the amenities of civilized warfare, putting your prisoners' feet in hot water and giving them gruel, my reply, I regret to say, was considered unfit for publication. As if war could be civilized! If I am in charge when war breaks out, I shall issue as my commands: 'The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility. Hit first, hit hard, hit all the time, hit everywhere!' Humane warfare! When you wring the neck of a chicken all you think about is wringing it quickly. You don't give the chicken intervals for rest and refreshment.'

With an

Fisher came to leadership with a definite purpose. overmastering idea of making the British Navy instantly prepared for war, he stamped with heavy sea-boots on everything and everybody that interfered with that supreme purpose. He tore to pieces red tape that had been accumulating for centuries. Men, ships, guns, methods, plans, ideas fell into a dust heap at a stroke from his strong arm. Before 1904, Great Britain, despite deceptive appearances, had had no efficient fighting navy. It had several huge armadas scattered all over the seven seas, but, so far as constituting effective protection to the empire, they were huge delusions. In this war Britain's Navy, under command of Fisher and one of his favorite pupils, Sir John Jellicoe, found itself able to strangle to death the German Empire. What Fisher had struggled for, through five tempestuous years, was exactly the thing that happened in the early days of August, 1914. An overwhelming naval force was in instant readiness for war, and was concentrated exactly at the spot where most needed. Had it not been for Fisher and Jellicoe, it may safely be said that this would not have happened.

· In 1904 this British admiral, then not widely known outside the service, short of stature, with a round head, round eyes, stubby nose, with hair like a scrubbing-brush, and a profile that, from forehead to chin, stuck out from his face like the prow of a ship-entered Whitehall virtually as commander-in-chief. Had any other man than Fisher taken this post at that moment, no one can say what might have been the position of Great Britain at the outbreak of war. "There never was such a plucky little beggar," said a friend, recalling Fisher as a midshipman in the Crimean War; "quick as a monkey, keen as a needle, hard as nails. He would do anything and go anywhere, and didn't know what fear was." Fisher's soul, filled with the highest enthusiasm for the Navy, constantly revolted at shiftlessness and laxity. Backward he knew that Navy to be, but he had studied its history, he loved its achievements, and he had his aspirations for its future. Fisher's favorite quotation was Admiral Mahan's picturesque description of Nelson's work in thwarting Napoleon: "Nelson's far-distant,

storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army had never looked, stood between that army and dominion of the world."

When the Government called Fisher to Whitehall as First Sea Lord, Mr. Balfour, then Prime Minister, and one of Fisher's most enthusiastic converts, gave him practically a free hand. When Fisher began to upset things, many Englishmen exprest horrified amazement. Critics shouted "autocrat!" but Fisher quietly answered that the British Navy "was not a republic." The organization of the Admiralty had been so changed as to give him practically absolute control. He was placed at the head of several important committees and most officers of importance were ordered to report to him. A life spent in carefully thinking about plans for the safety of the empire began now to flower into definite acts. The system "that had stood the test of centuries" went to pieces almost in a day. Britain's lame duck ships in foreign waters began to limp home; many were broken up where they stood, and dozens were sold at auction. "By one courageous stroke of the pen," said Premier Balfour in a public speech, “150 vessels disappeared from the British fleet." This and other changes that followed, he insisted, represented the greatest naval reform since Napoleon's day. Crews were brought back to England and placed on seaworthy ships that were lying tied to docks, with the result that England, for the first time, had an efficient reserve fleet equipped with crews. These vessels, instead of needing three months to prepare for war, could now be sent to sea in two or three days.

At the same time Fisher, in view of the changed political situation, abolished certain fleets that had been roaming about more or less aimlessly for years. There had been fleets in the North Atlantic and South Pacific. He abolished these and joined their effective vessels to new fleets established nearer home. The North Sea, instead of the Mediterranean, now became the headquarters of the most powerful British squadron. A new fleet, of twelve battleships and six armored cruisers, was stationed there based on home ports. Then Fisher organized a Mediterranean fleet, with eight battleships, based on Malta. He created an entirely new battle-squadron, of eight battleships and six armored cruisers, which he called the Atlantic fleet, based on, Gibraltar. This was known as the "pivot fleet." With the help of wireless telegraphy it could swing at a moment's notice and join either the Channel fleet or the fleet stationed in the Mediterranean.

For British naval preparedness, the real test came with the sudden outbreak of war in 1914. The Kaiser did not find the British ships scattered all over the world, many unfit for service

of any kind. He found a huge armada stationed literally at his front door, blocking his own egress. Fisher had made other preparations. He had handed gunnery-work over to Sir Percy Scott and Sir John Jellicoe, with results that became apparent in every naval engagement of the war. He engaged in another scrapping performance, compared with which that of 1904 was trifling. When Fisher launched a dreadnought, in 1906, it was apparent that he was a radical indeed. This vessel virtually "scrapped" the whole British Navy. England's old-fashioned fleet had never had such a preponderance over other navies as in 1906, when Fisher, by his new building program, relegated it to the pigeon-hole.18 On July 10, 1920, having lived to see his beloved navy do its part in the war, Lord Fisher died in London in his eightieth year.

SIR JOHN (NOW VISCOUNT) JELLICOE, ADMIRAL OF THE BRITISH FLEET

Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, now Viscount Jellicoe, who commanded England's Home Fleet and so was responsible for the coast-line of Great Britain and Ireland, was physically a small man-one of the smallest in the British Navy. But his intrepidity was as great as his inches were few, and he was a man of the Fisher type. In his younger days he was a famous boxer, football-player, and all-round athlete. He had seen plenty of fighting before battles were fought in this war in the North Sea. As a sub-lieutenant he was present at the bombardment of Alexandria, and afterward took part in the battle of Tel-el-Kebir as an officer of the Naval Brigade. Jellicoe was ill in the latter fight, suffering from Malta fever. He was on board the Victoria when that ship was rammed by the Camperdown, and sent to the bottom of the Mediterranean off the coast of Syria, carrying with her Admiral Sir John Tryon and more than 600 officers and men. Jellicoe escaped miraculously. He was forced into the water when his temperature from fever was over 103, but was fished out at the normal, 98, and so cured of his illness. Jellicoe was badly wounded in the attempt to relieve the foreign legations at Peking fourteen years before the World War began. He was then serving on the staff of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Edward Seymour, and received a Boxer bullet through one of his lungs but recovered. Jellicoe was regarded in the British and foreign navies as more responsible than any other officer for progress made in 18 Compiled from an article in The Evening Post (New York), and one in The World's Work by William Corbin.

naval gunnery. He raised the percentage of hits from forty-two a hundred rounds to over eighty while Director of Naval Ordnance at the Admiralty.

Immediately after the outbreak of the World War Jellicoe was appointed commander of the Grand Fleet guarding the North Sea. Under his orders the battle of Jutland was fought. This put the German battleship fleet not only to flight, but out of business for the remainder of the war. Afterward he became First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, and on the completion of his term was raised to the peerage as Viscount Jellicoe. Son of a naval officer, he had married the daughter of a rich man, Sir Charles Cayzex, principal owner of the Clan Line of steamships. At Sir Charles's death Lady Jellicoe inherited a fortune. She gave birth to a son, after having two daughters already in their teens. The christening of the youngster, for whom King George and Queen Mary acted as sponsors, was made the occasion of a remarkable demonstration of affectionate remembrance on the part of the officers and men of the Grand Fleet. It took the form of an immense gold cup with an inscription to the effect that it was given to the child with good wishes for its future by the officers and men who had had the privilege of serving under his father.1

18a

JOSEPH JACQUES CÉSAIRE JOFFRE, MARSHAL OF FRANCE

When the war began, barely a year had passed since the name of Joseph Joffre as chief of the French General Staff first became familiar in Europe. Joffre had toiled in a long obscurity from the rank of second lieutenant at eighteen to the post of commander-in-chief at sixty without impressing his personality on the French, but when in September, 1914, he won the battle of the Marne, all the world outside of Germany talked of Joffre, and when in October, 1914, he removed five generals from high commands on the ground of incompetence, the sensation in Paris was tremendous. A man of less iron will than Joffre, one not so sure of the technicalities of his calling, or less capable of imparting their significance to an astounded Minister of War, would then and there probably have gone into collapse in an official sense, but Joffre had won at the Marne and now won at the War Office. Joffre's manner was the kind and unaffected manner, but his will was comparable to tempered blades which bend exquisitely at the swordsman's thrust, only to resume a rigidity worthy of Toledo steel.

All personal descriptions made much of Joffre's deep blue eyes,

18 The New York Evening Post and The World's Work.

his pugnacity of chin, the bushiness of his whitened brows and the heaviness of his ear. It was a countenance typical of the south of France whence he came, a country in which he was never quite liked in some circles, because of his intense republicanism, his indifference to the old nobility, his disregard of traditional military etiquette. He had the temperament of the Pyrenees, with an intensity prone to assert itself beneath correctness of form and manner. His nostril, which quivered readily betrayed a quick temper, seemingly under control, and yet too impetuous to conceal itself from an expert in human nature. He had bursts of epigrammatic frankness which won enemies and explained in some degree the slowness of his rise.

Joffre was sixty before the world ever really heard of him. In his late teens, in the war of 1870, he had been an officer commanding a battery of artillery during the siege of Paris. In 1885 he was sent to Indo-China, and later to the French Sudan. Now and again in official dispatches from North Africa his name had emerged, as in 1894 when he led a force that occupied Timbuktu, after Colonel Bonnier's column had been massacred there, and again as head of affairs in Madagascar when that island still had a Queen. He had gone from one French possession to another, organizing native troops, administering provinces, testing artillery, equipping fortresses, buried in details, yet never the slave of them. He rose slowly through military grades, was always diligent, judicious, explosive, and burly, but remained unknown, even in France, until he had donned a black uniform coat, with three bronze stars on his sleeve, and a cross on his breast that marked a military magnate of the highest rank.

Joffre was something more than a soldier of high professional integrity; he was a first-class military scientist in whom were sustained the high traditions of the French engineering corps. His organizing genius had placed him on a level with men like Vauban, Lazare, and Carnot. Nevertheless the monarchical element in French society disliked Joffre, and was chagrined when he was placed in command over General Pau, who was their favorite. Something like a feud lay behind the circumstances that kept Joffre for years from becoming a captain, and withheld from him the badge of the Legion of Honor until he had gone through a Tonkin campaign. It took Joffre nine years of hard service in the French Sudan to attain the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In 1897 he was made colonel and it was not until eight years later (1905) that he obtained the epaulets of a brigadier-general.

From a grandmother Joffre derived his Gascon qualities—the fire in his eye, the swiftness of his gestures, the sharp stamp of his