Proud Tower - Barbara W. Tuchman [163]
As military and naval delegates Lord Salisbury’s government selected two exceptional men from the upper ranks of their respective services. Major General Sir John Ardagh, after winning honors in Hebrew and mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin, had changed from a clerical to a military career. Subsequently he had been an observer in the Franco-Prussian and Russo-Turkish wars, seen active service in Egypt and the Sudan and was now Director of Military Intelligence.
His naval colleague was the most unsubdued individualist of his time, possessed of a vigor and impetus remarkable in any time. Admiral Sir John Fisher was a force of nature entirely directed to the renaissance of British sea power through modernization of the Navy. His only other mania was dancing, which he pursued from hornpipe to waltz at every opportunity, with other officers if necessary when there were no ladies present. Whatever he fought for was a struggle against the weight and lethargy of “the way it has always been” and his career was that of a fierce broom sweeping aside obsolescence in men as well as ships. He demanded oil instead of coal twenty years ahead of his time, substituted training in gunnery for cutlasses, training in engines and engineering for rigging and the handling of sails, introduced destroyers, pioneered in ordnance, armor and battleship design. During the bombardment of Alexandria when an armored train was needed to transport a landing force, he invented one. He had been Commandant of the Torpedo School, Director of Naval Ordnance, Superintendent of Dockyards, Third Sea Lord, Controller of the Navy and was currently Commander-in-Chief of the Atlantic Station.
Born in Malaya, Fisher had a strange flat smooth-shaven face which inspired his enemies, who were innumerable, to hint broadly at Oriental ancestry. On his flagship when he “prowled around with the steady rhythmical tread of a panther, the quarter deck shook and all hands shook with it. When the word was passed, ‘Look out, here comes Jack!’ everyone stood terribly to attention while the great one passed on and away.” Upon the orthodox his flow of ideas had an effect either paralyzing or maddening. When he talked of some new scheme or program he held his companion fixed with a glittering eye and emphasized every sentence with a blow of his fist on his palm. When he wrote letters his emphasis took the form of two, three or four lines under a word and he closed, not “in haste,” but “in violent haste!” or with the warning: “Burn this!” He liked to quote Napoleon’s maxim, J’ordonne ou je me tais (“I command or I keep quiet”), but he was incapable of practicing the second half.
At the moment, in case of war with France over Fashoda, he had conceived a plan to execute a naval raid on Devil’s Island and kidnap Dreyfus in order to land him on the coast of France to embarrass the Army and sow dissension. For the motto of one of his destroyers he chose Ut Veniant Omnes (Let them all come). His pretended principles of battle were “Give No Quarter, Take No Prisoners, Sink Everything, No Time for Mercy, Frappez vite et frappez fort, l’Audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace,” but this was intended more for moral effect than as serious tactics. When Lord Salisbury appointed him naval delegate to The Hague he remarked that there was no doubt Jacky Fisher would fight at the Peace Conference. “So I did,