"HUSH-HUSH" SHIPS

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 74, 20 December 1919, Page 10

"HUSH-HUSH" SHIPS

« LORD FISHER'S "MEMORIES" AND SOME DIGRESSIONS The greater part of the book from which this matter is taken was dictated by Admiral of tho ITeet Lord Fisher in September. The book includes also extracts from certain fugitive writings wihich Lord Fisher i* printing for private circulation.' The complete volume ha 9 been published by Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton. CHAPTER IV.. Mr. Gladstone stood by me last night. My. M'Kennawas by his side. lam not inventing this dream. lb is r. true story. (It is godly sincerity that wins—not fleshly wisdom!) A gentleman, such as you, was by way of interviewing Mr. Gladstone. Mr. Gladstone was castigating mo. I was a Public Department. He said to you, who , were interviewing him, that ho was helpless against all the Public Departments, for ho was fighting for economy, and ho gave a ease to you worse than either Chepstow or Slough. I am sorry to say it ''was the War Ofiieo he was illustrating, as I am devoted to Mr. Churchill and would not hurt him for tho worldeven in a dream. It is too puerile (o desoribe in,print, but what Mr. Gladstone pointed to I have told you in conversation. Now, tho above is an allegory. Imagine! nearly a year after iihe armistice, and' yet we aro spending two millions sterling a day beyond an absolutely fabulous income—beyond any incoino ever yet produced by any empire or any nation! Sweep them out! ' Dr. ilaonamara, a few days since, in his apologia pro vita sua, excuses his Department to the public by saving that on the very day of the armistice the Board of Admiralty sat on economy. So they did! They sat on it! Economy! To 6end squadrons all over the globo that) were'not there before! The globe did without them during the not now? "Oh, my sacred aunt!" (as the FrencE say when in an extremity).. "Showing t'lie flu?," I suppose, for jihat was tho cry of the "baying hounds" in 1905 when we brough/. home , some 160 vessels of war that could neither fight nor run away, and whose officers were shooting pheasants up Chinese rivers and giving tea parties to British Consuls, How those Consuls did write! And how agitated was tho Foreign Officei I must produce some of these communications directly. "Dora" is abolished, Well,, that's what "showing the flag" means.

Sweep 'em out! Gladstone was hopeless against Deparfc-ments-so is now the nation. , Mr. Asquith's Ministry, Dr. llacnamnra may not know it, lint Mr. Herbert Samuel was to have had his place. I did not know either of them, but'l snid to the Prime Miirster "Let's have the 'Two Macs'!" Mind.'l don't class him with the music-hall artist (Tempns: Death of Campbsll-Bnnnemian) —that pDoch—l cannot foreet Mr. Ascinith's kindnej-s to We, He had- telephoned, to mo from Bordeaux after seeing the King at Biarritz, asking me to meet him on his arriv.il home next night at 5.30 p.m. at 40 Cavendish Square. His motor-car wns leaving the door as .1 nrrived. He told me he hod sem the Kind, and had nronoied Afr. Vienna as Fir?,!: Lord of the Adm : ralty. I he. Kinjr-seemed to have pome swnicion that I should not think' Mr. M'TCenn.*. a ronsfnial spirit. T made i;o.objection —I thought to nn-??lf that if Mr. M'Kenna were hostile then-Tonipus cdax reran. I don't th : nlc .Toiinthan and David were "in it" when Mr. M'Kcnn.i And T narted on .Tanuai-y 25. 1910—niv Footed day to go and plant roses in Norfolk.

And even now, when time, nnd obsericp might have deadened fl'uss fceiinrrs of affection, he castn himself- burning fiery furnace, bound with me ;n ;> rnistaahiji of ,\ huge psfafe with nnV H 'R- >n the £ left—nil that the spendthrifts leave us. "Showing the "IW , and presumably resuscitating the samt old game of multitudinous dockyards to minister to the ships that are "shown]." the-,ling"j nnd so more Chepsiows and more Ploughs! And these multitudes uf shipwrights .superfluous in Government dockyards who ought to be in day and night shifts making srood at private yardsthe seven millions sterling of merchant vessels .that Dr. Macnnmar.-i's Government associates suninely allowed .to be sent to the bottom! Those political and professional associates, .who. instead of using, the unparalleled British Wavy of the-.moment as a colossal wea.pon * for Jnndinu Eussinn itimies in Pomeranin and Schleswig-Holsteia. aided by the cnl.m and tideless water 3 of tho Bs»ltr'c; wero led astray to follow the road that led to conscription and nt, Army of 4,009.000 Poldie.rs, while the Navy was described ' in the Houf« of Commons as "a subsidiary service.' .

Lord Fisher as "Pooh-Bah." But this chapter is on "economy," and I have to tell a story here about my deiar friend M'Kenna. He was Secretary of the Treasury; he and an almost equal friend of mine—Mr. Runciman— v/ere, as we all know, extremely cunning at figures. Lots of people were then looking after m&—kind friends! For instance, I remember my good friend John Burns at one Cabinet committee meeting instructing me on a piece of blotting paper how to deal with a hostile fleet. I don't mean to say. that John Burns would not have been a first-class admiral.- To be a good admiral a man dees not need to be n ■ good sailov. That's a common mistake. He wants good sailors under him. He is the conceptionist. However, to resume- At that time I was "Pooh-Bah" at the Admiralty; the First Lord was in a trance, and the Financial Secretary was seriously ill. . I was First Sea Lord, fijid I acted for both the Financial Secretary and the First Lord in their absence. I wasn't justified, but 1 did it. So I was the tria juncta in uno; and I referred, as First Sea, Lord, a matter to the Financial Secretary for his urgent and favourable consideration, and ho favourably commended it to the First Lord, who 'invariably cordially 'approved. It was all over in about . a minute. Business buzzed. '

Well! the Treasury could not make out how all those submarines were being haiit—where the devil t'he money was coming from; so these ferrets came over 1 led n dog's life, uv rather a rabbit's life, chafed from hole to hole. Nothing came of it; mid as an outcome of that time I left the Admiralty with 61 good submarines and 13 building. The Germans, lhank God! had gone to the bottom with their first submarine, which never cnuio up again, and the few more they had at. that time were not much use.

1 must toil a story now. Mind! I don't want to run down the Treasury. The Treasury is an absolutely necessaiy iifthction.

There was once a good Parsec shipowner with .a good captain. But this captain would charge his owner with the eo.it of his carriage from his ship to tho oilice. ,\ot being far, the old Parsee thougiit t'ho captain oiignt to walk, and if iio didn't walk tnen he ought to pay lor tile cab liimsolf. They call the carriages "buggies" at Bombay. However, when the old l'arsee had to pay the bill next liionth—tlierc it was; "Buggy" —so many rupees; lie told his captain he vouid pjy tiiat ones but never again; and not muling it in the i:tems of the l>iil presented the following month hu gave the captain his ehc(|iie. As the captain pin it in his pocket he said, •'Jjugiry's tnere!" That's what happened to" the Treasury and the submarines. I had a friend in tho Acccmiii.'iir.General's Department called "The Moio," He tftugXt ntu how to hide tl>o money. I may observo J was called n "mole." It wasn't a bad name. 1 wat, m>: n-oii or beam, mit i was recognised by upheavals—"There is that damnc-d'f'lluw k'iaher again, I will, swear to But, as David said, "Let us bo abundantly satislit'd" that we have such nlnona uj j.s M'Kennas ami liuncimaiis. 1 elmtild like to let thoso terrets loose now. Uow ei er, "Out of evil good comes." .comes a prutbmible digression, I think.

Here's a letter I got yestm-.l:iy. Scptcmber 9, 1919, coming from Russia. Now suppose we had not made the iviy damnedest mess of Hussia-cver n-aiU- i:i this world—with Lord Mi.ajr liisl giiii:;; thero and then Mr. Henderson, I lie In ail of the Labour l'nrty, ainba-siniorin;; (at least, ho says so), and this, r.ation in every 'possible coucuiruble way uii>-i::t-ing tho Russian people—then 1 lievur coulcl liavo had (liis magnificent lctlvr from liussia lo give you. Just obsciving, before I quoto it: supposing a French army landed at Dover lo Ji»l>) us subjugate Ireland. 1, I gucs* »b should all forget whether ws vere Tories or Carsons or timillij;, ;>:ul i.niti! to gt this French army out of our Archatigi-1, and the Entente* Cordiale would 1.0 "in tho cart," as the vulgar suy. iVoll, this is the letter which docs iuy h-art gun-. It is from a young Ud in an English man-of-war, now off St. J'eteisb.irg. 11. is writing of the recent defeat if th« .Russian fieet there.—

"There has been such a light. I vns only n looker-on. . I was iurious. Kronstadt was altacked by our motor-boats each carrying two torpedoes [by thu way I was viljfied for introducing motorboats] and seaplanes with destroyers backing them up. [Isn't it awful. 1 ' 1 introduced destroyers also.] Two Hunsian battleships, a depot ship, ami a destroyer loader were, torpedoed. "Our motor-bouts were magnificent!

"I nearly cricd with pride at "belonging to the same race.

"Thero has been nothing like it in tho whole war.

_ "I would rather take part in a lliliij liko that than be I'rimo Minister of England. You would have'been so p;>r»d if you could have seen them." The letter is to the boy's mother. On it is written, !iy him who sends i: mo, "The Nelson touch, I think!" Speed and Armour. CHAPTEK VII. Myself, I hate a brainy man. All tho brainy men said it was impossible to •have aeroplanes. No brainy man ever sees that speed is armour. Directly the brainy men get a chanco they ciapned masses of armour on tho "llush-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 armoiirl" and so bane; went the speed, and tho ''Husih-llush" ships, whose fabulous beauty was their forty shore-going miles' an hour, were slowed down by these brainy men. Don't joekevs have _ to cjrry weights? Isn't it called handico.pping? Isn't the object to beat the favourite—the real winner? There really is comfort in" the 27th verse of tlio Ist chapter of I. Corinthians, wiiero the foolish aro wiser than the wise.

What!—A battle-cruiser called th» Furious going -10 shore-going miles an hour with 18in. guns reaching 26 mile's "Tako the damn (runs out and make it into an aeroplane ship!" (And I'm not sure they could ever pet the aeroplanes to land on her, owing. to the heat of tiio funnels causing what they call "air pockets" above the stern of the ship.) Yea! And 'we still have ancie.nt admirals who believe in bows and arrow:-. There's a good deal to' be eaid for bows and arrows. Our ancestors insisted on all churchyards being planted with yewtrees to make bows. Thero you are! It's a home product! Not like these damn fools who <;et their oil from abroad! And I have now the. memorandum wilii me delivered to me when I,was Contrcllor of tho Navy bv a jn_eniber of'the. Board of Admiralty desiring to build )0 Jailing ships! Again, didn't the 80ar.,1 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 damnablo' and fatal to tho supremacy of the British Navy Haven't we had admirals writing very brainy articles in magazines to prove that tlie.ro was nothing like a tortoise? You could stand on'thu tortoise back, you weren't rushed by (.lie • tortoise, whereas these "Hush-Hush ,1 | ships, they were flimsy, and speed wns worshipped as a god. One mitjlity man of valour (only "he was a leper" as regards sea fighting) told me at "his luncheon table that when one of these "HushHush" 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; biu of course ' the humour of it can't be properlv appreciated by the ordinary ehore-going I person. Yes, tho brainy men, na I said before, crabbed the "Hush-Hush" ehips; they couldn't understand that speed was j armour wlien associated with big , guns, I because the speed enabled you to put j your ship at such a distance that slid I couldn't be hit by the enemy, so it was ! the smiivnlent 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.8.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 bo captain of a ship ho gets it; it's his turn, oven if he is a silly ass. The phase of mind they have is this: "Nonp of your highly-strung racehorses for me, give me a «ood old carthorse!" So we 'build hugely 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 j\ 'oo*try crew, these discontented ones wh? fomi; together in John Bright's Cave of Admlam; ami the noor dear public rea'l on. interview in a newspaper with pom" Commanclpr Knowall; nnd then ,i magazine article bv Admiral Eetrograde; and some oii! "enn 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 mnniac, then lie's a traitor. But I ask my listeners, however ehould 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, nhn could hardly write his name, the chief engineer of the first ironclad, the Warrior, told me, when I was gunnery lieutenant of her in ISS!,' that hp h;-d i-.mnged for his monument at death beinff of "malleable" iron. No i-ast-iron for him. lie (■■aid! It played yon such prank?. So it i« with these carbonised cranks who wield the pen, actuated by the wrong kind of prey matter of their brain, and, their acidulated with lies, sway listeniai! Senates and control our wars. It requires a Mr. Disraeli to deal will' there victims of their own verbosity, wlv are the facile (times of their vncuouc imaginations and the servile copyists of t!ir Billingsgatean lino of argument!