And, even now, when time and absence might have deadened those feelings of affection, he casts himself into the burning fiery furnace, bound with me in a trusteeship of a huge estate with only 3_s._ 4_d._ in the £ left--all that the spendthrifts leave us. “Showing the flag” and presumably resuscitating the same old game of multitudinous dockyards to minister to the ships that are “showing the flag”; and so more Chepstows and more Sloughs! And these multitudes of shipwrights superfluous in Government Dockyards who ought to be in day and night shifts making good at Private Yards the seven millions sterling of merchant vessels that Dr. Macnamara’s Government associates supinely allowed to be sent to the bottom! Those political and professional associates, who, instead of using the unparalleled British Navy of the moment as a colossal weapon for landing Russian Armies in Pomerania and Schleswig-Holstein, aided by the calm and tideless waters of the Baltic, were led astray to follow the road that led to conscription and an army of Four Million Soldiers, while the Navy was described in the House of Commons as “a subsidiary service.” How Napoleon must now be chortling at his prognostication coming true, that he put forth at St. Helena, as described on page 177 of Lord Rosebery’s “Last Phase,” that the day we left the sea would be our downfall! But this chapter is on “Economy”; and I have to tell a story here about my dear friend McKenna. He was Secretary of the Treasury; he, and an almost equal friend of mine--Mr. Runciman--were, as we all know, extremely cunning at figures. Lots of people were then looking after me--Kind friends! For instance, I remember my good friend John Burns at one Cabinet Committee meeting instructing me on a piece of blotting paper how to deal with a hostile fleet. I don’t mean to say that John Burns would not have been a first-class Admiral. To be a good Admiral, a man does not need to be a good sailor. That’s a common mistake. He wants good sailors under him. He is the Conceptionist. However, to resume. At that time I was “Pooh-Bah” at the Admiralty; the First Lord was in a trance, and the Financial Secretary had locomotor ataxy. I was First Sea Lord, and I acted for both the Financial Secretary and the First Lord in their absence. I wasn’t justified, but I did it. So I was the _tria juncta in uno_; and I referred, as First Sea Lord, a matter to the Financial Secretary for his urgent and favourable consideration, and he favourably commended it to the First Lord, who invariably cordially approved. It was all over in about a minute. _Business buzzed!_