Elspeth Huxley on Churchill

of their superiors.” He invited a junior lieutenant on H.M.S. Vernon to submit direct to him details of a scheme connected with torpedoes, and when Sea Lords and Admirals attempted to restore the chain of command, went “dancing mad” and sent a furious telegram to the General Post Office to intercept a despatch that had gone through its channels.

The outbreak of World War I forms this volume’s natural climax. Churchill had failed at first to recognize the German threat, but the Agadir incident of 1911 opened his eyes and thereafter he set himself to prepare the Navy for the war he regarded as inevitable. Once at the Admiralty he became “a water creature.” As Lloyd George observed: “You forget that most of us live on land.” He did not mind eating words previously uttered against spending money on dreadnoughts. He never practiced half measures. “I like one thing or the other, not something fading into something else.” Had he died at forty, his son suggests, his epitaph would have been: “When war came the Fleet was ready.”

Featured Tags

of their superiors.” He invited a junior lieutenant on H.M.S. Vernon to submit direct to him details of a scheme connected with torpedoes, and when Sea Lords and Admirals attempted to restore the chain of command, went “dancing mad” and sent a furious telegram to the General Post Office to intercept a despatch that had gone through its channels.

The outbreak of World War I forms this volume’s natural climax. Churchill had failed at first to recognize the German threat, but the Agadir incident of 1911 opened his eyes and thereafter he set himself to prepare the Navy for the war he regarded as inevitable. Once at the Admiralty he became “a water creature.” As Lloyd George observed: “You forget that most of us live on land.” He did not mind eating words previously uttered against spending money on dreadnoughts. He never practiced half measures. “I like one thing or the other, not something fading into something else.” Had he died at forty, his son suggests, his epitaph would have been: “When war came the Fleet was ready.”