SECRET HISTORY OF THE DREADNOUGHT

Evening Star, Issue 16991, 13 March 1919, Page 2

SECRET HISTORY OF THE DREADNOUGHT

LORD FISHES’S SWEEPING

REVOLUTION

HOW “THE DAY” WAS

DEFERRED

Mr Harold Begbie has told, for the time, in the London ‘ Daily Chronicle,’ something of the naval revolution which was wrought by the genius of Lord Fisher—the one man in England whom the Kaiser said he feared. As a result of this revolution (says Mr Begbie) the many millions of Prussia’s hosts have been stricken into paralysis—“ the brain of the minnow has broken the heart of the mstodon.” KING EDWARD’S SUPPORT. In the days when Fisher was fighting desperately to get things done, ho said to mo that he scarcely had one friend to help him, except King Edward. Not only was society against him, but a great weight of naval opinion was opposing him at every turn. He had to depend upon himself. He had to act secretly. He had to break many a rule and many a tool. But one by one, with intervals of time between, he recalled ships I'roiA the Mediterranean and set them to make acquaintance with the North Sea. It was by degrees that Britain’s historic naval policy was revolutionised ; it was all of a sudden that tho Navy itself realised what had happened. The North Sea had become our drilling ground. The Mediterranean had become a side show. Then he began to scrap old ships, described as bug-traps; began to reduce the Naval Estimates; and there came attacks against him, cruel, malicious, scandalous to tho last degree. He stood firm, and King Edward told him not to budge. He was scrapping useless ships to spend millions on a ship that would scrap tho navies of the world. IN THE NORTH SEA PEA-SOUP. He said to me afterwards : “ What hope would the Fleet have had of a victory, called from the bright sunshine and tho blue air of the Mediterranean to fight a battle in the fogs of the North Sea? There they were, with white-topped caps and linen trousers, with beautiful polished decks and shining brasswork, living in a yachtsmen’s Paradise; and God was saying every hour as loud as Sinai’s thunders that Armageddon would be fought in the pea-soup ot the North Sea. I wanted the Fleet to drill on that battle-ground. I wanted it to nose about in the fogs, smelling different patches of pen-soupiness, sniffing and peering until it could eay: ‘ Hello, here; the Dogger Bank,’ and feel it had met a friend. 1 wanted that; and if England was not to be destroyed I had to get it.” The magnificent work of Tyrwhitt and his heroes was made possible only by this resolution. By 1914 the North Sea had become the familiar playground of the British Fleet. But Nelson inspired Fisher to make certain of his broomstick in another way. He saw that ] the Fleet, nosing about in the fogs of tho i North Sea, must be able to hit hard, to hit fast, and to keep on hitting. The j secret was gunnery. He must have a swift ship carrying a long-range gun. “A gun that cai’ries further than the other fellow,” lie is fond of saying, “ makes the otherfellow’s gun into a, peashooter.” HOW THE DREADNOUGHT FAILED, The world woke up one day to find that naval warfare bad been revolutionised. A ship was on tho sea which could steam a prodigious pace, a steaming hit on a moving target miles away on the horizon, crashing enormous shells on that tiny mark one after another, bang, bang, bang! Tho Britisii Admiralty made no secret of this success. On the contrary, that success was trumpeted - all over the world. Sonje people thought that fisher had lost his head. And when the Dreadnought came into dock nobody knew that it had come back as a failure. It had failed in one most urgent particular. It wouldn’t steer! There it lay, with the brains of the Admiralty toiling to right this vital defect, and all that the world heard was gossip about some improvements to be made in her gun mountings! This vessel, which first* paralysed the world’s shipbuilding, and then revolutionised naval warfare, was the greatest blow the German Kaiser had ever endured. No ship er came from the yards with a more Machiavellian purpose.

A HINT TO GERMANY. I remember Lord Fisher’s account of his visit to Reval with King- Edward after the Russo-Japanese War: “His Majesty said to me ‘I am going to visit Nicholas, and ho is sore because of our alliance with Japan; therefore, my escort is to consist of only two cruisers. It would be bad manners, it would be vulgar, to take a squadron of battleships.’ Well, I thought to myself What a gentleman the King is! And I loved him for that gentle thought. But we were going through the Kiel Canal, and I had to think of Germany. It was necessary to obey the King, but I wanted to drop 'the Germans a hint. I had to do that. Well, we took two cruisers as an escort for the Royal yacht, but when we entered the Kiel Canal we left them behind. Off Kiel there were two other cruisers waiting for us to continue the journey. A German naval officer came to me at Kiel, while the King was talking to Prince 1 Henry on the other side of the deck, and clicked his heels, and saluted, and bowed. I did the same. He said h© thought ho was addressing Bir Fisher, and bowed again. I bowed and said he was. He. then presented Admiral Tirpitz’s apologies for not being present, and offered me a handsome compliment in the admiral’s name. He then clicked, saluted, bowed; and I did the same. He was like a tin toy 1 All of a sudden he became human. The-.stiff ness went out of him. He became a man. He grinned, and said to me: ‘You came with two cruisers?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied, pretending no interest. 1 And you 1 have two more cruisers waiting for you out-there?’ I glanced over my shoulder seaward. ‘Yes.’ ‘ You call them cruisers?’ he asked, winking his eyes. ‘ Yes, why not?’ I affected bewilderment. ‘Ahl’ he exclaimed, ‘ you are very clever—these little cruisers of yours are too big to go through the Kiel Canal; so you left two behind you in the North Sea, and have two more waiting for you in the Baltic ; that is a hint for ua, is it not?’ “DER. TAG” POSTPONED. ’ “ I tapped him on the cheat, and said : ‘You’re a very clever fellow to see it.’ We parted on excellent terms. He was a funny little beggar; but quick, mind you, oh yes, devilish quick.’” That is-what the Dreadnought did. Till it came Germany’s naval strength lay in her shallow waters. No ships could approach to attack her. But here was a ship which could blow her harbors into smithereens from the horizon. All the millions of money she had spent on d-gks and canals and shipbuilding were thrown away. Worse fate still: before she could spenci more millions on building new ships of this Dreadnought type she must first spend millions and millions in dredging her harbors, bolts, and canals, including her famous Kiel Canal, which had to be ividened. This was the blow of blows. We had’ built ships that put her seaways out of business. She had to postpone “ Der Tag” and start dredging. “1914 OR NEVER!” This gave us breathing space. Naval Estimates became’modest. We made calm experiments, while our enemy sweated and toiled at his dredging, in a state of panic. Fisher took a pen in his hand and wrote in a book that war with Germany would come in 1914. That was in 1908. He who had postponed The Day knew that Germany would strike when her dredging was over and, her Dreadnoughts were ready. He knew that she could not afford to wait. She was gambling for world power, and the cost was heavy. He worked it out, | and it came to 1914. It was Then or j Never. I saw him in the first days of the I war. He had played a great part in the

crisis, of which Mr Winston Churchill will, no doubt, one day tell the world. He was pleased and satisfied. I asked him if he thought the German fleet would come out. He answered : ” Would you come out from your house if you knew that Jack Johnson was waiting for you on the doorstep?” [But Mr Begbie does not cay a single word about the crowning affront to Lord as the creator of Britain’s “ surest shield,” in declining to include him among the invitees to witness the surrender of the Gernian High Fleet.—Ed. E.B.]