I addressed the Directors of the S.E. & Chatham Railway last Tuesday, and hope I persuaded them to build a motor vessel of 24 knots between Calais and Dover, and proved to them they could save an hour between Paris and London--the whole side of the vessel falls down and makes a gangway on to a huge pontoon at Calais and Dover and all the passengers march straight out (“Every man straight before him,” like the Israelites did at Jericho, and the walls fell down before them!) No more climbing up Mont Blanc up a narrow precipitous gangway from the steamer to the jetty in the rain, and an old woman blocking you with her parcels and umbrella jammed by the stanchions, and they ask her for her ticket and she don’t know which pocket it’s in! and the rain going down your neck all the time! A glass roof goes over the motor vessel--she has no funnels, and her telescopic wireless masts wind down by a 2 h.p. motor so as not to go through the glass roof. But all this is nothing to H.M.S. “Incomparable”--a 25 knot battleship that will go round the whole earth without refuelling!... The plans of her will be finished next Monday, and I wrote last night to say I proposed in my capacity as a private British Citizen to go over in three weeks’ time in the White Star “Adriatic” to get Borden [the Canadian Prime Minister] to build her at Quebec. The Building Yard put up there by Vickers is under a guarantee to build a Dreadnought in Canada in May and the great Dreadnought Dock left Barrow for Quebec on August 31st. No English Government would ever make this plunge, which is why I propose going to Canada--to that great man, Borden--and take the Vickers people to make their bargain for building. * * * * * 1912. _Sept. 20th._ ... My idea now is to raise a syndicate to build the “Non-Pareil”! A few millionaires would suffice, and I know sufficient of them to do it. All the drawings and designs quite ready. The one _all pervading, all absorbing_ thought is to get in first with motor ships before the Germans! Owing to our apathy during the last two years they are ahead with internal combustion engines! _They have killed 15 men in experiments with oil engines and we have not killed one!_ And a d--d fool of an English politician told me the other day that he thinks this creditable to us!