‘I can’t support you at all in any way whatever for any two years’ or more programme. Some d——d fool has got hold of you to have made you say that! THE GREAT SECRET IS TO PUT OFF TO THE VERY LAST HOUR THE SHIP (big or little) _that you mean to build_ (or PERHAPS NOT BUILD HER AT ALL!). You see all your rival’s plans fully developed, their vessels started beyond recall, and then in each individual answer to each such rival vessel you plunge with a design 50 per cent. better! knowing that your rapid shipbuilding and command of money will enable you to have your vessel fit to fight as soon if not sooner than the rival vessel. Sometimes, as in one famous year, you can drop an armoured ship and put the money into acceleration of those building because you have a new design coming along, so don’t be a d——d ass and deliberately lay down a ship which you know is obsolete by some sudden vast step in old Watts’ brain! “_Sufficient for the year is the programme thereof._” For God’s sake get that written up somewhere for you to look at when you get out of bed in the morning! and do please tell me the name of the born fool who hoaxed you. Is it...? He has just got a gold medal in America for advocating smaller battleships I believe.... You know Archbishop Whately proved that Napoleon Bonaparte never existed!... ‘We are asses now for not building a 16–inch gun as Sir E. Wilmot told you in the letter I sent you—but you can’t help yourself any more than you can help deliberately laying down ships for the Line of Battle that go less than 30 knots—there are certain things my beloved Winston that even God Almighty can’t help! (let alone you!). He for instance can’t help two added to two being four!... ‘_The most damnable thing in the world is a servile copyist!_ One of the four Nelsonic attributes is “_Power of Initiative_”! and “_Plunge_” is the watchword of “_Progress_”! but I sicken you with my reiteration, so good-bye.’ I replied on February 19:—