British Secret Service During the Great WarEveritt, Nicholas
History
British Secret Service During the Great War
Everitt, Nicholas
Secret service -- Great Britain; World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- Great Britain
The Press also clamoured for Lord Fisher as First Lord of the Admiralty.
The nation knows how he was treated. A captain in the Navy aptly
described the unwanted and slighted Admiral expert in _John Bull_,
February, 1916, as follows:
"Lord John Fisher is to-day our second Nelson--a diplomatist among
diplomats and a strategist unequalled in our history. What has Lord
John Fisher done?
"He scrapped 162 obsolete warships which were rotting in harbour at
great expense--for which the Government tried to reprimand him.
"He introduced the water-tube boilers, which, as every engineer and
seaman knows, raise a full head of steam in twenty minutes, instead
of twenty hours, as formerly.
"He introduced the steam turbine, which was adopted by every
nation.
"He introduced oil fuel into the Navy, thus making destroyers
capable of steaming further, a great benefit being the almost total
absence of smoke. He also applied it to battleships and other large
craft.
"He introduced the Dreadnought, the bulwark of Britain, and the
ship that baffled the German nation and made the Kiel Canal useless
for years. The oil-burning, water-tubed destroyer, and the _Queen
Elizabeth_--the Secret Service ship and the monitor--all emanated
from his brain.
"He introduced the battle-cruiser, against the will of a timorous
Government whose cry was ever, 'Cut down armaments,' 'Cut down the
Army and Navy.' Had Fisher listened, the Germans would to-day have
outraged our wives and crucified our children.
"He planned the Falkland Islands battle, and sent the Secret
Service ships to chase the German submarines out of the Channel. He
fought hard against the Dardanelles expedition.
"He was Sea Lord when we sank the _Blucher_, the German destroyers
in the North Sea, the German Fleet at the Falklands.
"He is a great man, who seems never to have made a mistake."
Whilst Sir Edward Grey was giving his explanations in the House of
Commons, Lord Devonport was busy in another place. He is one of our
shrewdest and most experienced business men. As Chairman of the Port of
London Authority and former Parliamentary Secretary of the Board of
Trade, he would not be likely to go into figures lightly.
He had given notice to ask the Government for its official figures of
Holland's imports of ore (metal) during 1915.
The Duke of Devonshire replied that the figures provided him were only
650,000 tons. It was admitted that Holland had virtually no smelting
plant, nor coal to feed it if it had, and the Government was virtually
bound to confess that at least this amount of contraband had mostly gone
straight through to Germany.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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