Imperial Maritime League

[1] It focused on the media, linking editors with right-wing naval officers in order to challenge the Unionist government, the Admiralty, and the established Navy League as not aggressive enough toward Germany.

[4] Lord Esher wrote to The Times: The Board of Admiralty may occasionally make mistakes, but that they have by word or act appeared to doubt the vital necessity for naval supremacy, or that they would stoop to subordinate the naval superiority of this country to any personal or political exigency does not require to be proved by a “public inquiry.” There is not a man in Germany from the Emperor downwards who would not welcome the fall of Sir John Fisher, and for this reason only, apart from all others, I must beg to declined your invitation to join the council of the Maritime League.

[5]In response the Kaiser wrote to the King that he was writing to Lord Tweedmouth to reject Esher's assertions and further claimed that Germany's naval programme posed no threat to Britain.

The Kaiser's letter denounced Esher's opinion about the likely German response to Fisher's fall as "a piece of unmitigated balderdash" written by the "supervisor of the royal drains".

[8] In July 1914 the secretary, Captain Mathias, estimated the number of copies of the League's magazine required for each member at 1,460 distributed in twelve branches.