WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

Taranaki Daily News, 11 September 1919, Page 6

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.

, LORD FISHER'S REVELATIONS. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. London, Sept. 8. Lord Fisher, continuing his criticism of the Admiralty, says that the reactionaries derided battle-cruisers, and meddlers likewise depreciated the plans for a great armada of 012 ships authorised by Mr. Lloyd George as Chancellor of the Exchequer. For landing a million Russian soldiers 82 miles from Berlin he had definitely outlined amphibian monsters, proof against weather, mine, and torpedo, holding men, guns, horses, motors, and ploughing their way like huge hippopotami, and crawling from the shijres like tanks. Oil engines would have enabled this to be done.

Internal combustion engines would yet revolutionise commerce and alter the whole art of sea war. Every nation but ourselves was pushing along with internal combustion engines, and a drastic scrapping of warships was necessary for the very life of the nation. There was a silly crowd who wanted the navy dispersed all over the world, but nothing could be more deadly to peace than such a dispersal. Perfection was represented by a big fleet. The mission of battle-cruisers was not appreciated until the Invincible carried out a coup against von Spee's squadron. If the Mediterranean battle-cruisers had been sent after them, the Goeben and Breslau would not have escaped and Turkey would not have intervened in the war. Th KLa would have been no Gallipoli, the Baltic, would have been occupied by Russians landing on the Pomeranian beach, covered by the British fleet, and Berlin would have been captured. Lord Fisher reveals that the most striking feature of the pre-war period was the ridicule of submarines; they wore regarded as toys. A young submarine commander, during the British manoeuvres, torpedoed a hostile admiral three times and claimed the ship as a prize, but the admiral signalled back, "You be damned."