SECRET HISTORY.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 February 1920, Page 14

SECRET HISTORY.

A LETTER TO KING EDWARD. The following letter, written in 1907, would never have been penned but for the kindly intimacy and confidence placed and reposed in me by King Edward; it therefore rightly comes in these remarks about him (says Lord Fisher in Jus Memories): — , I have just received Reich's book. It is one unmitigated mass of misrepresentations.

In March this year, 1007, it is an absolute fact that Germany had not laid down a single Dreadnought, nor had she commenced building a single battleship or big cruiser for IS months. Germany has been paralysed by the Dreadnought. The more the German Admiralty looked into her qualities the more convinced they became that they must follow suit, and tlie more convinced they were that the wiiole of their existing Battle Fleet was utterly useless because utterly wanting in gun power! For instance, half of the whole Germany Battle Fleet is only about equal to the English armoured cruisers.

The German Admiralty wrestled with the Dreadnought problem for IS months, and did nothing. Why? Because it meant their spending twelve and a half million sterling on widening and deepening the Kiel Canal, and in dredging all their harbors and all the approaches to their harbors, because if they did not do so it would be no u?o building German Dreadnoughts because they could not float! But there was another reason never yet made public. It is this: Our battleships draw too much water to get close into the German coast and harbors (we have to build ours big to go all over the world with great fuel endurance). But the German Admiralty is going, is. indeed obliged, to spend twelve and a-hajf million sterling in dredging so as to allow these existing ships of ours to go and fight them in their own waters when before they could not do so. It was, indeed, a' Machiavellian interference of Providence on our behalf that' brought about the evolution of the Dreadnought. To return to Mr. Keich. He makes the flesh of the British public creep at page 78 et seq. by saying what the Germans are going to do. He does not say what they have done and what we. have done.

Now .this is the truth: England has seven Dreadnoughts and three Dreadnought battle cruisers (which last three ships are, in my opinion, far better than Dreadnoughts): total, 10 Dreadnoughts built and building, while Germany, in March last, had not begun even one Dreadnought. It is doubtful if, even so .late as May last, a German- Dreadnought had lieen commenced. It will therefore Ve seen, from this one fact, what a liar Mr. Jleich is.

Again, on page 86, he makes out the Germans are stronger than we are in torpedo craft, and states that England has only 24 fully commissioned destroyers.

Again what are the real facts? As stated in an Admiralty official document, dated August 22, 1907: "We have 123 destroyers; and 40 submarines. The Germans have 48 destroyers and one submarine."

The whole of our destroyers and submarines are absolutely efficient and ready for instant battle, and are fully manned, except a portion of t.]ie destroyers, which have four-fifths of their : crew on board. Quite enough for instant' service, and can be filled up under an hour to full crew. And they are all of them constantly being exercised. There is one more piece ftf information I have to give: Admiral Tirpitz, the German Minister of Marine, has just stated, in a secret official document, that the English Navy is now four times stronger than the German Navy.. Yes, that is so, and we are going to keep the British Navy at that strength, vide 10 Dreadnoughts built and building, and not one German Dreadnought, commenced last May. But we don't want, to parade all this to the world at large. Also we might have Parliamentary trouble. A hundred and fifty members of the House of Commons have just prepared one of the best papers I have ever read, showing convincingly that we don't, want to lay down any new ships at all because we are so strong. My answer is: We can't be too strong. . . In conclusion, a letter in The Times of September 17, 1007, should he , read. The writer of the letter understates the case, as the 'British Home Fleet is 20 per cent, stronger he puts it. , I <rot a letter last night from a trustworthy person stating that the recent inspection of the Fleet by your Majesty has knocked the bottom out of the case against the. Admiralty. I don't mean to say that we are not now menaced by Germany. Her diplomacy is, and always lifts been, and aIV ways will be, infinitely superior to ours. Observe our treatment of the Sultan as compared with Germany. The Sultan is the most important, parsonage in the whole world for England. He lifts his finger, and Egypt and India are' in a blaze of rfeligious disaffection. That groat American, Mr. Choate, swore to me before going to The Hague Conference that he would side with England over submarine mines and other naval matters, but Germany has diplomatically collared the United States absolutely at The Hague.

The only thing in the world that England has to fear is Germany, and none else. \

We have no idea, at the Foreign Office, of coping with the German propaganda in America. Our Naval Attache in the United States tells me that the German Emperor is unceasing in his efforts to win over the American official authorities, and that the German Embassy at Washington is far and away in the ascendant with the American Government. I hope I shall not be considered presumptuous in saying all this. I humbly confess I am neither a diplomatist nor a politician. I thank God I am neither. The former are senile, and the latter are liars. But it all does seem such simple common sense to me that for our Army we require mobile troops as against sedentary garrisons, and that our military intervention in any very great Continental struggle is unwise, remembering what Napoleon said on that point with such emphasis and such sure conception of war, and that great combined naval and military expeditions should be our role. In the splendid words of Sir Edward Grey: "The British Army should be a projectile to be fired by the British Navy." The foundation of our policy is that the communications of the Empire must be kept open by a predominant Fleet, and ipso facto such a Fleet will suffice to allay the fears of the "old women of both sexes" in regard to the invasion of I England or the invasion of her Colonies.