LORD FISHER'S BOOK.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 October 1919, Page 92

LORD FISHER'S BOOK.

REACTIONARIES DENOUNCED. London, Sept. 8. Lord Fisher, in the opening passages of his book, pictures himself in a secluded room at the Admiralty in iyCo, examining the chart with compasses, one point being fixed on the German fleet and the other seeking for a place of safety for the British. He saw a large inland, land-loeked sheet of water, unsurveyed and nameless. It was Scapa Flow. Within an hour a surveying vessel was on her way to the Orkneys. Many similar dramatic incidents marked the inougurr.tion of Admiralty reforms.

"The reactionaries," says Lord Fisher, "derided, the battle-cruisers, which I named the 'New Testament ships.' Meddlers likewise depreciated my plans for a great Armada of 612 ships, authorised by Mr. Lloyd George, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, for landing a million Russian soldiers 82 miles from Berlin." Lord Fisher was dubbed the "oil maniac" while at the Admiralty in 1885, in connection with his. advocacy of oil eugines, and, he says, he now outers the arena of controversy with inexpressible reluctance. What was formerly meant for the privacy of the future now demands publicity, which would be helpful towards that economy and drastic scrapping necessary for the very life.of the nation. "There is a silly crowd which wants the navy dispersed, over the world," he says, "but nothing is more deadly than peace-time dispersal. The perfection of naval war is a big fleet and a drastic admiral always on the battle-ground. Lord Fisher issued a memorandum in .January, 1914, stating that the submarine was the coming type of war vessel, but when he returned to the Admiralty in October, 1914, he found only 51 building.