red does not agree with Lord Fisher's
account.

Lord Kitchener sent for me early one morning, and on my presenting
myself, told me that Lord Fisher was insisting upon recalling the
_Queen Elizabeth_ owing to enemy submarines, that Mr. Churchill was in
two minds but leant towards keeping her where she was, that he (Lord
K.) objected to her removal, and that I was to accompany him to a
meeting at the Admiralty a little later in connection with the affair.
"They've rammed that ship down my throat," said he in effect.
"Churchill told me in the first place that she would knock all the
Dardanelles batteries into smithereens, firing from goodness knows
where. He afterwards told me that she would make everything all right
for the troops as they landed, and after they landed. And now, without
'with your leave or by your leave,' old Fisher says he won't let her
stop out there." He seemed to be quite as much concerned about the way
he had been treated in the matter, as influenced by any great alarm at
the prospect of the ship leaving the vicinity of the Dardanelles.
Finally, he asked me what I thought myself.

Now, there could be no question as to the _Queen Elizabeth_ being a
most powerful ship of war; but the fact was that she had been a
regular nuisance. Mr. Churchill had somehow persuaded himself, and
what was worse, he had managed to persuade Lord Kitchener as well as
Mr. Asquith and others, that she would just about settle the
Dardanelles business off her own bat. I had, as it happened (and as
will be mentioned in the next chapter), expressed doubts to him six
months earlier when the idea of operations in this quarter was first
mooted, as to the efficacy of gun-fire from warships in assisting
troops on shore or when trying to get ashore. Nothing which had
happened since had furnished any reason for altering that view. No
battleship depending upon flat trajectory guns could ever play a role
of paramount importance during fighting ashore, except in quite
abnormal circumstances. The whole thing was a delusion. Ships of war,
and particularly such a vessel as the _Queen Elizabeth_, did
undoubtedly provide moral support to an army operating on land close
to the coast, and their aid was by no means to be despised; but their
potentialities under such conditions were apt to be greatly
overestimated, and had, in fact, been greatly overestimated by the War
Council. My reply to the Chief, therefore, was to the effect that it
was of s