But the greatest thing of all was Fisher's new plan for bringing the mighty British fleets closer together and so "handier" for battles with the Germans. The old plan of posting British squadrons all over the world takes us back to the Conquest of Canada; for it was the work of St. Vincent, to whom Wolfe handed his will the night before the Battle of the Plains (1759). St. Vincent's plan of 1803 was so good that it worked well, with a few changes, down to Fisher's anti-German plan of 1904, about which time the French and British Navies began talking over the best ways of acting together when the Germans made their spring. In 1905--the centenary of Trafalgar--a British fleet visited France and a French fleet visited England. It was a thrilling sight to see that noble Frenchman, Admiral Caillard, whose example was followed by all his officers, stand up in his carriage to salute the Nelson statue in Trafalgar Square. In 1908, when Canada was celebrating the Tercentenary of a life that could never have begun without Drake or been saved without Nelson, the French and British Prime Ministers (Clemenceau and Campbell-Bannerman) were talking things over in Paris. The result was that the British left the Mediterranean mainly in charge of the French Navy, while the French left the Channel mostly and the North Sea entirely in charge of the British. There was no treaty then or at any other time. Each Government left its own Parliament, and therefore its own People, whose servant it was, to decide freely when the time came. But the men at the head of the French and British fleets and armies arranged, year by year, what they would do when they got the word _GO_! At the same time (six years before the war) that the Prime Ministers were in conference in Paris Lord Haldane, then Secretary of State for War, was warning Lord French in London that he would be expected to command the British army against the Germans in France, and that he had better begin to study the problem at once. A great deal of sickening nonsense has been talked about our having been so "righteous" because so "unprepared." We were not prepared to _attack_ anybody; and quite rightly too; though we need not get self-righteous over it. But our great Mother Country's Navy was most certainly and most rightly prepared to _defend_ the Empire and its allies against the attack that was bound to come. If France and Great Britain had not been well enough prepared for self-defence, then the Germans must have won; and wrong would have triumphed over right all over the world. There is only one answer to all this "Pacifistic" stuff-and-nonsense--if you will not fight on the side of right, then you help those who fight on the side of wrong; and if you see your enemy preparing to attack you wrongfully, and you do not prepare to defend yourself, then you are a fool as well as a knave.