I
Regarded by the Royal Navy in his own lifetime either as a saint or a - devil, as a genius who raised the efficiency of the Fleet to a peak never reached before, or as an evil old man who raised havoc with fleet discipline and efficiency, “Jackie” Fisher has remained in death a subject of controversy. This is a fitting occasion—twenty years after Fisher’s death and the hundredth anniversary of his birth—to attempt a fresh appraisal of the man and his work during his heyday, 1902-10.
The key to an understanding of the Fisher era lies in a consideration of the “naval milieu” at the turn of the century. The great Jubilee Naval Review of 1897 had instilled in Englishmen a spirit of bursting pride and confidence in their Navy; and a year later the Fashoda crisis confirmed the English in the belief that theirs was just about the finest fleet that had ever sailed the seas. In reality, the British Navy at the end of the nineteenth century, numerically a very imposing force, was a drowsy, inefficient, moth-eaten organism. Successive naval administrations had shrunk from the changes which science and its application to warfare had rendered inevitable. Officers and men were trained in all the minute details of masts and yards, though sails had disappeared by the 1880’s, and the steam engine, hydraulics, and electricity were supreme. The officers had a scanty knowledge of tactics and strategy, though the introduction of the ironclad warship, the steam engine, the torpedo, long-range ordnance, the submarine, mine, wireless, and high explosive shell had profoundly modified the tactics of the sailing ship era and the application of the principles of strategy. There was no staff or war college for the study of these subjects. When Fisher joined the Board of Admiralty as second sea lord in 1902, he remarked that the ideas of warfare of his colleagues were of the bow-and-arrow epoch. In fact, the pride of the naval profession was to a considerable extent centered in the smartness of the men-of-war, for therein lay the road to promotion. Hence, gunnery practice was neglected—it dirtied the paint-work. As regards the seamen, their morale was not of the best, for the navy fare was still hard “tack,” hard labor, harsh discipline, and poor pay. The naval reserve officers and men were almost all trained on shore with ancient weapons and were entirely ignorant of everything connected with modern guns and ammunition. Captain Mahan held, with universal approval, that one of the important elements of naval power consisted in the concentration of power. There was little concentration in 1900. British sea power was scattered over the whole world. Furthermore, for nearly two-thirds of the year there was no organized naval force in home waters, as the Channel Squadron cruised in Irish and Spanish waters. During these long absences British waters were left denuded of a regular fleet, for the ships in reserve were in a chaotic state. Such, in brief, was the state of the Fleet in 1900. Well might Admiral Lord Charles Beresford declare in 1898, “Were you to run your business on the same lines as the army and navy are run, you would be bankrupt in three months.”
II
Fundamentally, the backward state of the Navy stemmed from the fact that it had for nearly a century enjoyed a peace routine and that its title of Mistress of the Seas had not been seriously challenged. This bred a fatal lethargy and a “Two skinny Frenchmen and one Portugee, one jolly Englishman could lick them all three” frame of mind. Naval life had become one long holiday during which preparation for war was not given much thought. The innate conservatism of the Navy is a derivative factor. The Admiralty and the senior officers generally were not receptive to new ideas. The ablest minds in the Navy lived in the day before yesterday. Officers, even when awake to the weakness of existing arrangements, did not trouble to challenge them, for capacity to think and an independent or critical mind were handicaps.
The Navy went right on enjoying this state of quiescence until the close of the century, when the German Fleet began to emerge as a formidable rival. The dead weight of tradition which hampered the British Navy was never felt in the new German Navy, which had no heroic past behind it to obscure modern realities in a sentimental haze. The potential size of the Kaiser’s Fleet, its concentration in home waters, and especially its high quality and readiness for battle impressed professional observers in Britain. With the passage of the German Navy Acts of 1898 and 1900 began the awakening of the Royal Navy. An influence in the same direction was the Boer War. The Army’s bitter experiences in South Africa gave Britain a terrific psychological jolt. It was realized by every thinker in the Navy that a naval war might find the Fleet as unprepared as the Army had been.
Beginning around 1900 a little band of ardent reformers—younger officers—began to crystallize around Admiral Sir John Fisher, the Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. In season and out of season they worked to awaken the naval profession and the country to what was meant by efficient naval administration and real preparedness for war. Indeed, “the efficiency of the Fleet and its instant readiness for war” became the slogan of the Fisherites. Their system was set on foot in 1902, when Fisher came to Whitehall as second sea lord, and was introduced, bag and baggage, in 1904, after he became first sea lord, the chief professional adviser to the civilian First Lord. Although his countrymen have never been quite sure of it, the verdict of history will be that in “Jackie” Fisher the Navy and the nation had found their man—a tornado of energy and enthusiasm, a sworn foe of inefficiency and all outworn traditions, and possessed of originality, vision, and a most remarkable executive brain. Here was a strong man ready to face the tremendous responsibility and personal risk of carrying out a constructive revolution in a service rendered by the very pride of its traditions one of the most conservative in the world.
III
Fisher’s five years’ tenure of the post of first sea lord was the most memorable in the modem history of the Royal Navy. During these strenuous years there was no rest for anyone connected with the Navy. It was as though a thousand brooms were at work clearing away the cobwebs. It is sometimes alleged that Fisher’s schemes were hastily thought out. Nothing is further from the truth. They were the result of years of thinking, and of thinking tested by experience. But the reforms aroused much bitter antagonism and much painful controversy, and ranged the executive officers of the Fleet into two camps which were only on swearing terms. Despite the current opinion which represented Fisher as a man without feeling, he was cut to the heart by the attacks made upon him. “When I retire,” he said to a friend, “I shall write my reminiscences. I shall call them ‘Hell. By One Who Has Been There’.”
Much of the antagonism towards Fisher was involved in the very nature of the work which he had set himself to accomplish: a frightened service found itself being hustled out of the lethargy of a prolonged peace routine into a strenuous preparation for war; little wonder that it gave vent to a cry of agony. It was also natural, as in St. Vincent’s day, that every conservative influence should rise against Fisher. Valuing tradition and custom at too high a price, many naval officers—mostly on the retired list—seemed constitutionally opposed to change. What was good enough for their grandfathers was good enough for them, and any variation meant that the service was going to the dogs.
However, much of the unrest and discontent were due to Fisher’s personality and to the methods by which he carried out the reforms. To convert lay opinion he made extensive use of newspaper publicity. This innovation, which was so wholly opposed to service tradition, was deeply resented by the officers. As regards his treatment of the profession itself, instead of realizing that the ultimate success of his sweeping transformations could best be achieved by the hearty co-operation of all concerned and by appealing to the spirit of patriotism and sense of unity of the service, he used steam-roller tactics in putting pet reforms through. Increasingly arrogant and petulant, he made no attempt to convert his opponents. “But you don’t look at all sides,” a friend argued. “But why should I waste my time looking at all sides when I know my side is the right side.” “Never explain” and “It is only damn fools who argue” were favorite maxims. His closest friends remonstrated with him over the perfectly idiotic way in which he insulted and alienated many of the senior officers. “I am going to kick other people’s shins if they kick mine!” was his reply. Lord Esher, his close friend, frankly told him that “Your pitfall is that you want to carry your one man rule from War into Peace, and all history shows the fatal track along which One Man has walked to disaster.” It was therefore inevitable that Fisher made enemies. He made them right and left. “He took them all on, and there was something about him which goaded enmity to dementia.” But popularity is no sign of efficiency, neither are many enemies any proof of incapacity. Also it should be noted that, contrary to the general impression of the time, no opponent of his, if he were an efficient officer, suffered professionally for his opposition. The most brutal threats were heaved at those who actively opposed his reforms, and he did give important commands and subordinate positions to men in whom he believed, careless of the claims of seniority (an excellent policy on the whole, for through this flip to younger men many of them were in high command in 1914). Yet for the greater part of his long administration the more important commands, afloat and ashore, were held by men out of sympathy with his views—men who in some cases carried their opposition to the verge of mutiny—and the doors of the Admiralty were always open to new ideas and new developments.
IV
Turning to Fisher’s reforms, I shall not attempt even to mention the innumerable minor ones, but shall confine myself to the major changes. The naval revolution began with significant personnel reforms. Fisher has often been reproached for excessive preoccupation with the material as distinct from the personnel of the Navy. Actually, to Fisher the man was always more important than the machine. He continually insisted that the officers and men —their skill, resource, and readiness to respond to any emergency—were the elements in sea power which were of paramount importance. He practised what he preached. There was no wasting of time by officers or men over sail-drill and other obsolete things. The higher training of officers, long neglected, was provided for in the establishment of a Naval College at Portsmouth. A democrat and perhaps even a socialist at heart, Fisher wanted to see all fees abolished at the Osborne and Dartmouth Naval Colleges, so that entry to the commissioned ranks of the Navy could be thrown open as widely as possible. He was well in advance of the class prejudices of the officers’ corps when he declared: “ . . . this Democratic Country won’t stand 99 per cent at least of her Naval Officers being drawn from the ‘Upper Ten’ .... The true democratic principle is Napoleon’s ‘La carriere ouverte aux talentsl! ” Fisher’s campaign finally bore some fruit: in 1913 fees were reduced 50 per cent for one quarter of the entrants in any year. This was a step in the right direction.
The greatest personnel reform was the scheme announced in December, 1902. Its principle was that of a common entry of all cadets at an early age and a common training up to the rank of lieutenant, at which time they were to complete their training by specializing as executive, engineer, or marine officers. The basic idea was that since a modem warship was a mass of intricate machinery, it was essential that all officers should know at least a little about engines, and this subject was included in the course of study at Osborne and Dartmouth. Although the reform gave rise to bitter controversy—chiefly on the ground that proficiency as an executive, engineer, or marine officer demanded the whole time and talents of the aspirant— and though some modifications were introduced later, some of them not at all to Fisher’s taste, the scheme justified the faith of its warmest advocates. The fundamental principle still obtains that the fighting seamen of the future, whether officer or bluejacket, must be well versed in all the mechanical appliances with which a modem navy is equipped.
Under Fisher naval reserve officers and men were trained, not at shore batteries with more or less obsolete guns as in the past, but at sea under naval discipline, and with the weapons they would actually use in war. With Fisher and Captain (later Admiral Sir) Percy Scott playing the leading roles, a gunnery renaissance took place after 1900. A new system of training was introduced, the principle underlying which was that the men should be trained by repeatedly doing the thing and not by reading out of gunnery manual and drill book how it was to be done. By 1908 most ships were making much better shooting at 6,000 and7,000 yards than they had done at 2,000 yards a few years earlier. With this better war training for the men went an improvement in their working conditions. The long-standing grievances of the seamen with regard to victualing, pay, and discipline were removed. This resulted in a higher morale which was to bear handsome dividends in 1914-18.
V
The nucleus crew system was one of Fisher’s great reforms. It was the high- water mark of all the reserve systems which had been tried in the world’s fleets. Before 1904, British warships not actually at sea were kept in naval ports, for the most part in basins or docks, without crews on board in charge of them. Upon mobilization for maneuvers they were manned ad hoc partly by Royal Naval Reserve men, and in any case by complements totally unfamiliar with their ship. The value of these reserve ships in war was problematical and their frequent breaking down in maneuvers demonstrated the unsatisfactory character and great danger of the system. Under the Fisher reform every efficient ship in reserve was provided with a nucleus crew, that is, manned with two-fifths of their normal complements, including all the specialists in the ship’s company and all the officers really essential to the fighting efficiency of the ship. The nucleus crew lived on board, and by means of drills and practice cruises got to know their ship. If hostilities broke out, the crews could be quickly completed from the shore barracks and instructional establishments. Fisher rightly called the nucleus crew system “the keystone of our preparedness for war,” for it rendered the whole seagoing fleet as “instantly ready for war” as was compatible with peace conditions and a peace establishment. There was, however, no personnel surplus for the new system. That was provided by the complements of the scrapped ships.
The organization of the fleet was in many respects faulty, costly, and antiquated. Scattered over every ocean and sea on the planet were a large number of miserable little gunboats, sloops, and third-class cruisers, a survival of the days before steam, the telegraph, and wireless, when it took a long time to summon naval assistance in any emergency. Although this arrangement pleased the Foreign Office and the consuls’ daughters, who needed tennis and waltzing partners, and was useful for police duties and the relief of distress after an earthquake, it was useless for war purposes. These vessels could fight no modern warship larger than themselves, even when they could fight at all, and their speed was insufficient to enable them to run away. A number of these ships were in reserve, still on the active list. This outworn system was now discarded (1905): 154 ships were struck off the effective list. The advantages of this audacious stroke were that it cleared the naval harbors, where many of these ships had occupied valuable berthing space, it stopped unproductive expenditure, and it liberated a number of men who provided the personnel for the nucleus crew system. Contemporary criticism assailed the scrapping policy with two arguments: first, that it denuded distant stations of police forces and lowered British prestige through the disappearance of the flag; second, that it deprived the fleet of ships which would have been very useful in the multifarious task of trade protection in war. The critics found their justification in the first World War, when England never had a sufficiency of cruisers and other small craft for commerce protection. The answer to these charges is simple: Fisher did make due provision for such police purposes as were still necessary, and four powerful armored cruiser squadrons were to be employed to show the flag in imposing force whenever it was deemed advisable. As regards trade protection, the hindsight of the critics ignores the fact that it was the ruthless submarine warfare on commerce which led to the critical situation of 1916-17. No responsible person in the Navy foresaw this possibility before 1914. As of 1905 the scrapping policy was a sound reform.
The redistribution of British squadrons was the crowning stroke of all. The distribution had been determined in the sailing-ship era when sea voyages were long and when squadrons to protect trade had to be distributed widely. There were nine squadrons in 1904. The advent of steam and improved communications diminished the need for many isolated foreign squadrons. The entire distribution system was rendered wholly obsolete by the Japanese Alliance (1902), the French Entente (1904), the excellent relations with the United States and Italy after 1898, and by the fact that Fisher and the Government after 1902 looked upon Germany as the enemy of Great Britain. As one of Fisher’s first reforms, the squadrons in the Pacific, South Atlantic, and the North America stations were abolished. The next step was to concentrate the Fleet where it belonged—in home waters in the neighborhood of the potential enemy, Germany. In 1904 nearly all the most modem ships were stationed in the Mediterranean. The Channel Fleet got the next best of them—and that fleet was not always in the Channel—and the residue was considered good enough for the direct defense of home waters. In place of this disorganization, Fisher established three large fleets in home waters: the Channel Fleet, the Atlantic Fleet, which had its principal base in home waters, and the Home Fleet, which was manned with nucleus crews. Actually, it meant that three-quarters of Britain’s battleships would be readily available against Germany. The new distribution was savagely condemned by the opposition, partly on the ground that the striking power of the Fleet was seriously weakened by the ships of the Home Fleet not being fully manned. But to the close student of naval strategy, the Fisher reform was wholly admirable. Mahan had expressed the opinion that it was unpracticable to keep a large Navy fully manned in peace—manned to the requirements of war. “The place of a reserve, in a system of preparation for war, must be admitted because inevitable.” This salient truth was recognized in all the fleets of the world, and the Home Fleet was the Admiralty’s solution of the problem of organizing a portion of the Navy in time of peace so as to enable it to take its place in the fighting line with the shortest possible delay. The anti-Fisherites also insisted that the division of the forces in home waters into two principal parts, the Channel Fleet and the Home Fleet, under separate commanders in chief, was not adapted to war. The point was well taken. The system of dispersion was condemned by every strategist, British and foreign, and its terrible weakness had been demonstrated afresh in the Russo-Japanese War. Gossip had it that Fisher’s hatred of Beresford, Commander in Chief of the Channel Fleet, was responsible for this faulty organization of the home forces. The situation was rectified in the spring of 1909 when the Channel Fleet was absorbed into the Home Fleet. Fisher maintained that this change was but the final phase of an evolutionary policy. The evidence, however, is that his hands were forced by the pressure of naval opinion.
VI
Turning to problems of material, the important things to consider are Fisher’s introduction of the two new revolutionary warship types, the all-big-gun dreadnought and battle cruiser. Fisher’s critics claim that the Dreadnought was due to his megalomania ; his admirers say it was due to his great originality. The truth is that technological, strategical, and tactical considerations prepared the ground for the Dreadnought. None of its elements was due solely to Fisher. His genius lay in the boldness with which he resolved to combine them. It was and remains fashionable to deride the Dreadnought policy on the ground that it rendered all existing battleships obsolete, so sweeping away Britain’s overwhelming preponderance in battleships and giving the Germans a level start in the competition for naval supremacy. Fisher never denied that the introduction of the Dreadnought was tantamount to starting the battleship competition de novo. But he knew the design was inevitable, owing to the development of long-range firing, the improvement in torpedoes, etc. Every indication in 1904-5 pointed to it as the battleship of the immediate future. The Germans and Japanese were giving the matter serious attention and the United States Navy, as Fisher knew, was planning to build dreadnoughts. This being the situation, it was imperative for Britain to get the jump, particularly as the Germans were building warships in about the same time as the English. Another myth should be dispelled once and forever—that the Dreadnought was designed to act as a deterrent to Germany’s naval ambitions by making her fleet obsolescent and through entailing the widening and deepening of the Kiel Canal. There is not a scrap of evidence that this was a factor in the designing of the Dreadnought. Not once in any of the source materials on the origins of the Dreadnought is Germany mentioned even indirectly. The considerations throughout were purely technical, buttressed by the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War and by the knowledge that other powers were contemplating the introduction of the all-big-gun battleship.
The raison d'etre of the battle cruiser was threefold: to have armored ships (1) fast enough to deal with any German merchant or armored cruiser which might attempt to prey on British commerce; (2) to act as superscouting cruisers, ships fast and powerful enough to press home a reconnaissance in the face of an enemy’s big armored cruisers; (3) to act as a fast wing reinforcing the battle fleet in a fleet action. It is unfortunate that the ships were called battle cruisers, for their third function was the least important and tended to obscure their primary duty, which was (2). The genesis of the type was sound as the existing armored cruisers could not fulfill any of the above tasks.
As regards the efficiency of the warships built during Fisher’s tenure, it must be realized that he had no active part in the preparation of ship designs. He was responsible for the conception of the dreadnought and battle-cruiser types and shared in the preparation of the first designs. Thereafter, the evolution of the designs of the big ships as well as of the smaller craft was primarily the work of the third sea lord (controller) and his department. All the same, it is worth pointing out that the British dreadnoughts, though lacking the solid protection given German dreadnoughts by Tirpitz, met the test of battle at Jutland, their only major test in World War I. And despite criticism that the battle cruisers did not fare well because armor had been sacrificed to speed, they proved their worth at the Falklands and elsewhere, and they came out of Jutland as well as the badly mauled German battle cruisers. But for the defective magazine arrangements and misuse of the British battle cruisers at Jutland, two units would not have been lost. They were used, not as scouts, but on long-range action with the German battle cruisers, something for which they had never been intended.
Fisher was among the few to foresee the offensive possibilities of the submarine. As early as 1902, only two years after Britain had begun to build submarines, he was convinced that this new craft would revolutionize naval warfare. Hence he did all he could to build up a strong submarine fleet. Fisher has been taken severely to task by latter-day critics for his responsibility in developing a weapon which could be used only to the disadvantage of the stronger naval power. To this charge the Admiral would have answered (1) that the development of the submarine was inevitable—that technical progress, as with the battleship, could not have been stemmed; (2) that Britain’s submarine experience was an absolute prerequisite for the development of antidotes; and (3) that had his warning been heeded, preparations to neutralize the U-boat threat could have been made in time; for with uncanny foresight Fisher had predicted, in May, 1914, that the submarine menace was “a truly terrible one for British commerce and Great Britain alike. ...”
VII
Fisher’s admirers sometimes bemoan the fact that he was too old to be Commander in Chief of the Grand Fleet in 1914. It is just as well that Fisher was not in Jellicoe’s shoes, for he was not a great tactician. Often, when commanding the Mediterranean Fleet (1899-1902), the sea lords had to take him to task for his faulty tactical dispositions in fleet exercises and maneuvers. While he was at Whitehall the twin fetishes of the rigid single line and centralized command went unchallenged.
Fisher’s general strategical conceptions were sounder. He always planned to use sea power for something more than maintaining a distant blockade. He believed in joint naval and military operations, as in keeping with British tradition and admirably suited for a strong naval power possessing a small army. The General Staff’s schemes for using the whole B. E. F. as an extension of France’s left wing made Fisher’s hair stand on end. His plan, the famous “Baltic Project,” was to throw all or part of the B. E. F. ashore at a point on the German coast near the heart of the enemy’s power and on the flank and rear of the main body of the enemy. By so using to the utmost the ubiquity and mobility of sea power, he expected to divert a number of enemy troops out of all proportion to the number of attacking troops used. The idea was a bold one, but in war Fisher believed “considered rashness is prudence.” He knew before the first World War what the Germans have practiced so successfully in the second: “Prudence in war is a synonym for imbecility.” Who is to say that his was an impossible conception? From what we know, the project was never given serious consideration in the war. This is regrettable, since there is as much to be said for its advantages and feasibility as for its dangers. The mere threat of the amphibious use of a sea power had great potentialities, as witness Napoleon’s saying, often approvingly quoted by Mahan, that “With 30,000 men in transports in the Downs the British can immobilize 300,000 of my own.”
Much has been made of the ferocity with which Fisher always spoke on the subject of war, for example his oft-quoted statement at the Hague Peace Conference of 1899: “The humanizing of war! You might as well talk of humanizing hell ... as if war could be civilized.” In reality, Fisher was a man of peace, with a good many radical opinions, so far as he was a politician. It was his conviction that war was the greatest idiocy of life. But once it happened, he urged that it must not be conducted weakly—that it was the duty of the British Fleet to “hit first, to hit hard, and keep on hitting,” so that by one colossal effort the enemy might be destroyed and the nation saved from all the horrors of a long-drawn-out series of indecisive contests. Here is the essence of blitzkrieg warfare.
Nor was Fisher an alarmist or jingo. “Scare” statements about German invasion plans and dreadnought programs were branded as “silly” and “very mischievous.” His quiet confidence in the Royal Navy was in the best traditions of that service. His jingoism is supposed to be proved by his alleged plans to “Copenhagen” the German Fleet. More truthfully, a preventive war against Germany was never put forward except in private conversation with friends and in a famous conversation with King Edward in 1908. It was never advanced seriously, because Fisher realized that he could never get official approval. It was never considered by the Board and it was never part of British naval policy in the Fisher administration.
Fisher’s legions of critics have attributed the increase in German naval activity after 1905 to his boastfulness, the introduction of the dreadnought type, and his large dreadnought programs. All this, they say, added fuel to the passions of the period, baulked the chances of peace, and practically made war certain. They neglect one consideration—that Fisher was only following the maxim in vogue in all the admiralties of the world: “Si vis pacem, para bellum.” When Fisher became first sea lord Britain possessed 50 battleships to 57 of the next two great fleets, the American and German. When his building plans matured early in 1912, two years after he left Whitehall, Britain had 20 dreadnoughts completed to 15 of the next two great fleets, still those of the United States and Germany. Throughout, the Royal Navy held its preponderance in cruisers and torpedo craft. War was not averted by British naval superiority, but that superiority did win the war for Britain and the Allies. As the events of recent history have shown, a defenseless Britain is hardly a factor contributing to European peace. Preferable is a Si vis pacem theory which, if it fails to prevent war, at least enables a power to prosecute it successfully.
Lastly, mention should be made of Fisher’s foreign politics. The Admiral had a shrewd, realistic political sense. He was one of the architects of the Triple Entente. Regarding war with Germany as inevitable he always maintained that Britain needed above all a quadruple alliance of Russia, England, France, and Turkey. For a naval war, he held that Britain needed the alliance of Russia and Turkey above all— Russia for the naval diversion she could create in the Baltic, and Turkey so that communications with Russia via the Black Sea would remain open. As early as October, 1904, at a time when it was very unpopular to do so, we find the new first sea lord urging the conclusion of an alliance with Russia. Fisher’s Turkish policy goes back at least to the time of his Mediterranean command. The stupidity of the official policy of alienating Turkey was a favorite theme. He was opposed to the Japanese Alliance, “the very worst thing that England ever did for herself,” and he always worked for close Anglo-American co-operation. Fisher’s general attitude on foreign policy was very un-Munichlike. Of the Haldane Mission of 1912 he wrote: “A British Cabinet Minister crawling up the back stairs of the German Foreign Office in carpet slippers! ... a most humiliating, weak and dangerous [position].”
VIII
Bitterly disappointed at the Cabinet’s failure to back him 100 per cent against the attacks of the Beresford clique, and desiring to ensure the succession of Admiral Sir A. K. Wilson -while the latter was still of age, Fisher retired from office on his sixty- ninth birthday in January, 1910. It was just as well that he left Whitehall when he did. The spirit of unity, which had long been one of the most marked characteristics of the service until Fisher came along, had been shattered. This was not entirely his fault. Moreover, it can be argued that radical reforms were possible only by strong methods. Nevertheless, because of his methods he must bear a portion of the blame for weakening the old band-of- brothers feeling, which had been Nelson’s principal legacy to the Navy. The Navy needed a period of rest, a surcease from recrimination and bickering. Moreover, new problems were coming to the fore, problems which could be solved best by a Naval General Staff. It would serve as the Navy’s thinking department, corresponding in function to the General Staff of the Army. Being an egotist, Fisher was too apt to forget that the Navy could not live on one man’s brains. He therefore opposed the creation of a General Staff. For this reason, too, it was well that he retired in 1910. His later career, as behind-the-scene adviser to the First Lord, Winston Churchill, in 1911-14, and then as first sea lord in the early months of the war, is but an appendix, an unfortunate one in respects.
By 1910 Fisher’s work had been done. The greatest of British naval administrators since St. Vincent, in a little over four years he crammed the reforms of generations and laid foundations that can never be destroyed. He gave his countrymen a new Navy, stronger and better organized than he had found it, impregnated with the spirit of progress and efficiency, and purged as by fire of “those obese unchallenged old things that stifled and overlay it” in the past. It was British command of the sea more than any other factor which won the first World War, and the principal architect of that command was John Fisher. Count Reventlow, the chief spokesman of the German Navy League, referred to him at the time as “one of the most remarkable reformers that the British Fleet has ever possessed; the man who attained his object, which was to bring the fighting squadrons to the highest possible efficiency in material, training, and strategic utility.”
“Jackie” Fisher has been dead for twenty years, but his spirit is very much alive both in Whitehall and with the Fleet. The historian of today can safely confirm the statement made by the London Times when he passed away: “let the schoolmen say what they will . . . this man’s fame is safe with history.”
“Athanasius Contra Mundum”
1. This article was submitted in the Prize Essay Con test, 1942.