The first of the articles in defence of the Admiralty
appears in the Times of Monday. After emphasising the similarity of andpoint between the writer of the articles in the Times and Civil]." and drawing therefrom the conclusion that the volume of discontent has not increased, the writer demurs in tote to tUS view that Lord Selborne installed an autocracy at the Admiralty, and that Sir John Fisher has misused it, pointing out that it was not the First Sea Lord, but the First Lord, who was described under the old regime as Trieste; inter pares. These charges, he contends, indicate a failure to appreciate the facts of human nature. The strong, resolute administrator will always carry his colleagues with him, and always be denounced f°1" arrogance and intolerance by reactionary and timorous critics. He quotes from Lord Selborne's Order in Council, and declares that its principal object was "to charge the First Sea Lord with the most important and responsible work of Preparing for war," a duty so far neglected under the previous Ninie that "in Lord Walter Kerr's time at the Admiralty complete plane of war did not exist,"—a statement positively denied by Lord Walter Kerr in Wednesday's Times.
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