A JEU D’ESPRIT
BOWS AND ARROWS--SNAILS AND TORTOISES--FACILE
DUPES AND SERVILE COPYISTS
“Not the wise find salvation.”--_St. Paul._
One of the charms of the Christian religion is that the Foolish
confound the Wise. The Atheists are all brainy men. Myself, I hate
a brainy man. All the brainy men said it was impossible to have
aeroplanes. No brainy man ever sees that speed is armour. Directly
the brainy men got a chance they clapped masses of armour on the
“Hush-Hush” ships. They couldn’t understand speed being armour, and
said to themselves: “Didn’t she draw so little water she could stand
having weight put on her? Shove on armour!” and so bang went the speed,
and the “Hush-Hush” ships, whose fabulous beauty was their forty
shore-going miles an hour, were slowed down by these brainy men. Don’t
jockeys have to carry weights? Isn’t it called handicapping? Isn’t it
the object to beat the favourite--the real winner? There really is
comfort in the 27th verse of the 1st chapter of I Corinthians, where
the Foolish are wiser than the Wise.
What!--A battle cruiser called the “Furious” going 40 shore-going miles
an hour with 18-inch guns reaching 26 miles! “Take the damn guns out
and make it into an aeroplane ship!” (And I’m not sure they could ever
get the aeroplanes to land on her, owing to the heat of the funnels
causing what they call “Air pockets” above the stern of the ship.)
Yes! and we still have ancient Admirals who believe in bows and arrows.
There’s a good deal to be said for bows and arrows. Our ancestors
insisted on all churchyards being planted with yew trees to make
bows. There you are! It’s a home product! Not like those damn fools
who get their oil from abroad! And I have now the Memorandum with me
delivered to me when I was Controller of the Navy by a member of the
Board of Admiralty desiring to build 16 sailing ships! Again, didn’t
the Board of Admiralty issue a solemn Board Minute that wood floated
and iron sank? So what a damnable thing to build iron ships! Wasn’t
there another solemn Board Minute that steam was damnable and fatal
to the supremacy of the British Navy? Haven’t we had Admirals writing
very brainy articles in magazines to prove that there was nothing like
a tortoise? You could stand on the tortoise’s back; you weren’t rushed
by the tortoise, whereas these “Hush-Hush” ships, they were flimsy, and
speed was worshipped as a god. One mighty man of valour (only “he was
a leper” as regards sea fighting) told me at his luncheon table that
when one of these “Hush-Hush” ships encountered at her full strength of
nearly a hundred thousand horse power a gale of wind in a mountainous
sea she was actually strained! It’s all really too lovely; but of
course the humour of it can’t be properly appreciated by the ordinary
shore-going person. Yes, the brainy men, as I said before, crabbed the
“Hush-Hush” ships; they couldn’t understand that speed was armour when
associated with big guns because the speed enabled you to put your
ship at such a distance that she couldn’t be hit by the enemy, so it
was the equivalent of impenetrable armour although you had none of it,
and you hit the enemy every round for the simple reason that your guns
reached him when his could not reach you. Q.E.D. as Euclid says. What
these splendid armour bearers say is “Give me a strong ship which no
silly ass of a Captain can hurt.” Of course this implies that if it’s
Buggins’s turn to be Captain of a ship he gets it; it’s his turn, even
if he is a silly ass. The phase of mind they have is this: “None of
your highly strung racehorses for me, give me a good old cart-horse!”
So we build huge costly warships which will last a hundred years, but
become obsolete in five.
It all really is very funny--if it wasn’t disastrous and ruinous!
And they are such a motley crew, these discontented ones who come
together in John Bright’s cave of Adullam; and the Poor Dear Public
read an interview in a newspaper with some Commander Knowall; and then
a magazine article by Admiral Retrograde; and some old “cup of tea”
writes to _The Times_ (wonderful paper _The Times_--“Equal Opportunity
for All”) and there you are! Lord Fisher is a damned fool; and if he
isn’t a damned fool he’s a maniac. Oh! very well then, if he isn’t a
maniac, then he’s a traitor. Wasn’t Sir Julian Corbett very seriously
asked if he (Sir John Fisher) hadn’t sold his country to Germany? Sir
Julian thought the report was exaggerated, and that satisfied the
Searcher after Truth. But I ask my listeners, however should we get on
without these people? How dull life would be without their dialectical
subtleties and “reasoned statements” (I think they call them) and
“considered judgments”!
My splendid dear old friend, who could hardly write his name, the
Chief Engineer of the first ironclad, the “Warrior,” told me, when I
was Gunnery Lieutenant of her in 1861, that he had arranged for his
monument at death being of “malleable” iron. No cast iron for him, he
said! It played you such pranks. So it is with these carbonised cranks
who wield the pen, actuated by the wrong kind of grey matter of their
brain, and, their tongues acidulated with lies, sway listening Senates
and control our wars. It requires a Mr. Disraeli to deal with these
victims of their own verbosity, who are the facile dupes of their
vacuous imaginations and the servile copyists of the Billingsgatean
line of argument!