RECAPITULATION OF DEEDS AND IDEAS
“Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears!”
We have arranged that in this book you (to whom I am dictating) are to
insert a _réchauffé_ of my fugitive writings and certain extracts from
the three bulky volumes of my letters to Lord Esher, which he has so
very kindly sent me.
All, then, that I have to say in this chapter will be a summing up
of all that is in my opinion worth saying, and you are going to be
responsible for the rest. My judgment is that the British Public will
be sick of it all long before you come to the end of your part. One can
have too much jam. Nor do you seem inclined to put in all the “bites.”
For instance, it was told King Edward, who warned me of what was being
said, that my moral character was shocking. No woman will ever appear
against me at the Day of Judgment. One dear friend of mine attributed
all his life’s disasters to kissing the wrong girl. I never even did
that. However, there is no credit in my morality and early piety. For
I ever had to work from 12 years old for my daily bread, and work
hard, so the Devil never had a “look in.” I love Dr. Watts, he is so
practical.
“And Satan finds some mischief still.
For idle hands to do.”
Bishop Jeremy Taylor, who wrote that Classic, “Holy Living and Dying,”
who had a nagging wife who made him flee from home and youthful lusts,
said “That no idle rich healthy man could possibly go to Heaven.” No
doubt it is difficult for such a one. You will remember the Saviour
told us that the Camel getting through the eye of a needle is more
likely. Usually, earthly judgments on heavenly subjects are wrong.
Observe Mary Magdalene, and the most beautiful Collect for her Saint’s
Day which was in our First Prayer Book of 1540. This was later expunged
by the sacerdotal, pharisaic, self-righteous mandarins of that period.
The judgments of this world are worse than the judgments of God. When
David was offered three forms of punishment--Famine or the Sword or
Pestilence--he chose the pestilence, saying, “Let us now fall into
the hands of the Lord; for his mercies are great; and let me not fall
into the hand of man.” At the moment of making this note of which I am
speaking I am looking at two very beautiful old engravings I rescued
from the room here allotted to the Presbyterian Minister! One of them
is the “Woman Taken in Adultery” and the other is “Potiphar’s Wife”! My
host tells me it was a pure accident that these pictures came to be in
the Minister’s room; but such events happen to Saints. Wasn’t there
“The Scarlet Letter”--that wonderful book by Hawthorne?
I observe in passing how wonderfully well these Presbyterians do
preach. Our hosts have a beautiful Chapel in the house, and they have
got a delightful custom of selecting one from the Divines of Scotland
to spend the week-end here. Their sermons so exemplify what I keep on
impressing on you--that the printed word is a lifeless corpse. Can
you compare the man who reads a sermon to the man who listens to one
saturated with holiness and enthusiasm speaking out of the abundance
of the heart? No doubt there is tautology, but there’s conviction.
Two qualities rule the world--_emotion and earnestness_. I have said
elsewhere, with them you can move far more than mountains; you can
move multitudes. It’s the personality of the soul of man that has this
immortal influence. Printed and written stuff is but an inanimate
picture--a very fine picture sometimes, no doubt, but you get no aroma
out of a picture. Fancy seeing the Queen of Sheba herself, instead of
only reading of her in Solomon’s print! And those Almug trees--“And
there came no such Almug trees, nor were seen until this day.”
To a friend I was once adoring St. Peter (I love his impetuosity)--I am
illustrating how earthly judgments are so inferior to heavenly wisdom.
St. John, who was a very much younger man, out-ran Peter. Up comes
Peter, and dashes at once into the Sepulchre. Those men in war who get
there and then don’t do anything--_Cui bono_? A fleet magnificent,
five times bigger than the enemy, and takes no risks! A man I heard
of--his wife, separated from him, died at Florence. He was on the Stock
Exchange. They telegraphed, “Shall we cremate, embalm, or bury?” “Do
all three,” he replied, “take no risks!” Some of our great warriors
want the bird so arranged as to be able to put the salt on its tail.
But I was speaking of my praising St. Peter. What did my friend retort
(the judgment of this world, mind you!)? “Peter, Sir! he would be
turned out of every Club in London!” So he would! Thank God, we have a
God, so that when our turn comes we shall be forgiven much because we
loved much.
From this Christian homily I return to what I rather vainly hope is my
concluding interview.
Before beginning--one of my critics writes to _The Times_ saying I am
not modest--I never said I was. However, next day, Sir Alfred Yarrow
mentions perhaps the most momentous thing I ever did--that is the
introduction of the Destroyer; and the day following Sir Marcus Samuel
writes that I am the God-father of Oil--and Oil is going to be the
fuel of the world. Sir George Beilby is going to turn coal into Oil.
He has done it. Thank God! we are going to have a smokeless England in
consequence, and no more fortified coaling stations and peripatetic
coal mines, or what coal mines were. And then, I was going to give some
more instances, but that’s enough “_to point the moral and adorn the
tale_.”
“SEEKEST THOU GREAT THINGS FOR THYSELF? SEEK THEM NOT!” (THE PROPHET
JEREMIAH.)
You have given me a list of subjects which you think require
elucidation in regard to my past years--a _résumé_ especially of the
incidents which claim peculiar notice between 1902 and 1910; and you
ask me to add thereto such episodes from the past as will enlighten the
reader as to how it came about that those big events between 1902 and
1910 were put in motion.
It’s a big order, in a life of some sixty years on actual service--with
but three weeks only unemployed, from the time of entry into the Navy
to the time of Admiral of the Fleet.
I begin by being heartfelt in my thankfulness to a benign Providence
for being capable yesterday, September 13th, 1919, of enjoying suet
pudding and treacle with a pleasure equal to that which I quite well
remember, of having suet pudding and treacle on July 4th, 1854, when I
went on board H.M.S. “Victory,” 101 guns, the flagship at Trafalgar of
Admiral Lord Viscount Nelson. Yes! my thankfulness, I hope, is equal
to but hardly as wonderful as that of the almost toothless old woman
who, being commiserated with, replied: “_Yes, I only ’as two left;
but thank God they meet!_” So I say, to express the same thankfulness
with all my heart for the years that remain to me, though I have all
my teeth--or nearly all--notwithstanding that I have not had even one
single “thank you” for anything that I have done since King Edward
died. Nevertheless, I thank that same God as the old woman thanked,
Who don’t let a sparrow fall without a purpose and without knowledge.
I have no doubt the slight has done me a lot of good!
I thought at the age of nineteen, when I was Acting Captain of H.M.S.
“Coromandel,” that I never could again be so great. Please look at my
picture then. It’s a very excellent one--rather pulled down at the
corners of the mouth even then. (The child is father to the man.) And
though now nearly as old as Dandolo I don’t feel any greater than at
19. Dandolo after an escapade at the Dardanelles similar to mine,
became conqueror of Byzantium at 80 years of age. And Justinian’s two
Generals, Belisarius and Narses, were over 70. Dolts don’t realise
that the brain improves while the body decays--provided of course that
the original brain is not that of a congenital idiot, or of an effete
poltroon who never will run risks.
“Risks and strife” are the bread of Life to a growing brain.
I beg the reader of this dictation to believe that, whatever he may
hear to the contrary (and he probably will), though swaggering as I did
just now at suet-puddening at 79 as efficiently as at nineteen, yet I
do daily realise what that ancient monk wrote in the year 800, when he
studied the words of Job--that “Man that is born of a woman hath but
a short time” compared to eternity, and death may be always near the
door; and no words are more beautiful in connection therewith than when
a parting friend at the moment of departure makes us say: “Teach us who
survive in this and other like daily spectacles of mortality to see
how frail and uncertain our own condition is.”
First of all in this Recapitulation comes back to me a prophecy I
ventured at that age of 19 I have just mentioned--that the next great
war that we should have at sea would be a war of young men. And how
beautifully this is illustrated by the letter received only a few days
ago from that boy in Russia (see Chapter IV) where two battleships
were sent to the bottom and the British sailors in command were only
Lieutenants. And in passing one cannot help paying a tribute to
the Subalterns on shore. General Sir Henry Rawlinson said lately:
“Those who really won the war were the young Company Leaders and the
Subalterns,” and pathetic was the usual Gazette notice of those killed:
“Second Lieutenants _unless otherwise mentioned_.”
There was little “otherwise!” So has it been in the Navy, at Zeebrugge
and elsewhere.
There is, however, a very splendid exception--when all hands, old and
young, went to the bottom; and that is in the magnificent Merchant
Navy of the British Nation. Seven million tons sank under these men,
and the record of so many I’ve seen who were saved was: “Three times
torpedoed.” And remember! for them no Peerage or Westminster Abbey.
They didn’t even get paid for the clothes they lost, and their pay
stopped the day the ship was sunk. Except in the rare cases where the
shipowner was the soul of generosity, like my friend Mr. Petersen,
who paid his men six months or a year to do nothing after such a
catastrophe. But we go with Mr. Havelock Wilson: “We hope to change
all that.” For who is going to deny, when we all stand up for them,
that the Merchant Navy shall be incorporated in the Navy of the Nation
and with all the rights and money and rank and uniform and widows’
pensions and pensions in old age? All this has to come; and I am Mr.
Havelock Wilson’s colleague in that matter, as he was mine in that
wonderful feeding and clothing of our thousands of British Merchant
sailor prisoners, who didn’t, for some damned red tape reason, come
within the scope of the millions of money in that enormous Prince of
Wales’s Fund, and the Red Cross.
Somebody will have to be a martyr, perhaps it’s me. And I expect I am
going to be burnt at the stake for saying these things; but in those
immortal words of the past “I shall light the candle!” Isn’t it just
too lovely--when Bishop Latimer, as the flames shot up around him at
the stake in Oxford in A.D. 1555, cried to his brother Bishop, equally
burning:
“Play the man, Master Ridley! We shall this day light such a candle
by God’s Grace in England as I trust shall never be put out.”
So may it be in our being burnt for the sake of the great Merchant Navy
that saved our country!
* * * * *
As regards the years 1902 to 1910, the first conceptions of these great
changes stole upon me when I perceived in that great Fleet in the
Mediterranean how vague were the views as to fighting essentials. For
instance, in one of the lectures to the Mediterranean Fleet Officers
I set forth a case of so dealing with a hostile fleet that we should
ourselves first of all deliberately and in cold blood sacrifice several
of our fastest cruisers. Why?
To delay the flying enemy by the wounding of his hindermost ships.
Possibly a ruthless German Admiral might leave a “Blücher” to her fate;
but not so our then probable and chivalrous foe! The most shocking
description I have ever read of the horrors of war was that detailed
by one of the crew of the “Blücher” as he describes Beatty’s salvoes
gradually approaching the “Blücher” and falling near in the water, and
then the hell when these salvoes arrived, immediately extinguishing the
electric light installation, till all below between decks was pitchy
darkness only lighted up by the bursting shells as they penetrated and
massacred the crew literally by hundreds, who, huddled up together in
the “Blücher’s” last moments, were hoping behind the thickest armour to
escape destruction.
I saw that the plan of sacrificing vessels in the pursuit of an enemy
seemed a new feature to my hearers; and yet it was as old as the hills.
And another “eye-opener” I had--in the inability to realise so obvious
a fact as, alas! was somewhat the case in the North Sea recently--that
you need not be afraid of a mine field; for where the enemy goes you
can go, if you keep in his wake, that is. In close regard with this
matter, I am an apostle of “End-on Fire,” for to my mind broadside
fire is peculiarly stupid. To be obliged to delay your pursuit by
turning even one atom from your straight course on to a flying enemy
is to me being the acme of an ass. And, strange to say, in connection
with this I, only yesterday, September 13th, 1919, got a letter from
Admiral Weymouth--a most excellent letter, delightfully elaborating
with exceptional acuteness this very idea, which came along so long
ago as 1900, when the first thought of the “Dreadnought” came into my
brain, when I was discussing with my excellent friend, Mr. Gard, Chief
Constructor of Malta Dockyard, the vision of the “Dreadnought.”
I greatly enjoyed years ago overhearing a lady describe to another
lady, when crossing over to Ryde, a passing Ryde passenger steamer
(just built and differing very greatly from the one we were on board
of) as a Battleship. And she wasn’t far out as to what a battleship
should be. The enterprise of the Ryde Steam Packet Company had just
produced that vessel, which went just as fast astern as she did ahead.
In fact, she had no stern. There was a bow at each end and a rudder at
each end and screws at each end; so they never had any bother to turn
round. Now when you go to Boulogne or Folkestone, I don’t know how much
time you don’t waste fooling around to go in stern first, so as to be
able to come out the right way; and having escaped sea-sickness so far,
I myself have found that the last straw. Let us hope every ship now
built after this Chapter will be a “Double-Ender.” But in this world
you are a lunatic if you go too fast.
Take now the submarines. They began by diving head first to get below
water; and in the beginning some stuck their noses in the mud and never
came up again, and in the shallow waters of the North Sea this limited
the dimension of the submarine. But now there’s no more diving. A
lunatic hit by accident on the idea of sinking the ship horizontally;
so there is no more bother about the metricentric problems, and all the
vagaries of Stabilities. No limit to size!
This sort of consideration brought into one’s mind that a great
“Education” was wanted; and that we wanted “Machinery Education,”
both with officers and men; and also that the education should be
the education of common sense. My full idea of Osborne was, alas!
emasculated by the schoolmasters of the Nation; but it is yet going
to spread. As sure as I am now dictating to you, the practical way of
teaching is “_Explanation, followed by Execution_.” Have a lecture on
Optics in the morning: make a telescope in the afternoon. Tell the boys
in the morning about the mariner’s compass and the use of the chart;
and in the afternoon go out and navigate a Ship.
Similarly, with the selection of boys for the Navy, I didn’t want any
examination whatsoever, except the boy and his parents being “vetted,”
and then an interview with the boy to examine his personality (his
_soul_, in fact); and not to have an article in the Navy stuffed by
patent cramming schoolmasters like a Strasburg goose. A goose’s liver
is not the desideratum in the candidate. The desideratum was: could we
put into him the four attributes of Nelson:--
I. Self reliance.
(If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else will.)
II. Fearlessness of Responsibility.
(If you shiver on the brink you’ll catch cold, and possibly not
take the plunge.)
III. Fertility of Resource.
(If the traces break, don’t give it up, get some string.)
IV. Power of initiative.
(Disobey orders.)
AIRCRAFT.
Somewhere about January 15th, 1915, I submitted my resignation as First
Sea Lord to Mr. Churchill because of the supineness manifested by the
High Authorities as regards Aircraft; and I then prophesied the raids
over London in particular and all over England, that by and by caused
several millions sterling of damage and an infinite fright.
I refer to my resignation on the aircraft question with some fear and
trembling of denials; however, I have a copy of my letter, so it’s
all right. I withdrew my resignation at the request of Authority,
because Authority said that the War Office and not the Admiralty were
responsible and would be held responsible. The aircraft belonged to the
War Office; why on earth couldn’t I mind my own business? I didn’t want
the Admiralty building and our wireless on the roof of it to be bombed;
so it _was_ my business (the War Office was as safe as a church, the
Germans would never bomb that establishment!).
Recently I fortuned to meet Mr. Holt Thomas, and he brought to my
recollection what was quite a famous meeting at the Admiralty. Soon
after I became First Sea Lord on October 31st, 1914, I had called
together at the Admiralty a Great Company of all interested in the air;
for at that moment I had fully satisfied myself that small airships
with a speed of fifty miles an hour would be of inestimable value
against submarines and also for scouting purposes near the coast. _So
they proved._
Mr. Holt Thomas was a valued witness before the Royal Commission on
Oil and Oil Engines, of which I was Chairman (a sad business for
me financially--I only possessed a few hundred pounds and I put it
into Oil--I had to sell them out, of course, on becoming Chairman of
the Oil Commission, and what I put those few hundreds into caused a
disappearance of most of those hundreds, and when I emerged from the
Royal Commission the oil shares had more than quintupled in value and
gone up to twenty times what they were when I first put in).
Through Mr. Holt Thomas we obtained the very important evidence of
the French inventor of the Gnome engine--that wonderful engine that
really made aeroplanes what they now are. His evidence was of peculiar
value; and so also was that of Mr. Holt Thomas’s experience; and the
result of the Admiralty meeting on aircraft was that we obtained
from Mr. Holt Thomas an airship in a few weeks, when the experience
hitherto had been that it took years; and a great number of this type
of aircraft were used with immense advantage in the war. I remember
so well that the very least time that could be promised with every
effort and unstinted money, was three months (but Mr. Holt Thomas
gave a shorter time). In three _weeks_ an airship was flying over the
Admiralty at 50 miles an hour (“there’s nothing you can’t have if you
want it enough”), and now we’ve reached the Epoch--prodigious in its
advent--when positively the Air commands and dominates both Land and
Sea; and we shall witness quite shortly a combination in one Structure
of the Aeroplane, the Airship, the parachute, the common balloon, and
an Aerial Torpedo, which will both astound people by its simplicity
and by its extraordinary possibilities, both in War and Commerce (the
torpedo will become cargo in Commerce). The aeroplane has now to keep
moving to live--but why should it? The aerial gyroscopic locomotive
torpedo suspended by a parachute has a tremendous significance.
And let no one think like the ostrich that burying one’s head in the
sand will make Invention desist. At the first Hague Peace Conference in
1899, when I was one of the British Delegates, huge nonsense was talked
about the amenities of war. War has no amenities, although Mr. Norman
Angell attacked me in print for saying so. It’s like two Innocents
playing singlestick; they agree, when they begin, not to hit hard,
but it don’t last long! Like fighting using only one fist against the
other man with two; the other fist damn soon comes out! The Ancient who
formulated that “All’s fair in love and war” enunciated a great natural
principle
“_War is the essence of violence._”
“_Moderation in War is imbecility._”
“_HIT FIRST. HIT HARD. KEEP ON HITTING._”
The following Reports and letter will illustrate this history of my
efforts in this direction:--
Lord Fisher returned to the Admiralty on October 30th, 1914.
38 S.S. airships were at once ordered--single engine type. Six
improved type.
Before Lord Fisher left the Admiralty, a design of a double-engine
type was got out, and subsequently another 32 airships were ordered.
CIRCULAR LETTER issued by Lord Fisher in 1914 when First Sea Lord:--
Lord Fisher desires to express to all concerned his high
appreciation of the service rendered by those who carried out the
recent daring raid on Lake Constance.
He considers that the flight mentioned, made over 250 miles
of enemy country of the worst description, is a fine feat of
endurance, courage, and skill, and reflects great credit on all who
took part in the raid, and through them on the Air Service to which
they belong.
* * * * *
The following précis of correspondence is inserted because contributory
to Lord Fisher’s resignation. He had previously written to Mr.
Churchill, resigning on the ground of the disregard of his warnings
respecting the Aircraft menace:--
An Official Secret German Dispatch, obtained from a German Source,
dated December 26th, 1914:--
The General Staff of the German Army are sending aircraft to attack
French fortified places. Full use to be made of favourable weather
conditions for attack of Naval Zeppelins against the East Coast of
England with the exception of London. The attack on London will follow
later combined with the German Army Airships.
* * * * *
Précis of History of Rigid Airships of Zeppelin Type.--
Lord Fisher, when First Sea Lord, in December, 1908, instructed
Admiral Bacon to press for the construction of rigid airships for
naval purposes at the meetings of a Sub-Committee of the Committee of
Imperial Defence, which held its first meeting in December, 1908, after
many meetings at which Admiral Bacon presented the naval point of view
with much lucidity. The Committee recommended on January 28th, 1909,
the following:--
(_a_) The Committee are of opinion that the dangers to which we might
be exposed by developments in aerial navigation cannot be definitely
ascertained until we ourselves possess airships.
(_b_) _There are good grounds for assuming that airships will prove
of great value to the Navy for scouting and possibly for destructive
purposes._[12] From a military point of view they are also important.
(_c_) A sum of £35,000 should be included in the Naval Estimates for
the purpose of building an airship of a rigid type. The sum alluded to
should include the cost of all preliminary and incidental expenses.
(_d_) A sum of £10,000 should be included in Army Estimates for
continuing experiments with navigable balloons of a non-rigid type, and
for the purchase of complete non-rigid airships and their component
parts.
_January 28th, 1909._
Approved by Committee of Imperial Defence, _February 25th, 1909_.
And nothing more was done till I came back to Admiralty on October
30th, 1914!
Letter from Admiral Sir S. Eardley Wilmot, formerly Superintendent of
Ordnance Stores, Admiralty:--
THE OLD MALT HOUSE,
MARLOW,
_August 13th, 1916_.
DEAR LORD FISHER,
Having given us splendid craft to fight on and under the sea, I
wish you would take up the provision of an air fleet. There is
going to be a great development of air navigation in the future and
all nations will be at it. With our resources and wealth we can
take and keep the lead if we like.
As a modest programme to start with we might aim at 100 air
battleships and 400 air cruisers: all on the “lighter than air”
principle.
I met a young fellow who had been in the Jutland action and asked
him how the 15-inch guns did. “Splendidly,” he said--“They did
nearly all the real execution.” I hear the Germans have got 17-inch
guns which is what I anticipated, but they won’t get ahead of us in
that time tho’ we can’t yet snuff out their Zepps, thanks to you
know who.
Yours sincerely,
(Signed) S. EARDLEY WILMOT.
_Note._--More than a year before I got this letter I had got a
20-inch gun ready to be built for a new type of Battle Cruiser!
[Illustration: AGED 19. LIEUTENANT.
In temporary command of “Coromandel” in China.]
THE SUBMARINE MINE
As quite a young Lieutenant, with extraordinary impudence I told
the then First Sea Lord of the Admiralty that the Hertz German
Submarine Mine, which I had seen a few days before in Kiel
Harbour, would so far revolutionise sea warfare as possibly to
prevent one fleet pursuing another, by the Fleet that was flying
dropping submarine mines in its wake; and certainly that sudden sea
operations of the old Nelsonic type would seriously be interfered
with. He very good humouredly sent me away as a young desperado, as
he remembered that I had been a lunatic in prophesying the doom of
masts and sails, which were still then magnificently supreme, and
the despised engineer yet hiding his diminished head had to keep
the smell of oily oakum away from the noses of the Lords of the
ship.
That same Hertz mine in all its essentials remains still “The King
of Mines,” and if only in those years immediately preceding the war
we had manufactured none else, instead of trying to improve on it,
we should have bagged no end of big game. But as it was, our mines
were squibs; the enemy’s ship always steamed away and got into
harbour, while ours always went down plump.
The Policy of the Submarine Mine favoured us, but our authorities
couldn’t see it. I printed in three kinds of type:
(1) Huge capitals; (2) Italics; (3) big Roman block letters the
following words, submitted to the authorities very early in the
war--
“Sow the North Sea with Mines on such a huge scale that Naval
Operations in it become utterly impossible.”
_So you nip into the Baltic with the British Fleet._
That British Mining Policy blocked the North Sea entrance to the
Kiel Canal--that British Mining Policy dished the neutrals. When
the neutrals got blown up you swore it was a German mine--it was
the Germans who began laying mines; and a mine, when it blows
you up, don’t hand you a ticket like a passport, saying what
nationality it is. In fact, our mines were so damned bad they
couldn’t help believing it was a German mine. But I might add
I think they would have sunk any Merchant ship, squibs though
they were; and I may add in a parenthesis this British policy of
submarine mines for the North Sea would have played hell with the
German submarines, not so much blowing them up but entangling their
screws.
Well, at the last--_longo intervallo_--towards the close of the
war, being the fifteenth “Too Late” of Mr. Lloyd George’s ever
memorable and absolutely true speech, the British Foreign Office
did allow this policy, and the United States sent over mines in
thousands upon thousands, and we’re still trying to pick ’em up, in
such vast numbers were they laid down!
_We really are a very peculiar people.
Lions led by Asses!_
I bought a number of magnificent and fast vessels for laying down
these mines in masses--no sooner had I left the Admiralty in May, 1915,
they were so choice that they were diverted and perverted to other uses.
But perhaps the most sickening of all the events of the war was the
neglect of the Humber as the jumping-off place for our great fast
Battle Cruiser force, with all its attendant vessels--light Cruisers,
Destroyers, and Submarines, and mine-layers, and mine-sweepers--for
offensive action at any desired moment, and as a mighty and absolute
deterrent to the humiliating bombardment of our coasts by that same
fast German Battle Cruiser force. The Humber is the nearest spot to
Heligoland; and at enormous cost and greatly redounding to the credit
of the present Hydrographer of the Navy, Admiral Learmonth (then
Director of Fixed Defences), the Humber was made submarine-proof,
and batteries were placed in the sea protecting the obstructions,
and moorings laid down behind triple lines of defence against all
possibility of hostile successful attack.
However, I had to leave the Admiralty before it was completed and the
ships sent there; and then the _mot d’ordre_ was Passivity; and when
the Germans bombarded Scarborough and Yarmouth and so on, we said to
them _à la Chinois_, making great grimaces and beating tom-toms; “If
you come again, look out!” But the Germans weren’t Chinese, and they
came; and the soothing words spoken to the Mayors of the bombarded East
Coast towns were what Mark Twain specified as being “spoke ironical.”
I conclude this Chapter with the following words, printed in the early
autumn of 1914:--
“By the half-measures we have adopted hitherto in regard to
Open-Sea Mines we are enjoying neither the one advantage nor the
other.”
That is to say, when the Germans at the very first outbreak of war
departed from the rules of the Hague Conference against the type of
mine they used, we had two courses open to us: there was the moral
advantage of refusing to follow the bad lead, or we could seek a
physical advantage by forcing the enemies’ crime to its utmost
consequences. We were effete. We were pusillanimous, and we were like
Jelly-fish.
_And we “Waited and See’d.”_