The Mirrors of Downing Street | Page 9

faithful energy on the
part of Aristocracy and the Church, and a far nobler realization of its
responsibilities by the Press, can the ancient spirit of England make
itself felt in the sordid lists of Westminster. Till then he who crows
loudest will rule the roost.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Croker writes from Paris of a visit to St. Cloud, where he found
Blücher and his staff in possession: "The great hall was a common
guard-house, in which the Prussians were drinking, spitting, smoking,
and sleeping in all directions." Denon complained greatly of the
Prussians and said he was "malheureux to have to do with a bête féroce,
un animal indécrottable, le Prince Blücher."

LORD FISHER

BARON FISHER, ADMIRAL OF THE FLEET (JOHN
ARBUTHNOT FISHER)
Born, 1841; entered Navy, 1854; took part in 1860 in the Capture of
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 dæmon of inspiration.
Fortunately for England this dæmon 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