I was with the Prime Minister from 12.30 to 4 p.m. He was most pleasant and delightful but evidently didn’t see his way to making the reduction in the Army Vote which is imperative.... He and all the rest appear stupefied by the Indian Frontier Bogey and the 100,000 men wanted. I gave him figures to show the Army had been increased 60,000 odd men in 10 years. If he would reduce them at once he would get nearly threepence off the income tax and get rid of his recruiting difficulties. The Auxiliary Forces 4½ millions--absurd--the Volunteers 2 millions--still more absurd! * * * * * 1904. _July 16th._ A.-F.’s scheme rotten! You have hit the nail on the head about expense. He had the remedy in the palm of his hand! He simply had to reduce what the Army had _unnecessarily_ increased in 10 years--the 60,000 officers and men--and he got 6 millions sterling (including the accessories) and solved the recruiting question!... 3,700 Royal Engineers put on in 10 years and only ⅓ of them went to the war in S.A.! the rest enjoying themselves in civilian work! and was there ever such ineptitude as trying to make them into railway men, electric engineers and sailors for submarine mines when you have the real thing in abundance in the railway and telegraph workmen of the country and fishermen for any water work? This is only one sample. Every blessed item of the military organisation is similarly rotten! Why? Because the military system of entry and education is rotten. * * * * * 1904. _July 28th._ ... We have a new scheme for a reorganisation of the whole Admiralty and have got the Order in Council for it! _The new scheme gives the First Sea Lord nothing to do_, except think and send for Idlers! It also resuscitates the old titles of _Sea Lords_ dating from A.D. 1613, but which some silly ass 100 years ago altered to _Naval Lords_. * * * * * 1904. _August 17th._ ... I have got 60 sheets of foolscap written with all the new Naval proposals and am pretty well prepared for the fray on October 21st. [Sir John Fisher became First Sea Lord of the Admiralty on October 21st (Trafalgar Day), 1904; and the correspondence is scanty between that date and the autumn of 1907.] 1907. _Sept 12th._ ... I really can’t understand Mr. Buckle giving ---- his head in this way in the columns of _The Times_! but I suppose it “catches on” and makes the flesh creep of the “_old women of both sexes_” (as Lord St. Vincent called the “Invasion lot” in his day!) and his memorable saying so infinitely more true now than then. When asked his opinion of the possibility of an invasion, he replied “that if considered as a purely military operation he was loth to offer an opinion but he certainly could positively state it could never take place by sea!” * * * * *