"BREEZY" LORD FISHER

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 70, 16 December 1919, Page 14

"BREEZY" LORD FISHER

WHAT HE DID FOR NAVi r i HIS. SHIPS WON THE WAR , Continuing his contributions to "The Times" on the Navy and the war, Ldrd Fisher, First . Naval [Lord,-, ■writes ds : follows ?— It now seems to bo everywhere confessed that .jt was the control of the eons'by iho British Fleet which absolutely won the war! There" is no disparagement of those wonderful fightings on land by those who so bravely met the German armies under continuously inforior strength till when, at the very last moment, the United States altered the balance in our favour. The possession of tho sens (as Hinden-, burg and'. Ludondorffi since havo confessed), which was rendering imminent a domestio' revolution on account of the blockade, compelled peace! We ask this question: Why didn't the Germans' land a million men on the outbreak of r -the war on the Cotentin Penin, Bula, anil thus easily march on Paris? (Mind, this, we know, was planned bv the Gormans';and was feasible!) The following extract from a letter whioh I wrote to Lord-Esher on April 25, 1912, illuminates tltis. statement:— I waU#a~tho sands of Scheveningen . with General Gross von Schwarzkopf in | June 1899. The German Emperor said .-he (Sfchwarckopf) was a greater than '. Jloltke.. ,He was the military German delegate : at The Hague Conference; he was designated as chief of tho General Staff at Berlin, but he was burnt to. death in- China instertd. I had done him A very good tnrn, so lie opened his heart to me: There was no German Navy then. Wo,were doing Fashoda; and be ' expiated on the role of the British Army -how the absolute supremacy of tho British : Navy gave it such inordinate powor far ibe.vond its numerical strength, because '200,000 men embarked in transports, and God only knowing where they might be nut ashore, was a weapon of enormous; influence, and capable of deadly blows—occupying, perhaps, Antwerp, etc. (but, of course, he only was thinking of the Cotentin Peninsula), or laming 90 miles from Uerlin on thfit li 6andy lieach, impossible of defencß ihgninsfc a battl* sweeping ■with devastating shells the flat country for miles,' .like a mower's scylhe-no fortifications able to -withstand projectiles of 14501b.1 It was ; precisely a. similar operation and precisely as simple and- easy as a Jlnssian rarmy landing on the const of Pomeraniii in the lime of Frederick the Great, n-iid, as Admiral von Scheer has us (sec "The Times cf Jul}' 11,.I 1 ,. 1919), wa could have done the same, and, to use his words, easily marchetWo Berlin"! '

Why Cherbourg Was Safe. ■ Well >-hy didn't the Germans land thus inithe vicinity of Cherbourg? 1 'Will telUyou why! - ' •'; - • I ihadfthe advantage of knowing tho coutentstof a letter written by a person in tho German fljet to his fnend, only a few hours after the outbreak of war on August i, 19W, and he said to his -friend that tho German fleet had been foiled bv.the..readiness of the- British Fleet—so-'Mnexpccted by them; but apart from this' very striking testimony we have it on incontestable authority thai,, could the Germans hava rushed the Eng-i lish Channel at &e first outbreak of war.r. then the-'Cofcentin Peninsula would Jtofc been their Frederick tho Greafs P6ms-' ranian cjoast and Paris would have been theirs in'-a few days! Well, 'why did'not tho German /leot (commarfded by the most pugnacious'of all theiiGcrman admirals) attack :(or; i rinyway,:'mask) the British Fleet at Scapa 'Flow whilst Wio multitude of German transports convoyed tli2 .German'' armies (unattached) to Cherbourg, ,jnsf' as tho German armies afterwards (to tye, : lasting disgrace of the British Navy)'' were convoyed to Riga and the vicinity of St: Petersburg without fear and without loss?' , ■ *• Well, the reason was—that fee British Fleet was ineffably superior to the Gor- ■' nan fleet, and the Germans knew it! Some of our very perturbed high, seas officers have 'written a. la Jeremiah as to the varied drawbacks suffered, by the British Fleet,- and the seriousness of tihe British seaposition und the menace thorp was to British sea traffic when war broke out; but-there is the fact that yr,u can't got overj;.'that the sGernian .; fleet was., boxed up and titvs door "slammed, bolted, and barred" in its face; and when tup d— —d fools of German spies went and told Ingenohl, the Gorman admiral, that lie might attack the British Fleet at Scapa Flow he promptly 6hot them both, .•■' persuaded they were traitors luring the German fleet to its doom! :• In-a-memorandum delivered to tho ' Board of Admiralty in July, 190£, I said: Every, penny not spent on an efficient fighting "snip, and on an. efficient fighting man is'a', penny takjn away from the Day of ißSfee. 'Every item of expenditure must-be tested 'by!.this question: Docs it directly or indirectly minister to the fighting effi-. ciency ofune' fleet and its instant-readi-ness for-war? If not—out with'it! There jCre 10,000, chairs in.storo at Portsmouth Dockyard,' cane-bottomed chairs—they can't fight, they take : fighting'men to take care of them—you 'can get" lliciit from Maples by tho next train; if you put your money into chairs, you. haven't got it for fighting. Clear them all out! rvo sceir blankets mouldering from decay waiting to Ix> wanted and mouldcrj ing parasites looking after the'blankcts! There's a paraphernalia of clerks and auditors looking after these, and* then there's a' Board of Works to look after ;them, and then come their pensions, and yon mnsthayo houses to house the pension ; distributors. It's awful! Wo have got to bo Ruthless, Relentless, and Remorseless!— Out you go! « Ye.;, when th's Sea pa Jj'low British Fleet began to be Ixirn, we navy estimates were at their lowest! This was greatly due to the fact that (ho inception of the Dreadnought completely paralysed German warship building! If.the German navy followed suit (which they. did after IS months' thought) it meant a new Kiel Canal. and ..many millions' sterling' more to dredge their harbours and their approaches! "And, by the way, l'«is enabled 33 proDrculnought battlcSfips "ft) Eecomo available for .fighting . Geimany. which wero previously paci-tmted. by their heavy draught of water! Rathor Machiavellian! ' But what has to be reiterated (Reiteration i? tho secret of conviction) is that there was no vessel for. the fine of battle at Scapa Flow when war broko out that was not built or incepted whilst I was First Sea lord, and it was that 11 cot that won tho war because it stopped tho German fleet in its first moments of possible annihilation of France. • That fleet raved

Oilr commerce. That Hoc;t sent Admiral von Speeto the bottom and all his eleven fagt snips. That fleet established a cordon that hemmed in tho Germans, and that fleet: was capable ,of landing a Russian. army on tho coa'Sfc of Poiuerania, as Admiral von Scheer feared it would 5 do, whence, as he says, "they ■ could easily Tmve marched to Berlin"! ;A Descont on Prussia.. OiiDecember 3, 1908, when I was First 6ea Lord of, tho Admiralty. I gavo roy opinion that if ever we landed a British Armv.on tho Continent in a war against Germany, then would come tho biggest Wow to England she would ever have experienced—not a defeat—because England' never succumbs—but by a deadly blow to our economic resources and by the inevitable relegation of tho Britisli Navy to a "subsidiary service" (as it was actually so-called by Sir Ivor Phillips, M.P., in the Houso of Commons)—l «Ibo 6aid the above to King Edward in 1908 (I think Lord Eslier heard me say it to ■ King Edward)—at page 177 of Loro! Rosebery'a "Napoleon"—'The Last Phrase, will l>e found these words of Bonaparte at St. Helena:— "At present the English can dictate to tho' worldftmore especially if. they withdraw their'troops from the Contiuent, and remain a purely maritime Power she can then do what she likes, a "Th© original English Expeditionary Force of some ICO,OOO inon in all was but as a drop in the ocean compared with tlie German and French millions upon millions of soldiers, but if it were RO'iig to lie sent to the Continent, then that British force of 1(1(1,000 men lanoed by the British Fleet at Antwerp, andl susitained at Antwerp by tho .British Fleet, jsould tee toe® an .wp/egnablo bpinot

to tho German advance if combined with the seizure of the Baltic by tho British Fleet, so overwhelmingly superior, at thn outbreak of war, to tho German Fleet; and tho landing of -armies on the Pomeranian coast within 90 miles of Berlin. "In a conversation with Beit in 1907 the. German Emperor attributed this idea to me of landing Russian armies-on tho coast of Pomerania, but the idea was. as old as "Frederick the Great! ; ■"The German Emperor aleo said' I wantetf'to 'Copenhagen' tho German Fleet-so I did:, but the bare-idea caused 'fits' Tdo not disparaßO my successors in any way, but I maintain that tho' Britain Fleet at the outbreak of war contained the German Fleet in its harbours defended our commerce, 6ank Admiral von Spee, and safely convoyed our armies to the enemy's frontiers and eventually compelled peace. No doubt it is very interesting to recount what appalling things might have haoDened 1 The only substantial quefl; Hon to answer is: "What did happen?' Well, what did happen was that the British Navv won tho war! Yes, and won it on August 4, 1914, the day tho war was declared! Our Fleet then was nnchallengeably many times superior to the German Fleet, and the Germans knew it!