I hardly liked to go further with my remarks this morning, recognising how very valuable your time is, but I would have liked to have added how appalling it is that the Germans may now be about to deal a deadly blow to Russia by sending a large German Force by sea from Kiel to take St. Petersburg (which, as the Russian Prime Minister, Stolypin, told me, is the Key of Russia! All is concentrated there!). And here we are with our Fleet passive and unable to frustrate this German Sea attack on Russia. All this due to the grievous faulty Naval strategy of not adopting the Baltic Project put before Mr. Asquith in association with the scheme for the British Army advancing along the Belgian Coast, by which we should have re-captured Antwerp, and there would have been no German submarine menace such as now is. An Armada of 612 vessels was constructed to carry out this policy, thanks to your splendid approval of the cost when you were Chancellor of the Exchequer. I. Our Naval Strategy has been unimaginative. II. Our shipbuilding Policy has been futile, inasmuch as it has not coped with the German Submarine Menace. III. Our Naval Intelligence of the enemy’s doings is good for nothing. For it is impossible to conceive there would have been apathy at the Admiralty had it been known how the Germans were building submarines in such numbers--3 a week, Sir John Jellicoe told us at the War Cabinet. I say 5 a week. Yours, etc., (Signed) FISHER. 28/3/17. I append a couple of extracts from Memoranda made by me in 1902, when I was Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. “Here we see 5,000 of these offensive floating mines laid down off Port Arthur, covering a wider space than the English Channel, and we, so far, have none, nor any vessel yet fitted! What a scandal! For a purpose unnecessary to be detailed here, it is absolutely obligatory for us to have these mines instantly for war against Germany. They are an imperative strategic necessity, and must be got at once.” AUTOMATIC DROPPING MINES FOR OCEAN USE.