I send you two books--a more portly volume I hesitate to send!--Also I fear without some verbal explanation you may not see the application to Military matters of these purely Naval Notes, but they do apply in the spirit if not in the letter! For instance I had an overwhelming confidence that every Officer and man in the Mediterranean Fleet had also an overwhelming confidence that we thoroughly knew all we had to do in case of war in every conceivable eventuality! Well! that is the confidence you also want in an Army! Have you got it! * * * * * _Dec. 2nd._ Here is a letter just come from Prince Louis of Battenberg illustrating what I was saying to you this morning as to a Member of the Board of Admiralty however junior in rank being accepted as a superior controlling authority by all in rank above him. An Officer actually at the moment serving under Prince Louis in the Admiralty itself being put over Prince Louis in the Admiralty itself, and sending for him and giving him orders! I don’t know that it would be possible to have a stronger case to quote when by and by we have to defend or rather have to lay down and define the status of the Members of the New War Office Board. Inglefield, the new Naval Lord, being a Junior Captain, will be sending for _Admiral_ Boys, Director of Transports, who is specially under him and who I rather think entered the service before Inglefield was born. * * * * * _Dec. 4th._ ... You are right about the Submarines! “_We strain at the gnat of perfection and swallow the camel of unreadiness_,” and that permeates every branch of Naval and Military Administration, forgetting the homely proverb that “half a loaf is better than no bread!” but please God! “_the dauntless three_” [Sir Geo. Clarke, Lord Esher and Sir John Fisher] (as I see we are now called) will change all that! “We’ll stagger humanity” as old Kruger said! * * * * * _Dec. 7th._ Arnold-Forster [Secretary for War] has been here three days and he is most cordially with us. I wish you had been here with him. He places implicit trust in us. He has shown me an outline of an excellent memorandum proposing an immediate reduction of 300,000 men and he will let me have a copy as soon as printed, also a memorandum of his difficulties in the War Office.... This is another proof of the value of the advice of my Military Nicodemus (he is one of the Sanhedrin!) that there must be an active “clear-out” of the present military gang, root and branch, lock, stock, and gunbarrel! Sir John French and General Smith-Dorrien (lately Adjutant-General in India) are names I have suggested to Arnold-Forster as members of his new Board. * * * * * _Dec. 11th._