4.15 a.m. The _Early_ Bird!!... Yesterday, with all Sea Lords present, McKenna formally agreed to 4 Dreadnoughts _and if necessary_ 6 Dreadnoughts next year (perhaps the greatest triumph ever known!)... He tells me Harcourt for certain will resign on it ... and he is paring down the money with a view to Supplementary Estimates.... This is what I suggest to you to impress on Lloyd George: _Let there he no mistake about the two Keels to one in Dreadnoughts!_ Let Lloyd George reassure McKenna and tell him to have no fear--it doesn’t affect next year, as McKenna consents to 4 or even 6; but it does affect the year after, and the Admiralty Finance should be arranged accordingly and not deplete next year at expense of year after. I wonder if this is all clear to you--that McKenna is going to give us the _numbers_ for next year all right. Shove in again the great fact--The Navy and Army Estimates not far different in magnitude, and yet the Army not big enough to fight Bulgaria, and the Navy can take on all the Navies of the world put together.--“_Ut veniant omnes!!!_”--“Let ’em all come!” You might tell Lloyd George he can rely on my parsimony. * * * * * 1908. _Sept. 8th._ ... “The heart untravelled fondly turns to home.”--We have no poets nowadays like Pope, Goldsmith and Gay--only damned mystical idiots like Browning and Tennyson that want a dictionary and the Differential-Calculus sort of mind to understand what they are driving at! ... I sat several times [on a recent visit abroad] between Stolypin, the Russian Prime Minister, and Isvolsky, the Foreign Secretary. I didn’t begin it, but Stolypin said to me “What do you think we want most?” He fancied I should answer “So many battleships, so many cruisers, &c., &c.,” but instead I said: “Your Western Frontier is denuded of troops and your magazines are depleted. _Fill them up_, and then talk of Fleets!” Please see enclosure from Kuropatkin’s secret report: “_The foundation of Russia’s safety is her Western boundary!!!_”... Have you seen Monsieur Rousseau (I think is his name) in _Le Temps_? I had an extract of it, and put it aside to send you, but alas! it has gone. “Procrastination is the thief of good intentions”--which is not so good as “Punctuality is the curse of comfort.” But the good Frenchman (like Monsieur Hanotaux before him) is lost in admiration of what moved Mahan to his pungent saying that Garvin seized on with the inspiration of genius--“that 88 per cent. of the English guns were trained on Germany!”... By the way, I’ve got Sir Philip Watts into a new _Indomitable_ that will make your mouth water when you see it! (and the Germans gnash their teeth!) * * * * * 1908. _Dec._