LORD FISHER: A TYPICAL JOHN BULL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11282, 9 January 1915, Page 8

LORD FISHER: A TYPICAL JOHN BULL.

For a man who ha?, ■loin.' so inii'"h, so tho "New York Sun" tolls -.is, t.ho recently reappointed commander of Britaiu's Na.vy i;; curiously little known to his countrymen. Now in the. neighbourhood of seventy, John Arbuihiiot Fisher, Lord Fisher of Kilverstone. G.0.H., 0.M., has » record of nearly sixty years' service. And throughout that period he has held a constant belief in the necessity oi' absolute etlicioncy in the Navy that has amounted almost to a passion. Even when, at the age of sixty, he was offered tho greatest honour that a naval officer can receive, appointment as First Sen Lord', his desire- to acquit himself in that office only in accordance with this linn belief led him. to insist upon his own terms before he would accept the appointment. As we arc: told (says tho "Literary Digest'"), he carried in his brain a full scheme of reorganisation. Ho believed tho training a.nd the distribution of the Navy to be perilously out of date. He had watched tho change from wooden walls to iron citadels packed with tremendous and exquisite, machinery. Yet there had beon no fundamental change since Nelson's time in the method of training officers for their profession. There had been a revolution in England's political relations, and it was cleair to him that the struggle of life and death in the future would bo fought in the North Sea, and no other where. Yet England's fleets were still organised as though the Mediterranean would be, as in the eighteenth century, the chief scene of crisis. British ships were stationed anywhere but where they would probably have to light. Sir John Fisher--as he was then ; his creation as first Baron Fisher of Kil-

Fisher's influence was evidenced by Lord Selborne's issue of a memorandum and circular letter dealing in drastic fashion with the distribution and mobilisation of the fleet. Existing arrangements were cancelled and the effective war fleet divided into two, one in commission at sea -and the other in commission in reserve.

Only a month later Fisher made his next departure, which was of a kind more calculated to attract general attention. He then .showed that his practical, as apart from his strategic, policy was to scrap every naval vessel that was not absolutely up to date. In the first three months of 1905 no fewer than 120 of such vessels were removed from the ports to mooring-stations round the coast as obsolete. All bis life he had been a hard worker and he was untiring at the Admiralty. He was constantly planning and preparing for the war which lias now come. In a measure he is the von Moltke of the British Navy, and when the storm broke the men and ships of England were, thanks to his work of organisation, as ready for Avar as the German soldiers were in 1870. His! knowledge of naval affairs was all-em-bracing. He knew where each shiD was and all about it, whether the commander was a good officer, whether he drank, whether he was a fop, whether he was liked by his crow—in fact, everything about him. "Confound him," said an officer who served under him in the West Indies, "I believe he could tell you the exact number of cocktails I drink every time I go ashore." Added to this encyclopedic quality of mind are the faculties of prompt action, absolute fearlessness, and the ability, developed to a remarkable degree, of holding his tongue. Interviewers find him invariably deaf and dumb. These are not un-English traits, and yet— The strangest thing about this man who bears upon his shoulders much ol' the weight of the British Empire is that he is not an Englishman at all in the strict sense of the word. His father was a. captain in the 78th Highlanders, who settled in Ceylon, and his mother was a Singalese woman of high rank Thus he has a strain of Oriental blood in his veins.

It shows very slightly in. his face; only persons who have lived in the East are able to detect it. In countenance Admiral Fisher shows the characteristics of a bulldog, and he has th.H .simple, bluff, hearty manner which is associated with the typical John Bull. Sometimes his subordinates and foreign diplomatists with whom he has had to do have been deceived by this manner into thinking him an innocent, guileless sailorman with plenty of pluck, but no brains. In every case they discovered too late that a touch of Oriental subtlety was grafted on toj the Anglo-Saxon directness and iron will, and that Fisher had been playing them with Asiatic craft. Essentially, he is a hard man, a hard taskmaster, and an implacable warrior. Ho does not dally with any romantic perceptions of his trade, but believes that, since war exists, it should in reality be war and not a monster inadequately swaddled in ribbons and bits of lace to hide its ugliness. When lie was delegate at the Hague Peace Conference he made it plain that in his opinion a humane war is an anomaly and both foolish and cruel and illustrated his meaning most skilfully: "When you have to wring a chicken's neck," he'said, "all you think about is wringing it quickly. You don't give the chicken intervals for refreshment and recuperation. It should be the same with warfare." Lord Fisher has never hesitated to sav that any war he may have to make will be lieTl. He has a bitter hatred of submarine vessels, and yea-\s ago was quoted as saying that if lie cauahr, the crew of a hostile submarine :u time of war ho would string them up to the yard-arm. even if he had to face a court-martial afterward. He showed the sternness of his nature after the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882. As captain of the Inflexible he had the task nf organisms a police force and repressing aisoroer and looting after the capture ol the city. He shot the guilty on sight and restored order in a few hours. Some or his intimate friends, even officers of his own ship, were caughlj

•WILL MAKE WAR HELL IS AN AMERICAN VIEW,

version* dates from 1900-dearly staled his intentions. They wore approved, lie went into the Admiralty to carry them out. His activities were revolutiouarv though constructive. He was denounced for the sheer daring and resolution of the changes he introduced. But he wins commissioned Irom the outlet to effect them. That was what ho was there for. To the foreign mind he app-nrcd like nothing so much as ;m incarnated torpedo waiting for its war head to he fixed on it. And what did he accomplish? At Osborne he trained the officers of today to handle the grim machines which have superseded for ever the old vision oi masts and wails. Bo vastly increased efficiency while reducing expense. He struck out of the estimates every penny which did not yield real fiiihtir.e- vaiuo. fie mercilessly scrapped scores of weak vessels that could neither attack nor run. He transferred the men to real fish ting ships. He created, with the inspiration of nothing less than genius, the system of nucleus crews, by which every ship m tho reserve caii he mobilised' for war in a few hours. Above all, he swung the whole fleet, as it were, clean round to face the tasks of the future. He recognised that in the twentieth eenturv, as in the seventeenth, the. British Empire will be saved or lost'not in the Mediterranean, but in the North Pea. Quietly he massed British strength in the narrow seas until, in Admiral Mahan's words, " 8(5 per eeflt of the British battleship strength was concentrated in or near Home waters." When Fisher was appointed First Sea Lord in 1904, ai Unionist Government was in power, with Lord Selborneas First Lord of the Admiralty. Within two months

with looted goods. They begged in vain for mercy. He had all of them court-martialled and severely punished. Admiral Fisher's subordinates respected him, but did not lovo him. He worked them too hard for chat, and was too quick to detect their faults. He himself toiled from five o'clock in the morning until nine at night, and expected everybody to do the same. Men who have served under him are apt to curse when ever his name is mentioned.

Fisher knows tliis, and takes a sardonic pleasure in it. He is fond of telling the story of an old boatswain who served under him in several ships. The boatswain eventually retired on pension, and Fisher paid him a visit at his country cottage in Devonshire. He noticed a man servant about the place who seemed to have nothing to do, and asked his host: "What on earth do you want him for?" " Well, sir," said the Boatswain, " he has to call nie every morning at five o'clock, and say : ' Admiral wants to see yon, sir.' I roll over on the other side of the bed and reply: ' Tell the Admiral to go to the devil.' Then Igo to sleep again, feeling good.

"This happens half a dozen times a day, and I feel better every tine. I've been waiting for it for twenty years." " His will is iron," said one of Fisher's Mediterranean officers, " and hia nerves are Harveyised Krupp steel." No better idea can he given cf this little-known man of energy and determination than in the- following anecdotes and incidents of his career:

Several years ago he was at Lisbon with a squadron. Relations were strained between Germany and England .

Just before the English .'hips left a German fleet of twice the strength entered the harbour, with the idea of impressing the Portuguese, and drew up indouhle line off the town. Fisher exchanged salutes, and then led nis vessels out of tho harbour at full speed between the two German !;.jes, v/ith only twenty or thirty yards dear on cither side.

It was a manoeuvre that might have wrecked a dozen ships, and only a man. of iron nerves could havo earned it out successfully. But he had trained his squadron well. Not a single vessel swerved a yard from the wake of his flagship. Amazed at. his daring, the Germans cheered as he passed by their ships. Stern toward men, he is pleasant to women. He never went into port it he could help without giving a ball en his flagship. He was a gi»:at favourite with Queen Victoria, and was deeply attached to her.

He married a clergyman's dargbter, and possesses an extraordinary stock of Scriptural quotations, which ie uses to emphasise his arguments.

Lord Fisher has paid only one visit to America, and then stayed exactly a week. That was four years ago. But he is remotely connected with that country, because on that visit he came to attend the wedding of his h.dii to Miss Jane Morgan, (laughter cf Randal Morgan, of Philadelphia.

At the time of his visit here, Admiral Fisher expressed the opinion than the coming thing in navigation Mas the oilengine, find that aeroplanes won id ho valuable in matters of naval reconnaissance and dispatch. And that was about all the reporters could get him to say about navol matters. As for personal characteristics, it has been said that it would tax Mr Sargent to paint him. His profile, like that of most born fighters, juts clean out from forehead 1o chin like the bow of a. battleship. There is a certain force of expression about it which recalls the " hainmer-and-tongs ' captain in Marryat's ballad. His figure is of middle size and active, and if you passed him in the street without knowing him you would be compelled to look at him twice. His talk Is full of the unexpected, yet revealing t>hra,sos which light up a subject with hashes of conversational lightning, lie is as irresistible in anecdote as in energy. Once when asked what was his favourite text, ho replied instantly, "And there shall be no more sea." His motto throughout his career has been that "the frontiers of England are the coasts of the enemy."