Now I give the note, for it really is first-rate. Who wrote it I don’t know, and I don’t know the paper that it came from:-- “It is amusing to read the eulogies now showered on Lord Fisher. He is the same man with the same methods, the same ideas, and the same theories and practice which he had in 1905 when he was generally abused as an unscrupulous rascal for whom the gallows were too good. Lord Fisher’s silence under storms of obloquy while he was building up Sea Power was a striking evidence of his title to fame.” The writer of the paragraph quotes the above words from some other paper; then he goes on with the following remark:-- “We cordially endorse these observations. At the same time, not all of those who raised the ‘storms of obloquy’ in 1905 and for some years subsequently are now indulging in eulogy. Many of them just maintain a more or less discreet silence, varied by an occasional insinuation either in public or in private that everything is not quite as it should be at the Admiralty, or that Lord Fisher is too old for his job, etc., etc., etc. As we have often remarked, many of the vituperators of Lord Fisher hated him for this one simple reason, that he had weighed them up and found them wanting. They had imposed on the public, but they couldn’t impose on him. Some of these vituperators are now discreetly silent, but we know for a fact that their sentiments towards the First Sea Lord are not in the slightest degree changed.” To proceed with this synopsis:-- I entered the Navy, July 12th, 1854, on board Her Majesty’s Ship “Victory,” after being medically examined by the Doctor on board of her, and writing out from dictation The Lord’s Prayer; and I rather think I did a Rule of Three sum. Before that time, for seven years I had a hard life. My paternal grandfather--a splendid old parson of the fox-hunting type--with whom I was to live, had died just before I reached England; and no one else but my maternal grandfather was in a position to give me a home. He was a simple-minded man and had been fleeced out of a fortune by a foreign scoundrel--I remember him well, as also I remember the Chartist Riots of 1848 when I saw a policeman even to my little mind behaving, as I thought, brutally to passing individuals. I remember seeing a tottering old man having his two sticks taken away from him and broken across their knees by the police. On the other hand, I have to bear witness to a little phalanx of 40 splendid police (who then wore tall hats and tail coats) charging a multitude of what seemed to me to be thousands and sending them flying for their lives. They only had their truncheons--but they knew how to use them certainly. They seized the band and smashed the instruments and tore up their flags. I share Lord Rosebery’s delightful distaste; and wild horses won’t make me say more about those early years. These are Lord Rosebery’s delicious words:--