“I am sure I am right, I am sure I am right, but he is always convincing me against my will."

From Castles of Steel by Robert K. Massie. Page 442.

Fisher attended this meeting in the belief that in their just completed conversation, Asquith had said that a final decision on the Dardanelles was not to be taken that day. The mood at the council meeting was cheerfully optimistic; Churchill’s continuing enthusiasm had colored the views of his colleagues. The First Lord reported that preparations for the attack on the Dardanelles were well advanced, but that the council must understand that the expedition “undoubtedly involves risks.” As soon as Churchill finished, Fisher intervened to say that “he had understood that this question would not be raised at this meeting and that the prime minister knew his views on the subject.” To this, Asquith replied that “in view of the steps which already had been taken, the question could not be well left in abeyance.” Fisher thereupon stood up and made for the door. Kitchener saw this and, jumping to his feet, succeeded in reaching the door first. Steering Fisher to a window, he quietly asked the admiral what he was going to do. Fisher replied that he would not go back to the table and that he intended to resign as First Sea Lord. Kitchener pointed out that Fisher was the only man present who disagreed with the proposed operation; that the prime minister had made a decision and that it was the First Sea Lord’s duty to his country to accept it and continue in office. Reluctantly, Fisher went back to the table where ministers were competing in optimistic predictions. Kitchener now declared that a naval attack was vitally important; the great merit of this form of offensive action, he said, was that “if satisfactory progress could not be made, the attack could be broken off.” Balfour said that “it was difficult to imagine a more hopeful operation.” Grey said that “the Turks would be paralyzed with fear when they heard that the forts were being destroyed one by one”; that the neutral Balkan powers, all anxious to be on the winning side, would watch the progress of this effort, and that he hoped that success would finally settle the attitude of Bulgaria. Through all of this, Asquith noticed, Fisher maintained “an obstinate and ominous silence.”

The meeting adjourned at 2:00 p.m. to resume in the late afternoon. During this interval, Churchill, who had seen Kitchener talking privately to Fisher, spoke to the old admiral in his room at the Admiralty. The conversation was “long and very friendly,” in Churchill’s phrase, “I am in no way concealing the great and continuous pressure which I put upon the old admiral,” Churchill admitted later, and Fisher often complained to friends about his inability to withstand these tactics. “He always out-argues me,” he said to one. And to another: “I am sure I am right, I am sure I am right, but he is always convincing me against my will. I hear him talk and he seems to make the difficulties vanish and when he is gone I sit down and write him a letter and say I agree. Then I go to bed and can’t sleep, and his talk passes away and I know I am right. So I get up and write him another letter and say I don’t agree, and so it goes on.” Something of this kind happened on the afternoon of January 28. By the end of his talk with Churchill, Fisher had consented to support the Dardanelles operation.

When the War Council reconvened in the late afternoon, Churchill—accompanied by Fisher—was able to announce that everyone at the Admiralty agreed that the navy would undertake the operation. Fisher’s conversion seemed, for the moment, to be complete. “When I finally decided to go in,” Fisher said later, “I went the whole hog, totus porcus.” Indeed, Churchill had been so successful that Fisher added Lord Nelson and Agamemnon as well as Queen Elizabeth to the operation. “This I took as the point of final decision,” Churchill wrote. “After it, I never looked back. We had left the region of discussion and consultation, of balancing and misgivings. The matter had passed into the domain of action."