* * * * * 1910. _June 7th._ ... I can’t shake off my sense of loss in the King’s death. Though personally it practically makes no difference of course--yet I feel so curious a sense of isolation--which I can’t get over--and no longer seem to care a d--n for anything!... As you told me, it was miraculous I left the Admiralty when I did! It was the nick of time! A. K. Wilson is doing splendidly and is unassailable. I had much pressure to emerge the other day, but I won’t, nor have I the heart now. * * * * * 1910. _August 5th._ KILVERSTONE HALL. McKenna has just been here on his second visit (so he liked the first, I suppose! I mention this as an inducement to you to come!) He has shewn me various secret papers. HE IS A REAL FIGHTER, and the Navy Haters will pass over his dead body! If our late Blessed Master was alive I should know what to do; but I feel my hands tied now. Perhaps a kindly Providence put us both on the Beach at the right moment! Who knows? “_The lights begin to twinkle on the rocks_”! I’ve told ---- and others that the 2 keels to 1 policy is of inestimable value because it eliminates the United States Navy, _which never ought to be mentioned--criminal folly to do so_--Also it gives us such an ample margin as to allow for discount! The insidious game is to have an enquiry into Ship Designs, which means delay and no money! Two immense episodes are doing Damocles over the Navy just now. I had settled to shove my colleagues over the precipice about both of them, but as you know I left hurriedly to get in Wilson--so incomparably good! We pushed them over the precipice about Water Tube Boilers, the Turbine, the Dreadnought, the Scrapping [of ships that could neither fight nor run away], the Nucleus Crews--the Redistribution of the Fleet, &c., &c. In each and all it was _Athanasius contra mundum_, but each and all a magnificent success; so also these two waiting portents full of immense developments. 1. Oil Engines and internal combustion, about which I so dilated at our dinner and bored you. Since that night (July 11th) Bloom & Voss in Germany have received an order to build a Motor Liner for the Atlantic Trade. _No engineers, no stokers, and no funnels, no boilers! Only a d--d chauffeur! The economy prodigious!_ as the Germans say “_Kolossal billig_”! But what will it be for War? _Why! all the past pales before the prospect!!!_ I say to McKenna: “Shove ’em over the precipice! _Shove!_” But he’s all alone, poor devil!