Chapter XIII Americans
My very best friends are Americans. I was the Admiral in North America, and saw “American Beauties” at Bermuda. (Those American roses and the American women are equal!) And without question they are the very best dancers in the world! (I suppose it’s from so much skating!) My only son married an American lady (which rejoiced me), and an American gentleman on the steamer complimented me that she had come over and vanquished him instead of his going, as the usual way is, to America to capture her! I had such a time in America when I went over to the wedding! I never can forget the hospitality so boundless and sincere! I really might have spent three years in America (so I calculated) in paying visits earnestly desired. The Reporters (25 of them) asked me when I left what I thought of their country (I tried to dodge them, but found them all in my cabin when I went on board!) I summed it up in the one word I greatly admire—“HUSTLE!” and I got an adhesive label in America which I also loved! Great Black Block letters on a crimson ground—
RUSH
You stick it on a letter or the back of a slow fool. Mr. McCrea, the President of the Pennsylvania Railway, had his private car to take me to Philadelphia from New York. We went 90 miles in 90 minutes, and such a dinner! Two black gentlemen did it all. And I found my luggage in my room when I arrived labelled:
“MR. LORD FISHER”
(How it got there so quick I can’t imagine.) I was bombed by a photographer as we arrived late at night, and an excellent photograph he took, but it gave me a shock! I had never been done like that! I had the great pleasure of dining with Mr. Woodrow Wilson. I predicted to the reporters he would be the next President for sure! I was told I was about the first to say so—anyhow, the 25 reporters put it down as my news!
I met several great Americans during my visit; but the loveliest meeting I ever had was when, long before, a charming company of American gentlemen came on July 4th to Admiralty House at Bermuda to celebrate “Independence Day!” I got my speech in before theirs! I said George Washington was the greatest Englishman who ever lived! England had never been so prosperous, thanks solely to him, as since his time and now! because he taught us how to associate with our fellow countrymen when they went abroad and set up house for themselves! And that George Washington was the precursor of that magnificent conception of John Bright in his speech of the ages when he foretold a great Commonwealth—yes a great Federation—of all those speaking the same tongue—that tongue which is the “business” tongue of the world—as it expresses in fewer words than any other language what one desires to convey! And I suppose now we have got Palestine that this Federal House of Commons of the future will meet at Jerusalem, the capital of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel, whom we are without doubt, for how otherwise could ever we have so prospered when we have had such idiots to guide us and rule us as those who gave up Heligoland, Tangier, Curaçoa, Corfu, Delagoa Bay, Java, Sumatra, Minorca, etc., etc.? I have been at all the places named, so am able to state from personal knowledge that only congenital idiots could have been guilty of such inconceivable folly as the surrender of them, and again I say: “Let us thank God that we are the lost ten tribes of Israel!” Mr. Lloyd George, in a famous speech long ago in the War, showed how we had been 14 times “too late!” How many more “too lates” since he made that memorable speech? Especially what about our shipbuilding and the German submarine menace and Rationing? (The only favoured trades seem to be Brewing and Racing! Both so flourishing!)
The American barber on board the “Baltic” told me a good story. He was a quaint man, clean shaved and wore black alpaca throughout. Halfway across the Atlantic I was waiting to have my hair cut, when a gentleman bounced in on him, kicking up a devil of a fuss about wanting something at once! The barber, without moving a muscle, calmed him by saying: “Are you leaving to-day, Sir?” But this was his story. He was barber in the train from Chicago to New York that never stops “even for a death” (so he told me) when the train suddenly stopped at a small village and a lady got out. Mr. Thompson, the President of the Railway, was in the train, and asked why? The conductor showed an order signed by a great man of the Railway to stop there. When Mr. Thompson got to New York he asked this great man “What excuse?” and added: “I wouldn’t have done it for my wife!” and the answer he got was: “No more would I!”
But the sequel of the story is that I told this tale at an international cosmopolitan lunch party at Lucerne and said: “The curious thing is I knew the man!” when Mr. Chauncey Depew wiped me out by saying that “he knew the woman!”
This American Barber quaintly praised the Engine Driver of this Chicago train by telling me that “he was always looking for what he didn’t want!” and so had avoided the train going into a River by noticing something wrong with the points!
Admiral Sampson brought his Squadron of the United States Navy to visit me at Bermuda. I was then the Admiral in North America. At the banquet I gave in his honour I proposed his health, and that of the United States. He never said a word. Presently one of his Officers went up and whispered something in his ear. I sent the wine round, and the Admiral then got up, and made the best speech I ever heard. All he said was: “It was a d—d fine old hen that hatched the American Eagle!” His chaplain, after dinner, complimented me on the Officers of my Flagship, the “Renown.” He said: “He had not heard a single ‘swear’ from ‘Soup to Pea-nuts’”!
Lord Fisher on John Bright
(From “Bright’s House Journal”)
At a dinner held in London the other day to Mr. Josephus Daniels, Secretary to the United States Navy, Lord Fisher made the following speech in which he referred to a speech by Mr. John Bright:—
“Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher, who was called upon also to respond, was received with cheers, the whole company standing up and drinking his health. He said he had no doubt it would be pleasing to them if he spoke about America. He was there one week. Mr. Daniels had been here about one week. He was in America one week because his only son was married there to the only daughter of a great Philadelphian.
“‘King Edward who was a kind friend to me—in fact he was my only friend at one time’—remarked Lord Fisher,’ said to me, “You are the best hated man in the British Empire,” and I replied, “Yes, perhaps I am.” The King then said, “Do you know I am the only friend you have?” I said, “Perhaps your Majesty is right, but you have backed the winner.” Afterwards I came out on top when I said, “Do you remember you backed the winner and now everyone is saying what a sagacious King you are? The betting was a thousand to one.”’
“But he was going to tell them about America, and some of them would hear things they had never before heard about their own country. When he was at Bermuda a deputation of American citizens waited upon him on July 4th. To tell the honest truth he had forgotten about it. He told the deputation he knew what they had come there for. ‘You know,’ he said to them, ‘the greatest Englishman that ever lived was George Washington. He taught us how to rule our Colonies. He told us that freedom was the thing to give them. Why, if it had not been for George Washington America might have been Ireland.’ ‘I shook hands with them,’ continued Lord Fisher, ’and they went away and said nothing they had come to say....
“‘Now I will talk about the League of Nations. In A.D. 1910 an American citizen wished to see me; and he said to me, taking a paper out of his pocket, “Have you read that?” I looked at it and saw it was a speech by John Bright, mostly in words of one syllable—simplicity is, of course, the great thing. That speech is really very little known on this side of the Atlantic or on the other, but it so impressed me at the time that I have been thinking of it ever since. John Bright said he looked forward to the time when there would be a compulsory peace—when those who spoke with the same tongue would form a great federation of free nations joined together.’”
The following is an extract from the speech by Mr. John Bright. It was delivered at Edinburgh in 1868:—
“I do not know whether it is a dream or a vision, or the foresight of a future reality that sometimes passes across my mind—I like to dwell upon it—but I frequently think the time may come when the maritime nations of Europe—this renowned country of which we are citizens, France, Prussia, resuscitated Spain, Italy, and the United States of America—may see that vast fleets are of no use; that they are merely menaces offered from one country to another; and that they may come to this wise conclusion—that they will combine at their joint expense, and under some joint management, to supply the sea with a sufficient sailing and armed police which may be necessary to keep the peace on all parts of the watery surface of the globe, and that those great instruments of war and oppression shall no longer be upheld. This, of course, by many will be thought to be a dream or a vision, not the foresight of what they call a statesman.”
Sir Hiram Maxim
When Sir Hiram Maxim—that great American—was very little known, he came to see me when I was Captain of the Gunnery ship at Portsmouth, bringing with him his ever-famous Maxim gun, to be tried by me. So we went to Whale Island to practise with the gun; and when he was ready to fire I adopted the usual practice in trying all new guns and ordered the experimental party to get under cover; and at that order they were supposed to go into a sort of dug-out. Evidently old Maxim considered this an insult to his gun, and he roared out at the top of his voice: “Britishers under cover, Yankees out in the open!” The gun didn’t burst and it was all right; but it might have, all the same.
Admiral Hornby the bravest of the brave, was one of the Britishers; and he came to lunch with me, being extremely fascinated with Hiram’s quaintness. Hiram was a delightful man in my opinion, and I remember his telling me that if I wanted to live long and see good days the thing was to eat Pork and Beans. I never had the chance, till 1910, of eating them cooked à l’Américaine; and I then agreed with Hiram Maxim—no more delicious dish in the world, but you can’t get it in England! After lunch there were some oranges on the table; and to my dying day I shall never forget the extraordinary look on Sir Geoffrey Hornby’s beautiful, refined face as Hiram reached out and grasped an orange from the centre of the table—tore it apart, and buried his face sucking out the contents, emerging all orange. He told us that was the way to enjoy an orange. We neither of us were up to it!