LORD JELLICOE.

Shannon News, 29 November 1921, Page 4

LORD JELLICOE.

A PERSON AT-, SKETCH. A vivid sketch of Lord Jellieoe’s personality appears in Mr A. G. Gardiner's volume “The War Lords.” Mr Gardiner quotes Lord Fisher’s remark when describing hie hirth of the afi-big-gun ship and the opposition it had to meet, lie said “t took caie that my committee oi experts wixo had to give their judgment on the idea should not consist oi men whose day was done, but of the young men who had the rope round their nock—the men wiio would have to waik the plank themselves for every mistake they made.” Among these men was Captain Jellicoe—the sailor who was charged in the iate war with lire most momentous task that lias fallen to me lot ol any sailor in our annals. "Hut,” says Mr Gardiner, “it required no exceptional gilts o£' intuition th discover Jellicoe. There is that about this small alert man, with the cLaac frank eye, the tight-lipped mouth dm falls away in lines which seem ecpi itly ready to harden with decision or soften wiih good humour, that commands attention. Flis lace, in Stevenson’s phrase, is a certificate, ft suggests a spacious, mobile vuulerMap.ling, breadth oi judgment, and iarge reserves of patience, good humour, confidence. He is not lorfnidabie with the thunderous gloom of Lord Kitchener or the sardonic lightnings of Lord Fisher. There is about linn much more of the quality of Fir John French, the quality uf ihe plain man, human and friendly in his .attitude to the world, hut with his emotions under the control of a firm will; wholly free from vanity or eccentricity, seeing things with a large simplicity ana comprehension, governed not by temperemental moods or inspirations that may be ialse, but lry the calculations of an acute, dispassionate, singularly serene mind: He carries with him what one may ealJ the candour of the sea, that feeling of a, certain elemental directness and veracity common to men who spend their lives far Loin towns, under a wide sky 'and' in companionship with the great natural forces that do not lie and that danndt he deceived.

Here, you feel, is one who has cleared his mind of illusions, who gives you the truth and demands the , truth. He will have no pleasant falsities. “Tilings and actions," he j seems to say with another famous j man, “are what ihey are, and their j consequences will be what they will be. Why, therefore, should we desire j to be deceived?”' This foundation note of veracity is illustrated by an incident which occurred during the dilated expedition ui AdmiraL Seymour, which went at the urgent summons of Sir Claude MacDouaid to relieve Peking at the rime of the Boxer riots in 1900. A fellow officer tells how at the battle j of Peitsang Captain Jellicoe acted as j Chief.of Staff, and was so dangerously wounded that the doctor of the flag- . ship despaired of his life. While in that condition he sent lor Ids friend, who thus relates the incident: — “I went down immediately, and found him suffering severe pain from his wound, pain made the worse the utter misery of the surroundings and by the uncertainty of everything. Ho wanted to know what I thought of things. Foolishly/ perhaps, 1 tried to make the best of them, and mid j him that I thought we were doing j very well, and that tbefe was no . doubt at ail of our ability to cut our j way back to Tientsin or even to me j coast, supposing the foreign settle- j uient to have fallen. I do not think | l shall ever forget the contemptuous j tin-it of the eyes he turned on me, or j the impatient remark: ‘Tell me Ihe | truth; don’t lie!”’

This passion for the naked truth is i not merely -ihe instinct of a fund a- ' mentally honest man. It is not un > co"’ikon io had a flawless veracity as- i socialcd with extreme dulnesc ami a j fatal bigotry. But Admiral Jellicoe’? j respect tor truth, is intellectual as well j as-moral. U is an expression of those | rare mental gibs which have made i him a marked man in dm Navy from | the lime when, as axead.ee, lie came j out oi The. Britannia, the first ol bis j year by an unusual percentage tf I marks and Ihe winner of all the prizes, j Then rnosi important phase in-the-; modernising oi the British Navy \yas i that which effected a revolution . nr j guns and gunnery, and recognised- j .that ships, after all, were onto gun car- j i viages. The throe’ men responsible J I were Lord Fisher, Sir Berov Scott, who j made the ab-big-gmi ship possible by , his invention of the central fire con- < trol system ,and Lord Jellicoe-, one oi I the Navy’s greatest gunnery experts, | and one whose sympathy, under- j standing and enthusiasm made eKeo- j tivc the work of Scott’s original and j inventive mind. Within a year of j his appointment as Director of Ovd- j nonce, Lord Jellicoe raised the oer- J rentage of hits and ol rounds tired ; from 42 to over 70. In oilier words j lie increased by Tfioro than a. third j the fighting value of the British Navy

without a keel being added to its com- - position. Thrice he has escaped death when death seemed to have him fast—-m China, as f have indicated; oh Gibraltar, m 18S6, when he commanded a gig, manned by volunteers, that went to the rescue of the crew of a steamer stranded on a sandbank, and when the gig capsized in the heavy seas and he was washed ashore: most conspicuously in the Mediterranean, in -'393, on the day when Sir George Tryon sent his flagship Victoria to its doom. Jellicoe was the commander of 'be iagship. It is not necessary here to recall the facts of that terrible disaster. Tryon’s mistake is lor ever inexplicable. What we know is that Captain Bourke did his utmost to counter ihe Admiral’s fatal order. Had the commander been present to reinforce his objections. perhaps the calamity 'would have been avoided. But the commander was not present. “He, poor fellow, was below and in bed from fever,” said Admiral Sir g. Phipps Hornby, in liis article on the disaster in the Fortnightly. “Ha was called to get up before ihe ship sank. He got up; but, instead of going up to save himself ,he went below to hurry up any one who might be there. When the ship foundered, lie came to the surface necessarily in a state of exhaustion. Fortunately, a midshipman helped supported aim.” That midshipman certainly deserves a memorable place among the instruments of fate. For it is doubtful whether any life more necessary, not io this country alone, but to the world, was ever snatched from the jaws oi dejith. How necessary we only fully understood twenty-one years later, in the tremendous hour when the nation realised that the Fleet alone stood between it and annihilation. “In the mind oi one masterful man ho had for years been marked out as Admiralissirao when the time came, amt the way that, masterful mind cleared the obstacles from, the path ol this man of genius but small social | influence, will one day make a fas i cinating page in the history of the Navy' and of the war. The conclusive proof of his fitness for the immense burden imposed upon him came, fortunately, on the eve ol ihe struggle. He commanded the Led Fleet during the manoeuvres of 1913. They were carried. out in strict see rDcy, but it is known in service circles that the result was soinediing much more than a victory tor kdm. i.d Jellicoe. . It was a; victory not merely brilliant,... hut efturged with a significance that*can only be described as startling. When it was over, it left tms man of the . pleasant, alert manner, the clear, terse speech, and the diiei - yet kindly eye, Ihe indisputable ebe h-c when the day that was to bring all the speculations of Whitehall to the test of battle. In/ that ordeal many doctrines will be found to be effete, many calculations will urove unsound, many truth? will turn out to be falsities. _ But Lure are two certainties that will survive all tests —the gallantry 5 of the men an 1 the gonitis of their commander.