This project of mine sounds an impossibility! but so did von Spee’s annihilation! Pitt said “I walk on Impossibilities.” All the old women of both sexes would squirm at it! They equally squirmed when I did away with 19½ millions sterling of parasites in ships, officers and men, between 1904 and 1910! They squirmed when, at one big plunge, we introduced the Turbine in the Dreadnought (the Turbine only before having been in a penny steamboat). They squirmed at my introduction of the water tube Boiler, when I put the fire where the water used to be and the water where the fire used to be! And now 82 per cent. of the Horse Power of the whole world is Turbine propulsion actuated by water tube Boilers! They squirmed when I concentrated 88 per cent. of the British Fleet in the North Sea, and this concentration was only found out by accident, and so published to the ignorant world, by Admiral Mahan in an article in _The Scientific American_! And they squirm now when I say at one stroke the War could be ended. It could be! Yours, etc. (Signed) FISHER. _Lord Fisher to a Privy Councillor_ 36, BERKELEY SQUARE, LONDON, _Dec. 27, 1916_. MY DEAR FRIEND, You’ve sent me a very charming letter, though I begged you not to trouble yourself to write, but as you have written and said things I am constrained to reply, lest you should be under false impressions. I have an immense regard for Jellicoe.... Callaghan I got where he was--he was a great friend of mine--but Jellicoe was better; and Jellicoe, in spite of mutinous threats, was appointed Admiralissimo on the eve of war. I just mention all this to show what I’ve done for Jellicoe because I knew him to be a born Commander of a Fleet! Like poets, Fleet Admirals are born, not made! _Nascitur non fit!_ Jellicoe is incomparable as the Commander of a Fleet, but to prop up an effete Administration he allowed himself to be cajoled away from his great post of duty. I enclose my letter to him.