ABSTRACT
In the Naval Intelligence Department, the author did not receive one of the posts devoted to foreign intelligence for which his previous service and knowledge of languages qualified him. The vacancy he filled was dealing with the coast defences of the United Kingdom, the Dominions, the Colonies and India. In August 1903 Fisher left the Admiralty, after only sixteen months service there, to become Naval Commander-in-Chief at Portsmouth, where he could supervise the execution of some of the plans he had already launched, nurse them through their earlier stages and, above all, hatch out a new series of reforms against the day when he was to become First Sea Lord. The basic cause of Fishers reforms between 1904 and 1910 was the growth of the German Fleet. His predecessor had diagnosed the disease, but it was left to Fishers logical, ruthless and iconoclastic mind to forestall the danger.
