But there is another providential sequel to the events with which I began this statement. I made great friends at the Peace Conference with General Gross von Schwarzhoff and Admiral von Siegel, the Military and Naval German Delegates, and I then (in 1899) imbibed those ideas as to the North Sea being our battle ground, which led to the great things between 1902 and 1910. III.--SHIP-BUILDING AND DOCKYARD WORKERS. I have been asked to explain how I got rid of 6,000 redundant Dockyard workmen, when Mr. Childers nearly wrecked his Government by turning out but a few hundred. Well, this was how it was done. We brought home some 160 ships from abroad that could neither fight nor run away; enough men were thus provided for the fighting portion of the crews for all the new ships then lying in the Dockyards, which were not only deteriorating in their hulls and equipment for want of care, but were inefficient for war because officers and men must have practice in the ship they fight as much as the Bisley shot with his rifle, the jockey with his race-horse and the chef with his sauces. It is practice that makes perfect. The original plan for mobilising the Navy for war was that on the outbreak of war you disorganised the ships already fully manned and efficient by taking a portion of the trained crew, thus impairing the efficiency of that ship, and putting them into the un-manned ships and filling up both the old and the new--the former efficient ships and those in the dockyards--with men from the Reserve. So the whole Navy got disorganised. And that was what they called “Preparing for War!” By what Mr. Balfour called a courageous stroke of the pen, in his speech at Manchester, when he was Prime Minister, every vessel in the Fleet by the new system had its fighting crew complete. Those who were to fill up the hiatus were the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. The brains were there; only the beef had to come, and the beef might have been taken from the Army. When are we going to have the great Army and Navy Co-operative Society, which I set forth to King Edward in 1903--that the Army should be a Reserve for the Navy? When shall we be an amphibious nation? This last war has made us into a conscript Nation.