evil of genius, this pirate of public life, who more than any
other Englishman saved British democracy from a Prussian domination.

It is possible to regard him as a very simple soul mastered by one
tremendous purpose and by that purpose exalted to a most valid
greatness. If this purpose be kept steadily in mind, one may indeed see
in Lord Fisher something quite childlike. At any rate it is only when
the overmastering purpose is forgotten that he can be seen with the eyes
of his enemies, that is to say as a monster, a scoundrel, and an
imbecile.

He was asked on one occasion if he had been a little unscrupulous in
getting his way at the Admiralty. He replied that if his own brother had
got in front of him when he was trying to do something for England he
would have knocked that brother down and walked over his body.

Here is a man, let us be quite certain, of a most unusual force, a man
conscious in himself of powers greater than the kindest could discern in
his contemporaries, a man possessed by a daemon of inspiration.
Fortunately for England this daemon drove him in one single direction: he
sought the safety, honour, and glory of Great Britain. If his
contemporaries had been travelling whole-heartedly in the same direction
I have no doubt that he might have figured in the annals of the
Admiralty as something of a saint. But unhappily many of his associates
were not so furiously driven in this direction, and finding his urgings
inconvenient and vexatious they resisted him to the point of
exasperation: then came the struggle, and, the strong man winning, the
weaker went off to abuse him, and not only to abuse him, but to vilify
him and to plot against him, and lay many snares for his feet. He will
never now be numbered among the saints, but, happily for us, he was not
destined to be found among the martyrs.

He has said that in the darkest hours of his struggle he had no one to
support him save King Edward. Society was against him; half the
Admiralty was crying for his blood; the politicians wavered from one
side to the other; only the King stood fast and bade him go on with a
good heart. When he emerged from this tremendous struggle his hands may
not have been as clean as the angels could have wished; but the British
Navy was no longer scattered over the pleasant waters of the earth, was
no longer thinking chiefly of its paint and brass, was no longer a
pretty sight from Mediterranean or Pacific shores--it was almo