some sixteen years before when Lord Fisher had been
Commander-in-Chief on the Mediterranean station, enjoyed a
confidential discussion with him in Malta concerning certain
strategical questions in that part of the world, and had been amazed
at the alertness of his brain, his originality of thought, his
intoxicating enthusiasm, and his relentless driving power. Now, in
1915, he seemed to be even younger than he had seemed then. He covered
the ground at such a pace that I was speedily toiling breathless and
dishevelled far in rear. It is all very well to carry off _Memories_
into a quiet corner and to try to assimilate limited portions of that
work at a time, deliberately and in solitude. But to have a
hotch-potch of Shakespeare, internal combustion engines, chemical
devices for smoke screens, principles of the utilization of sea power
in war, Holy Writ, and details of ship construction dolloped out on
one's plate, and to have to bolt it then and there, imposes a strain
on the interior economy that is greater than this will stand. After an
interview with the First Sea Lord you suffered from that giddy,
bewildered, exhausted sort of feeling that no doubt has you in thrall
when you have been run over by a motor bus without suffering actual
physical injury.

The main point that I insisted upon when in due course discussing the
construction details of the motor-lighters with the admiral who was
supervising the work, was that they should be so designed as to let
the troops aboard of them rush out quickly as soon as the prow should
touch the shore. The vessels were put together rapidly, and one or two
of those first completed were experimented with in the Solent towards
the end of April, when they were found quite satisfactory. Although
they were never turned to account for the purpose which Lord Fisher
had had in mind when the decision was taken to build them, a number of
these mobile barges proved extremely useful to our troops in the later
stages of the Dardanelles campaign, notably on the occasion of the
landing at Suvla and while the final evacuations were being carried
out. Indeed, but for the "beetles" (as the soldiers christened these
new-fangled craft), our army would never have got away from the
Gallipoli Peninsula with such small loss of stores and impedimenta as
it did, and the last troops told off to leave Helles on the stormy
night of the 8th-9th of January 1916 might have been unable to embark
and might have met