LORD FISHER'S MEMOIRS.

Colonist, Volume LXI, Issue 15203, 16 October 1919, Page 5

LORD FISHER'S MEMOIRS.

A GREAT INVASION PLAN,

DISAPPROVAL OF DARDANELLES

OPERATIONS,

RELATIONS WITH LORD

KITCHENER.

("The Times.")

(Received Oct. 15, 7.10 p.m.) London, Oct. 14. Lord Fisher's memoirs, published in ''The Times," tell a piquant story of the war. A gigantic conception of an invasion of Germany through the Babtic with three armies, inchiding Russians, following an immense fleet, dominated him while he was at' the Admiralty, and he still insists that this i would have ended the war in 1915. At the War Councils he was only the naval representative. (Be was opposed to the Dardanelles operations, but he adds, UI backed Mr Churchill, because he had courage and imagination." Lord Fisher eventually resigned because he could not stand lying by while the Dardanelles operations were kept going. He scoffs at ail official spokesman who ludicrously asserted that the Turks were coming to the last round of their ammunition. He admits that there was frequent tension in those days between him and Lord Kitchener. He delivered an ultimatum one day to Lord Kitchener that if the Queen Elizabeth was not withdrawn from the Dardanelles he would leave the Admiralty. The next day, luckily, she did leave, for a submarine which had been prowling round for a fortnight looking for her that night blew up her ,wooden dummy, thinking it had gtffc her.

He hints that at one time there was a big scheme to polish- off every soul on Heligoland and in the surrounding fleet by a deadly poison gas. He detscribes Lord Kitchener as a great man, but also a great deception inasmuch that he could not be what the people thought he was. He was a great commissariat officer, but he was no Napoleon or Moltke. He was a Carnot in excelsis, but a facile dupe of his own failings.