The Mirrors of Downing Street | Page 9

Canton and the Peiho Forts; Crimean War, 1855; China War, 1859-60; Egyptian War and Bombardment of Alexandria, 1882; Lord of the Admiralty, 1892-97; Commander-in-Chief, North American Station, 1897-99; Mediterranean Station, 1899-02; Commander-in-Chief, 1903-1904; 1st Sea Lord, 1904-10; 1914-15; died, 1920.
[Illustration: BARON FISHER]

CHAPTER III
LORD FISHER
_"Look for a tough wedge for a tough log."_
PUBLIUS SYRUS.
No man I have met ever gave me so authentic a feeling of originality as this dare-devil of genius, this pirate of public life, who more than any other Englishman saved British democracy from a Prussian domination.
It is possible to regard him as a very simple soul mastered by one tremendous purpose and by that purpose exalted to a most valid greatness. If this purpose be kept steadily in mind, one may indeed see in Lord Fisher something quite childlike. At any rate it is only when the overmastering purpose is forgotten that he can be seen with the eyes of his enemies, that is to say as a monster, a scoundrel, and an imbecile.
He was asked on one occasion if he had been a little unscrupulous in getting his way at the Admiralty. He replied that if his own brother had got in front of him when he was trying to do something for England he would have knocked that brother down and walked over his body.
Here is a man, let us be quite certain, of a most unusual force, a man conscious in himself of powers greater than the kindest could discern in his contemporaries, a man possessed by a d?mon of inspiration. Fortunately for England this d?mon drove him in one single direction: he sought the safety, honour, and glory of Great Britain. If his contemporaries had been travelling whole-heartedly in the same direction I have no doubt that he might have figured in the annals of the Admiralty as something of a saint. But unhappily many of his associates were not so furiously driven in this direction, and finding his urgings inconvenient and vexatious they resisted him to the point of exasperation: then came the struggle, and, the strong man winning, the weaker went off to abuse him, and not only to abuse him, but to vilify him and to plot against him, and lay many snares for his feet. He will never now be numbered among the saints, but, happily for us, he was not destined to be found among the martyrs.
He has said that in the darkest hours of his struggle he had no one to support him save King Edward. Society was against him; half the Admiralty was crying for his blood; the politicians wavered from one side to the other; only the King stood fast and bade him go on with a good heart. When he emerged from this tremendous struggle his hands may not have been as clean as the angels could have wished; but the British Navy was no longer scattered over the pleasant waters of the earth, was no longer thinking chiefly of its paint and brass, was no longer a pretty sight from Mediterranean or Pacific shores--it was almost the dirtiest thing to be seen in the North Sea, and quite the deadliest thing in the whole world as regards gunnery.
This was Lord Fisher's superb service. He foresaw and he prepared. Not merely the form of the Fleet was revolutionized under his hand, but its spirit. The British Navy was baptized into a new birth with the pea-soup of the North Sea.
When this great work was accomplished he ordered a ship to be built which should put the Kiel Canal out of business for many years. That done, and while the Germans were spending the marks which otherwise would have built warships in widening and deepening this channel to the North Sea, Lord Fisher wrote it down that war with Germany would come in 1914, and that Captain Jellicoe would be England's Nelson.
From that moment he lost something of the hard and almost brutal expression which had given so formidable a character to his face. He gave rein to his natural humour. He let himself go; quoted more freely from the Bible, asserted more positively that the English people are the lost tribes of Israel, and waited for Armageddon with a humorous eye on the perturbed face of Admiral Tirpitz.
In July, 1914, he was out of office. A telegram came to him from Mr. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, requesting to see him urgently. Lord Fisher refused to see him, believing that Mr. Churchill had jockeyed Mr. Reginald McKenna out of the Admiralty--Mr. McKenna who had most bravely, nay heroically, stood by the naval estimates in face of strong Cabinet opposition. On this ground he refused to meet Mr. Churchill. But a telegram from Mr. McKenna followed, urging him to grant this interview, and