The Mirrors of Downing Street / Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster

ough wedge fo

IUS

this dare-devil of genius, this pirate of public life, who more than a

. If this purpose be kept steadily in mind, one may indeed see in Lord Fisher something quite childlike. At any rate it is only when the ov

Admiralty. He replied that if his own brother had got in front of him when he was trying t

f his contemporaries had been travelling whole-heartedly in the same direction I have no doubt that he might have figured in the annals of the Admiralty as something of a saint. But unhappily many of his associates were not so furiously driven in this direction, and finding his urgings inconvenient and vexatious they resisted him to t

st and bade him go on with a good heart. When he emerged from this tremendous struggle his hands may not have been as clean as the angels could have wished; but the British Navy was no longer scattered over the pleasant waters of the earth, was

the form of the Fleet was revolutionized under his hand, but its spirit. The

done, and while the Germans were spending the marks which otherwise would have built warships in widening and deepening this channel to

. He gave rein to his natural humour. He let himself go; quoted more freely from the Bible, asserted more positively that the Eng

way from London. Mr. Churchill informed Lord Fisher of the facts of the European situation, and asked him for advice. The facts were sufficient to convince Lord Fisher that the tug-o'-war between Germany and England had begun. He told Mr. Churchill that he must do three things, and do them all by telegram before he left that room: he must mobilize the Fleet, he must buy the Dreadnoughts building for Turkey, and he must appoint Admiral Jellicoe Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet. To do either of the first two was a serious breach of Cabinet discipl

s declared the British Fleet held the seas, and in comman

" He looked up from his plate and regarded me with lugubrious eyes. I then told him that Lord Kitchener had been down at Knole with the Sackvilles and had spent a whole day in taking blotting-paper impressions of the beautiful mouldings of the doors for his house at B

ry, for a Fleet on which hung the whole safety of the Allies, and a Fleet which had experienced the deadly power of the submarine. He was certainly not too old for work. To the last, looking as if he was bowe

lack of character. Only here and there did he come across a man who had the properties of leadership in even a minor degree: for the most part they had no eyes for t

for principle, made him bitterly contemptuous. At first he could scarcely bridle his rage, but as years went on he used to say that the politicians had deepened his

Ocean, and some

have made us

with all the vigour of the

thing in these interesting confidences struck me so much as the self-satisfacti

AS

. HERBERT H

coln's Inn, 1876; Q. C. 1890; Home Sec'y, 1892-95; Ecclesiastical Commissioner, 1892-95; Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1905-8; Sec'y for