” (p. 48). In
my speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in 1907 (see Chapter VI of this
volume) I had spoken of Sir Henry Lucy as “gulled by some Midshipman
Easy of the Channel Fleet” (Sir Henry had been for a cruise in the
Fleet), who stuffed him up that the German Army embarking in the German
Fleet was going to invade England! And in the flippant manner that
seems so to annoy people, I observed that Sir Henry might as well
talk of embarking St. Paul’s Cathedral on board a penny steamer as of
embarking the German Army in the German Fleet! He and Gould came up to
me at a _séance_ on board the “Dreadnought,” and had a cup of tea as if
I had been a lamb!
On the occasion of that same speech, a Bishop looked very sternly at
me, because in my speech, to show how if you keep on talking about
war and always looking at it and thinking of it you bring it on, I
instanced Eve, who kept on looking at the apple and at last she plucked
it; and in the innocence of my heart I observed that had she not done
so we should not have been now bothered with clothes. When I said this
in my speech I was following the advice of one of the Sheriffs of the
City of London, sitting next me at dinner, who told me to fix my eyes,
while I was speaking, on the corner of the Ladies’ Gallery, as then
everyone in the Guildhall could hear what I said. And such a lovely
girl was in that corner, I never took my eyes off her, all the time,
and that brought Eve into my mind!
CHAPTER III
THE BIBLE, AND OTHER REFLECTIONS
I have just been listening to another very eloquent sermon from Dr.
Hugh Black, whom I mention elsewhere in this book (see Chapter V).
Nearly all these Presbyterians are eloquent, because they don’t write
their sermons.
The one slip our eloquent friend made in his sermon was in saying that
the _A.D._ 1611 edition of the Bible (the Authorised Version) was a
better version of the Bible than the Great Bible of _A.D._ 1539, which
according to the front page is stated to be as follows:--
“The byble in English that is to say the content of all
the Holy Scripture both of the old and new testament truly
translated after the verity of the Hebrew and Greek texts by
the diligent study of diverse excellent learned men expert in
the aforesaid tongues.
“Printed by Richard Grafton and Edward Whitchurch. Cum
privilegio ad imprimendum solum.
1539.”
It is true, as the preacher said, that the 1611 edition, the Authorised
Version, is more the literal translation of the two, but those
“diverse excellent learned men” translated according to the spirit and
not the letter of the original; and our dear brother (the preacher)
this morning in his address had to acknowledge that in the text he
had chosen from the 27th Psalm and the last verse thereof, the pith
and marrow which he rightly seized on--being the words “Wait on the
Lord”--were more beautifully rendered in the great Bible from which
(the Lord be thanked!) the English Prayer Book takes its Psalms, and
which renders the original Hebrew not in the literal words, “Wait on
the Lord,” but “_Tarry thou the Lord’s leisure_,” and goes on also
in far better words than the Authorised Version with the rest of the
verse: “Be strong and He shall comfort thine heart.”
When we remonstrated with the Rev. Hugh Black after his sermon, he
again gainsaid, and increased his heinousness by telling us that the
word “Comfort,” which doesn’t appear in the 1611 version, was in its
ancient signification a synonym for “Fortitude”; and the delightful
outcome of it is that that is really the one and only proper prayer--to
ask for Fortitude or _Endurance_. You have no right to pray for rain
for your turnips, when it will ruin somebody else’s wheat. You have no
right to ask the Almighty--in fact, He can’t do it--to make two and two
into five. The only prayer to pray is for Endurance, or Fortitude. The
most saintly man I know, daily ended his prayers with the words of that
wonderful hymn:
“Renew my will from day to day,
Blend it with thine, and take away
All that now makes it hard to say,
Thy will be done.”
It must not be assumed that I am a Saint in any way in making these
remarks, but only a finger-post pointing the way. The finger-post
doesn’t go to Heaven itself, yet it shows the way. All I want to
do is to stick up for those holy men who were not hide-bound with
a dictionary, and gave us the spirit of the Holy Word and not the
Dictionary meaning.
Here I feel constrained to mention a far more beautiful illustration of
the value of those pious men of old.
In Brother Black’s 1611 version, the most famous of the Saviour’s
words: “Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I
will give you rest,” is, in the 1539 version, “I will _refresh_ you!”
There is no _rest_ this side of Heaven. Job (iii, 17) explains Heaven
as “Where the wicked cease from troubling and where the weary be at
rest.” The fact is--the central point is reached by the Saviour when He
exemplifies the Day of Perfection by saying: “In that day ye shall ask
me nothing.”
I have been told by a great scientist that for the tide to move a
pebble on the beach a millionth of an inch further would necessitate an
alteration in the whole Creation. And then we go and pray for rain, or
to beat our enemies!
Again, I say--The only thing to pray for is _Endurance_.
Some people in sore straits try to strike bargains with God, if only He
will keep them safe or relieve them in the present necessity. It’s a
good story of the soldier who, with all the shells exploding round him
was heard to pray: “O Lord, if You’ll only get me out of this d--d mess
I will be good, I will be good!”
I am reminded of what I call the “Pith and Marrow” which the pious
men put at the head of every chapter of the Bible, and which, alas!
has been expunged in the literary exactitudes of the Revised Version.
Regard Chapter xxvi, for instance, of Proverbs--how it is all summed up
by those “diverse excellent learned men.” They wrote at the top of the
chapter “Observations about Fools.” Matthew xxii: the Saviour “_Poseth_
the Pharisees.” Isaiah xxi: “The _set_ time.” Isaiah xxvii (so true
and pithy of the Chapter!): “Chastisements differ from Judgments”; and
in Mark xv: “The Clamour of the Common People”--descriptive of what’s
in the chapter. All these headings, in my opinion, as regards those
ancient translators, are for them a “Crown of Glory and a Diadem of
Beauty”; and I have a feeling that, when they finished their wondrous
studies, it was with them as Solomon said, “The desire accomplished is
sweet to the Soul.”
DR. GINSBURG
_March 27th, 1918._
DEAR FRIEND,
When I was at Bath I read in the local paper a beautiful letter
aptly alluding to the Mount Fiesole of Bath and quoting what
has been termed that mysterious verse of David’s:
“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills----.”
Well! the other day a great friend of that wonderful Hebrew
scholar, Dr. Ginsburg--he died long since at Capri--told
me that Ginsburg had said to him that all the Revisers and
Translators had missed a peculiar Hebraism which quite alters
the signification of this opening verse of the 121st Psalm: It
should read:
“_Shall_ I lift up mine eyes to those hills? DOTH my help come
from thence?”
And this is the explanation:
Those hills alluded to were the hills in which were the Groves planted
in honour of the idols towards which Israel had strayed. So in the
second verse the inspired tongue says:
“No! My help cometh from the Lord! He who hath made Heaven and
Earth! (not these idols).”
I have had an admiration for Ginsburg ever since he shut up the two
Atheists in the Athenæum Club, Huxley and Herbert Spencer, who were
reviling Holy Writ in Ginsburg’s presence and flouting him. So he asked
the two of them to produce anything anywhere in literature comparable
to the 23rd Psalm as translated by Wyclif, Tyndale, and Coverdale. He
gave them a week to examine, and at the end of it they confessed that
they could not.
One of them (I could not find out which it was) wrote:
“I won’t argue about nor admit the Inspiration claimed, but I say
this--that those saintly men whom Cromwell formed as the company to
produce the Great Bible of 1539 _were inspired_, for never has the
spirit of the original Hebrew been more beautifully transformed from
the original harshness into such spiritual wealth.”
Those are not the exact words, I have not got them by me, but that was
the sense.
The English language in A.D. 1539 was at its very maximum. Hence the
beauty of the Psalms which come from the Great Bible as produced by
that holy company of pious men, who one writer says: “Did not wish
their names to be ever known.” I send you the title page.
Yours, etc.,
(Signed) FISHER.
27/3/18.
I enclosed with this letter the front page of the first edition of the
Great Bible, A.D. 1539, often known as Cranmer’s Bible, but Archbishop
Cranmer had nothing whatever to do with it except writing a preface to
it; it was solely due to Cromwell, Secretary of State to Henry VIII.,
who cut off Cromwell’s head in July, 1540. Cranmer wrote a preface for
the edition after April, 1540. Cranmer was burnt at the stake in Mary’s
reign. Tyndale was strangled and burnt, Coverdale, Bishop of Exeter,
died of hunger. Coverdale headed the company that produced the Great
Bible, and Tyndale’s translation was taken as the basis. (So those who
had to do with the Bible had a rough time of it!)
John Wyclif, in A.D. 1380, began the translation of the Bible into
English. This was before the age of printing, so it was in manuscript.
Before he died, in A.D. 1384, he had the joy of seeing the Bible in the
hands of his countrymen in their own tongue.
Wyclif’s translation was quaint and homely, and so idiomatic as to
have become out of date when, more than one hundred years afterwards,
John Tyndale, walking over the fields in Wiltshire, determined so
to translate the Bible into English “that a boy that driveth the
plough should know more of the Scriptures than the Pope,” and Tyndale
gloriously succeeded! But for doing so, the Papists, under orders from
the Pope of Rome, half strangled him and then burnt him at the stake.
Like St. Paul, he was shipwrecked! (Just as he had finished the Book of
Jonah, which is curious, but there was no whale handy, and so he was
cast ashore in Holland, nearly dead!)
Our present Bible, of A.D. 1611, is almost word for word the Bible
of Tyndale, of round A.D. 1530, but in A.D. 1534, Miles Coverdale,
Bishop of Exeter, was authorised by Archbishop Cranmer and Thomas
Cromwell (who was Secretary of State to Henry VIII.) to publish his
fresh translation, and he certainly beautified in many places Tyndale’s
original!
In 1539, “Diverse excellent learned men expert in the ‘foresaid
tongues’” (Hebrew and Greek), under Cromwell’s orders made a true
translation of the whole Bible, which was issued in 1539–40 in four
editions, and remained supreme till A.D. 1568, when the Bishops tried
to improve it, and made a heavenly mess of it! And then the present
Authorised Version, issued in A.D. 1611, became the Bible of the Land,
and still holds its own against the recent pedantic Revised Version of
A.D. 1884. No one likes it. It is literal, but it is not spiritual!
In the opinion of Great and Holy men, Cranmer’s Bible (as it is
called), or “the Great Bible”--the Bible of 1539 to 1568--holds the
field for beauty of its English and its emotional rendering of the Holy
Spirit!
Alas! we don’t know their names; we only know of them as “Diverse
excellent learned men!” It is said they did not wish to go down to Fame!
“It is the greatest achievement in letters! The Beauty of the
translation of these unknown men excels (far excels) the real and the
so-called originals! All nations and tongues of Christendom have come
to admit reluctantly that no other version of the Book in the English
or any other tongue offers so noble a setting for the Divine Message.
Read the Prayer Book Psalms! They are from this noble Version--English
at its zenith! The English of the Great Bible is even more stately,
sublime, and pure than the English of Shakespeare and Elizabeth.”
ACTION
“Ye men of Galilee! Why stand ye gazing up into Heaven?” (Acts, Chapter
i., verse 11.)
The moral of this one great central episode of the whole Christian
faith (which, if a man don’t believe with his utmost heart he is as a
beast that perisheth, so Saint Paul teaches in I. Corinthians, Chapter
xv.), the moral of it is that however intense at any moment of our
lives may be the immediate tension that is straining our mental fibre
to the limit, yet we are to “get on!” and not stand stock still “gazing
up into Heaven!” Inaction must be no part of our life, and we must
“get on” with our journey as the Apostles did--“to our own City of
Jerusalem!”
It is curious that Thursday (Ascension Day) was not made the Christian
Sabbath. No scientific agnostic could possibly explain the Ascension
by any such theories as those that try to get over the fact of the
Resurrection by cataleptic happenings or an inconceivable trance! The
agnostic can’t explain away that He was seen by the Apostles to be
carried up into Heaven when in the act of lifting up His hands upon
them to bless them “and a cloud received Him out of their sight!”
_Vide_ the Collect for the Sunday after Ascension Day!
RESENTMENT
The prophet Zechariah says in Chapter xiv., verse 7:
“At evening time
It shall be light!”
And I conclude that in the last stage of life, as pointed out so very
decisively by Dr. Weir Mitchell (that great American), “the brain
becomes its best,” and so we rearrange our hearts and minds to the
great advantage of our own Heaven and the avoidance of Hell to others!
“Resentment” I find to fade away, and it merges into the feeling of
Commiseration! (“Poor idiots!” one says instead of “D--n ’em!”) But
I can’t arrive as yet at St. Paul, who deliberately writes that he’s
quite ready to go to Hell so as to let his enemy go to Heaven! You’ve
got really to be a real Christian to say that! I’ve not the least
doubt, however, that John Wesley, Bishop Jeremy Taylor and Robertson
of Brighton felt it surely! Isn’t it odd that those three great saints
(fit to be numbered “with these three men, Noah, Daniel and Job,”
Ezekiel, Chapter xiv., verse 14) each of them should have a “nagging”
wife!
Their Home was Hell!
And I’ve searched in vain for any one of the three saying a word to the
detriment of the other sex! They might all have been Suffragettes! (St.
Paul does indeed say that he preferred being single! But Peter was
married!)
But this “Resentment” section hinges entirely on “Charity” as defined
and exemplified by Mr. Robertson, of Brighton, in one of the best of
his wonderful Trinity Chapel Sermons.
DEAN INGE
I heard the Dean of St. Paul’s (Dr. Inge) preach in Westminster Abbey
on the 17th Chapter of St. Matthew, verse 19: “Then came the disciples
to Jesus apart, and said, ‘Why could not we cast him out?’”
The sermon was really splendiferous!
The Saviour had just cast out a devil that had been too much for
the disciples, and He told them their inability to do so was due to
their want of Faith, and added: “Howbeit this kind goeth not out but
by prayer.” The Dean explained to us that some ascetic annotator 400
years afterwards had shoved in at the end of these two additional
words--“and fasting.” That, of course, was meant by the Dean as “one
in the eye” for those who fast like the Pharisees and for a pretence
make long prayers! Then the Dean was just too lovely as to “Prayer!”
He said he was so sick of people praying for victory in the great War!
And speaking generally he was utterly sick of people praying for what
they wanted! (as if _that_ was Prayer!) No! the Dean divinely said,
“Prayer was the exaltation of the Spirit of a Man to dwell with God and
say in the Saviour’s words, ‘Not my will but Thine be done.’” “Get
right thus with God,” said the Dean, “and then go and make Guns and
Munitions with the utmost fury. That (said the Dean) was the way to get
Victory, and not by silly vain petitions as if you were asking your
Mamma for a bit of barley sugar.” (I don’t mean to say the Dean used
these exact words!) Then he said an interesting thing that “this event
of the disciples ignominiously failing to cast out the devil” happened
to these chief of His apostles just after their coming down from the
Mount of Transfiguration, where they had been immensely uplifted by the
Heavenly Vision of the Saviour talking with Moses and Elijah. The Dean
said “that it was really a curious fact of large experience that when
you were thus lifted up in a Heavenly Spirit it was a sure precursor
of a fierce temptation by the Devil!” These highly-favoured disciples,
after such a communion with God, thought that they themselves, by
themselves, could do anything! Pride had a fall! They could not cast
out that devil! They trusted in themselves and did not give God the
praise! And so it was that Moses didn’t go over Jordan, for he struck
the rock and said, “How now, ye rebels!” (I’ll show you who I am!)
The Dean also observed that it was the Drains that had to be put right
when there was an Epidemic of Typhoid Fever! “Prayer” wasn’t the
Antidote!
The holy man Saint Francis summed up all religion and the Christian
life in his famous line:
“How we are in the sight of God!--That is the only thing that matters!”
[Illustration:
PHOTOGRAPH, TAKEN AND SENT TO SIR JOHN FISHER BY THE EMPRESS MARIE OF
RUSSIA, OF A GROUP ON BOARD H.M.S. “STANDARD,” 1909.
1. Lord Hamilton of Dalzell.
2. The Chevalier de Martino.
3. Sir Arthur Nicholson.
4. M. Stolypin, Russian Prime Minister.
5. The Czarina.
6. M. Isvolsky, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
7. Sir John Fisher.
8. Sir Charles Hardinge.
9. Baron Fredericks.
10. The Grand Duchess Olga.
11. The Czar.
12. The Princess Victoria.
13. The Grand Duke Michael.
14. Count Benckendorff, Russian Ambassador.
]
FORGIVENESS
It fortuned this morning that I read Joseph’s interview with his
Brethren just after the death of their Father Jacob. They, having done
their best to murder Joseph quite naturally thought that he would now
be even with them, so they told a lie. They said that Jacob their
Father had very kindly left word with them that he hoped Joseph would
be very nice with his brethren after he died. Jacob said no such thing.
Jacob knew his Joseph. But it gave Joseph a magnificent opportunity
for reading one of Mr. Robertson’s, of Brighton, Sermons--he said to
them, “Am I in the place of God?” Meaning thereby that no bread and
water that he might put them on, and no torturing thumbscrews, would
in any way approach the unquenchable fire and the undying worm that
the Almighty so righteously reserves for the blackguards of this life.
Which reminds me of the best Sermon I ever heard by the present Dean
of Salisbury, Dr. Page-Roberts. He said: “There is no Bankruptcy Act
in Heaven. No 10s. in the £1 there. Every moral, debt has got to be
paid in full,” and consequently Page-Roberts, though an extremely
broad-minded man, was the same as the extreme Calvinist of the
unspeakable Hell and the Roman Catholic’s Purgatory. How curious it is
how extremes do meet!
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.
[Illustration: 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; 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.”
CHAPTER V
DEMOCRACY
“_Government of the people--by the people--for the people._”
(_President Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg, 1863._)
Some time ago the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University presided at a
lecture on Democracy given at Cambridge by the Professor of History at
Chicago (A. C. McLaughlin). I gather that he implied that Democracy is
helpless in the game of secret diplomacy and secret treaties. Democracy
now all depends upon the purpose and desire of the English-speaking
people.
It’s an opportune moment to repeat John Bright’s very famous speech on
a great federation of the nations that speak the Anglo-Saxon tongue.
The speech was given me when crossing the Atlantic by a splendid
citizen of the United States, where I had just been receiving boundless
hospitality and a wonderful welcome, and had realised the truth about a
prophet when not in his own country, and had been asked to “stump the
Middle West” to advocate the cause of friendship amongst all those who
speak our incomparable tongue, and to establish a Great Commonwealth of
Free Nations. There can be no secret treaties and no secret diplomacy
when the Government is of the People, by the People, for the People.
This is John Bright’s speech:
“Now what can one say of the future of our race and of our
kinsmen? Is that merely a dream? By no means.... Look where we
are now?...
“In this country, in Canada, and in the United States there
are, or soon will be, one hundred and fifty millions of
population, nearly all of whom owe their birth and origin to
the comparatively small country in which we live. It is a fact
that is not paralleled in any past history, and what may come
in the future to compare with it or excel it, it is not for
us to speak of, or even with any show of reason to imagine;
but we have in all these millions the same language, the same
literature, mainly the same laws and the institutions of
freedom. May we not hope for the highest and noblest federation
to be established among us? That is a question to which I would
ask your special and sympathetic attention. The noblest kind
of federation among us, under different Governments it may be,
but united by race, by sympathy, by freedom of industry, by
communion of interests and by a perpetual peace, we may help to
lead the world to that better time which we long for and which
we believe in, though it may not be permitted to our mortal
eyes to behold it.”
That was said by John Bright.
The time has now come for this great federation which he desired--for
this great Commonwealth of Free Nations.
There is only one type of treaty which is effective--“Community of
Interests.”
All other treaties are “Scraps of Paper.”
It is maintained by eminent men that the late appalling and disastrous
war, in which so many millions of human beings have been massacred or
maimed, would never have occurred _had there been a real Democracy in
power in England_. They say, as a small instance, that the great Mutiny
at the Nore and other mutinies were brought about by trampling on
Democracy.
This is what pure and unadulterated Democracy is, and we have not got
it in England:--
“EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL.”
For instance, no parent with less than nearly a £1000 a year can now
send his boy into the Navy as an Officer!
Nature is no respecter of birth or money power when she lavishes her
mental and physical gifts.
_We fight God when our Social System dooms the brilliant clever
child of the poor man to the same level as his father._
Therefore, we must have such State provision and such State education
as will enable the very poorest in the land to let their eligible
children rise to Admirals, Generals, Ambassadors, and Statesmen.
Can it be conceived that a real Democracy would have permitted secret
treaties such as have been divulged to us, or have scouted the terms of
Peace which were allowed only to be seen by Kings and Prime Ministers;
or would a real Democracy have flouted the Russian Revolution in its
first agonizing throes when gasping for help and recognition?
In a real Democracy, would true Labour leaders have waited on the
doormat?
Would a real Democracy wave the red rag of “Empire” in front of these
noble self-governing peoples all speaking our tongue in their own free
Parliaments, and all of them praying for the hastening of the time when
“England, the Mother of Free Parliaments, shall herself be free”?
But the Glorious Epoch is now fast approaching!
A Prime Minister once complimented me on a casual saying of mine at his
luncheon table. I was accounting for part of my success against
“Many giants great and tall,”
and I ventured to state that:--
“The secret of successful administration was the intelligent
anticipation of agitation.”
_Anticipate the Revolution._ Do the thing yourself in your way before
the agitators get in before you and do it in their way. Get rid of
the present obsolete Forms and Antique Ceremonies which grate on the
masses, and of Figureheads who are laughing-stocks, and of sinecures
which are exasperating--and so anticipate another Cromwell, who is
certainly now coming fast along to “Remove another Bauble!”
I forget what they did to the man who tried to import poisonous snakes
into New Zealand (finding that happy island unblessed with this
commodity). It was something quite drastic they did to _him_! They
killed the snakes.
The Canadian House of Commons adopted by a majority of 33 a motion by
Sir Robert Borden, on behalf of the Canadian Government, asking that
no more hereditary titles should be bestowed in Canada, and declaring
that the Canadian Government should make all recommendations for
honours of any kind. This motion was a compromise designed to damp down
the popular outcry against titles which has arisen in Canada. In one
debate Sir Wilfrid Laurier offered to throw his own title on a common
bonfire. He urged that all titles in Canada should be abolished.
Why should Great Britain lag behind Canada and the United States?
Hereditary titles are ludicrously out of date in any modern democracy,
and the sooner we sweep away all the gimcracks and gewgaws of snobbery
the better. The fount of so-called honour has become a deluge, and the
newspapers are hard put to it to find room for even the spray of the
deluge.
The war has not begotten simplicity and austerity in this respect. On
the contrary, it has made what used to be a comedy a screaming farce.
There was a time when the Birthday Honours List could be printed on
one day, but it is now a serial novel. The first chapter of the latest
Birthday list was long, but the _Times_ warned us that it was only “the
first of a series which already threatens to outlast the week--quite
apart from the gigantic Order of the British Empire.”
Chicago’s great Professor of History, Mr. McLaughlin, made the
statement at the Kingsway Hall, in his address to British teachers,
that now the United States have over 100 millions of people, and fifty
years from now they may well have 200 millions--a great Atlantic and
Pacific Power. The Professor added that this great War was “_to
protect Democracy against the greatest menace it has ever had_” (in the
present rule of Kings and Secret Treaties, etc., etc.). Another points
out as a striking example of present old-time conditions (so pernicious
to freedom and efficiency) the positive fact now existing that our
Military Leaders, by a class distinction, were only selected from one
twenty-fifth of the ore which we have at our disposal though we had
brought five million men under arms, as all our generals commanding
armies, army corps, divisions, and in most cases brigades, were drawn
from among the Regular Forces who handled our small pre-War Army of two
hundred thousand men. And the writer adds:
“If considered purely from the standpoint of the law of
averages, one would expect to find more good brains if one
searched the entire Army than in merely looking for material in
one twenty-fifth of it.”
General Currie, who so ably commands all the Canadian Forces, was
a Land Agent before the War. Neither Napoleon nor Wellington ever
commanded a regiment. Marlborough never handled an army till he was
fifty-two years of age. Clive was a Bank Clerk. Napoleon’s maxim was
“_La carrière ouverte aux talents_.” Are we ever going to adopt it?
PEACE
This truth is (_and ever will be_) the fact that the only pact that
ever holds, and the only treaty that ever lasts is:
“_COMMUNITY OF INTEREST!_”
and we can only have Community of Interest in the masses of a People
always being on the side of Peace, because it’s the masses who are
massacred, not the Kings and Generals and Politicians (they are
plentifully fed and comfortably housed, and have the best white
bread--_vide_ the American Dentist, Davies, when he stayed with the
German Emperor).
Well! the only way the masses of the People can act effectively is by
means of Republics. Because then no secret diplomacy ever answers, and
no one man can make war, or no coterie of men. In a Republic we get
“Government of the People, by the People, for the People.”
It’s a cheap sneer to ask how long the same Government ever exists
in Republican France! Nevertheless, sooner millions of changes of
Government and Peace than a stable Government with War! _A Republic is
always Peace-loving!_ except when righteous fury in a gust of popular
rage sweeps it into war, as lately in America; but it took four years
to move them! The People pushed the President. We are going to have
Bolshevism unless we foster these German Republics, and it will spread
righteously to England.
These Leagues of Nations and Freedoms of the Seas and all the other
items are all d--d nonsense! When War does come, then “Might is Right.”
“La raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure!” and every treaty is
a Scrap of Paper!
The Essence of War is Violence.
Moderation in War is Imbecility.
You hit first, you hit hard, and keep on hitting.
You have to be Ruthless, Relentless and Remorseless.
It’s perfect rot to talk about “Civilised Warfare!”
You might as well talk about a “Heavenly Hell!”
FROM LORD FISHER TO A FRIEND.
MY DEAR ----,
I wrote to a distinguished friend to note (but not to
congratulate him) that he had been made “a Companion of
Honour” (what that is I don’t know!), and told him one of the
disadvantages of even a “Limited Monarchy” was the making
of us all into Christmas Trees to hang Decorations upon! He
replied he had declined it, as he did not wish “to be regarded
as a dab of paint to camouflage this new Order instituted for
Labour Leaders!” Haven’t I always told you we are a Nation of
Snobs, and that even the Labour Leaders don’t resent being kept
hanging about on the door mat?
My dear friend adds: “I feel sure your conception of Democracy
will be realised.” (I had sent him my Paper on Democracy that
you didn’t like!) “_Liberty means a Country where every man or
woman has an equal chance._”
“The race of Life in a civilised Country is a race carried
out under a system of handicaps, and the people who do the
handicapping are the people of the least brains.
“The prophecy you send me is wonderful.”
I think the words of this my friend will interest you, _though
perhaps not convince you_!
Yours till death,
F.
9/6/18.
THE BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.
I have been sitting this morning under a Presbyterian Minister, Dr.
Hugh Black, whose eloquence so moved the Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd
George (who kindly gave me a seat in his pew, on the other side of me
being President Wilson, at the Presbyterian Church in Paris on May
25th, 1919), that the moment the service was ended the Prime Minister
went straight to him in the pulpit and told him it was one of the
best sermons he had ever heard. And it probably was. One word Dr.
Black used was very descriptive. He described us all, except those
homeless ones for whom the Saviour pleaded in Dr. Black’s text, as the
“sheltered” classes. I think also our feelings in the congregation
(not that I wish to derogate from the sermon) had been intensely moved
by the magnificent singing on the part of the great congregation
(mostly American Citizens) of the Battle Hymn of the American Republic,
composed by Julia Ward Howe. The tune (“John Brown’s Body”), as Mr.
Sankey said, no doubt has much to do with the glorious emphasis of the
chorus; but certainly the words are magnificent:--
BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC.
Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fatal lightning of His terrible swift sword,
His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps,
His day is marching on.
Glory, etc.
I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel;
“As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal”
Let the Hero born of woman crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is marching on.
Glory, etc.
He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His Judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet!
Our God is marching on.
Glory, etc.
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea;
With the glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Glory, etc.
It reminded me of the 76th Psalm, sung by those old Covenanters when
they vanquished Claverhouse at Drumclog. We see the Battle Field of
Drumclog from the room where we are now talking.
“In Judah’s land God is well known,
His name’s in Isr’l great.”
I began a letter (but diffidence made me stop it) to Sir William Watson
the poet, to ask him if he couldn’t give us some such great Hymn for
the Nation.
“God Save the King” is worn out. We don’t individualise now. It is as
worn out as knee breeches for Court Functions or Gold Lace Coats for
Sea Officers.
CHAPTER VI
PUBLIC SPEECHES
I have made four accurately reported public speeches, the fifth one
(at Mr. Josephus Daniels’s reception by the American Luncheon Club) is
too inadequate to include here. For none of these four speeches had
I any notes, except for the one of a hundred words and one of fifty
words, both delivered in the House of Lords. The other two were simply
and solely my exuberant verbosity, and they must be read with that
remark in mind. I was saturated with the subject; and when the _Times_
reporter came and asked me for my speech before I’d made it, I told him
with truth that I really didn’t know what I was going to say. I might
have been like Thackeray (What a classic case his was!). He was the
Guest of Honour. He got up, was vociferously cheered, and was dumb.
After a death-like silence he said these words, and sat down:--“If I
could only remember what I thought of to say to you when I was coming
here in the cab, you really would have had a delightful speech!”
[Illustration: A GROUP ON BOARD H.M.S. “STANDARD,” 1909.
1. The Empress Marie of Russia.
2. The Czarina.
3. Sir John Fisher.
4. The Grand Duchess Olga.
5. The Czar.
]
I.--THE ROYAL ACADEMY BANQUET, 1903.