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Hitherto we have lived in England in a condition of peace, which is quite unknown to the Continent. Abroad every detail of daily life is regulated by authority, so far as it may be necessary for purposes of national security. Everyone who travels at all on the Continent is aware of the difference in this respect between English and Continental methods. It is not merely a question of passports, but of the careful precautions that no one shall live in a given town without all his circumstances being duly reported to the police. In England, on the other hand, the orders to our sentries are that if anyone attempts to break their post they are by no means to interfere with the intruder, but immediately to call a policeman. Unless our sentries are to have this condition of things removed and to shoot at sight, as they would do in Germany, anyone who did not satisfy them as to what his purpose was, no English defences can ever be safe, according to the standard of German or French regulations. Now these regulations are not made because Frenchmen or Germans like better than Englishmen to live under such constraining chains. It is simply because the whole experience of war, which has been brought home to them by the bitter history of the past, has taught them that in no other way can a nation dependent on land defences be secure. It has been more often than not at the beginning of a war that surprises such as those of Port Arthur have been triumphant. The notion that we, living now at peace with our neighbours, are bound to receive from them long notice of their intention to strike a deadly blow, is one for which history affords no justification whatever. Wheresoever it has been possible, the principle enunciated by the Russian diplomatist, Baron Brunnow, in 1840 that the blow must first be struck before it is announced,' has been unsparingly applied, applied by us quite as freely as by any other nation, but applied also by every nation in Europe. In the case of the Russo-Japanese war, long negotiations had in fact preceded Admiral Togo's stroke; but no one in Russian army or navy recognised that the moment had come, because the Japanese ambassador had left St. Petersburg, for changing peace for war, easy indifference for vigilance.

Supposing our end of the Tunnel to be in the hands of a foreign Power, Mr. Hiram Maxim says that there are 30,000,000 of people in England and that it is absurd to suppose that they would not be able to defeat troops who have come through the Tunnel. If every one of the men, women, and children whom Mr. Hiram Maxim counts in his estimate, unarmed, unorganised, unaccustomed to the crash of shell and bullets as they are, is ready to expose him or herself to meet the well-trained troops of a foreign Power, the army of which numbers 4,000,000 at the least, it might be possible to begin to discuss the question with him. I, being one of those unthinking persons' whom he contemptuously sweeps away, am afraid that he will not find it easy to persuade many of the 30,000,000 men, women, and children that it would be a pleasant

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experience. As long as the advocates of the Channel Tunnel put forward as their best arguments such pleas as these, I have great hopes that they will not succeed in persuading the English people to consent to their schemes.

For those who have never realised the supreme position of advantage which we at present enjoy, it may be worth while to re-state it. Hitherto, alone of all European Powers, Great Britain has avoided the strain of liability to universal personal service. Yet she governs the largest and most scattered Empire in the world; her commerce is vaster than that of any other country. Despite the disproportion between the enormous population and the vast area of territory which she has to defend, and the trifling strain that is put upon her home population in defending it, she is able to borrow money at a cheaper rate than any other nation can, because her security is greater than any other. How and why is this? It is because she has been an island; because she has always had at her command powerful fleets which have made actual invasion impossible, at all events without ample notice. When once the Channel Tunnel is made, the defence of the kingdom passes over from our supreme navy to our wholly inadequate army. The further advantage which our fleets have always given us, that, even if a force landed on our shores, it could not long maintain itself there, will be gone.

Success in military operations has always depended mainly on two things on surprise, and on having safe communications oneself while one can strike those of an enemy. In all Lord Roberts's and Lord Wolseley's most successful efforts, surprise was the element they enlisted in their favour. So it has been also with all the great leaders of war. Lord Roberts, when he attacked the Peiwar Kotal, marched his troops up to a certain point, without informing any single person of his plans; he then exactly reversed the front towards which they were directed in order that the attack might be delivered where no one expected it. During the Boer war his relief of Kimberley and his capture of Kronje depended entirely on his having deceived the Boer leaders, partly by the issue of fictitious orders, partly by doing the exact opposite of what he had reason to know that they expected, and partly by making movements of a kind that left them in doubt as to what he intended to do. The transfer of the army from the Orange River to the Riet was one of the most successful surprises of war. Lord Wolseley began the Ashanti war by a brilliant surprise, due to the spreading of false rumours as to his intentions. In the war against Arabi which gave us Egypt, the transfer of the army from Alexandria through the Suez Canal to Ismailia was carried out, not only without Arabi's knowledge at the time, but it was so completely concealed from the enemy that it was not till afterwards, when he was a prisoner in Ceylon, that the Egyptian chieftain was aware that it had taken place.

Such incidents have been the common features of all war. Yet when Lord Wolseley, who had shown himself a past-master of the art of surprise, explained to the Joint Committee of the Lords and Commons the ease with which Dover could be surprised, his words seemed to them like idle tales and they believed them not. That is the disadvantage under which every soldier lies in endeavouring to lay before his countrymen the real dangers which he foresees in the construction of this communication with the Continent. He does

not adequately put himself in their place. What seems to him easy seems to them difficult. As Lord Randolph Churchill happily said on one occasion, 'It is very easy to take a debating advantage of any soldier.' Whether the Channel Tunnel is constructed or not depends not at all upon the judgment of any English soldier, though every Continental statesman with whom our peace-statesmen have to deal is a trained soldier, but on the extent to which he is able to persuade the vast majority of his countrymen. It often seems to him an almost hopeless task; because, in presence of such statements as those of Mr. Hiram Maxim or in presence of such a question as that which was put by Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Why should not we invade France by the Tunnel just as likely as they us?' the number of data which he has to bring before them is so great, if they really think it necessary that either of these arguments requires answer, that the task would be endless. All he can hope to do is to persuade those who think of taking a debating advantage' in the matter that the stake for which they are playing is the life of their country.

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Nothing has been proposed in regard to the new Tunnel that was not carefully considered by Sir Archibald Alison's Committee. The power of flooding the Tunnel, the power of blowing it up, were all taken into account. Perhaps the tower at sea, which is now proposed as a means of flooding, is in form a new thing. It has every objection that was raised against the previous proposals, and many more. Ultimately, every conceivable scheme must depend upon human vigilance. Human vigilance has failed nation after nation. Why should we escape? That is undoubtedly what was meant by Sir Archibald Alison's Committee when, after recommending every precaution they could think of, they added that these would not insure safety in every imaginable contingency.' What was virtually 'a debating advantage' was taken of these words. They were assumed to mean that the Committee were hedging against what was humanly speaking impossible, and the very words gave encouragement to the advocates of the Tunnel. What they unquestionably did mean was that, after they had done their best, they could not guarantee the safety of England. Never till now have we trusted the safety of the kingdom to the discretion, the readiness, and the acceptance of responsibility of some routine officer or man. As Sir Evelyn Wood, speaking from experience of a time when the Dover

garrison was under his command, has told us, he found it impossible to insure a night when he could safely turn out the garrison in such a way as to protect the town. At present that is a matter of detail. With the Channel Tunnel, such a failure would be fatal to the kingdom. What is certain is that no one except the Cabinet will take the responsibility of all that either flooding or blowing up the Tunnel would entail, and that the very last people who are likely to take that responsibility at a moment when our relations with some foreign Power are strained are, as the experiences of the South African war have shown us, the Ministers themselves.

F. MAURICE.

THE REVIVED CHANNEL TUNNEL

PROJECT

III

A QUARTER of a century ago the question of making a submarine tunnel between England and France was settled in the negative by general consent. The military authority of Lord Wolseley had something to do with the result. The opinions of eminent persons, Tennyson among others, collected in this Review were not without weight. The Prime Minister of that day, Mr. Gladstone, supported the project, and a Joint Committee of both Houses recommended its adoption by a bare majority. What really defeated it in the end was the feeling that Great Britain ought to remain an island, taking advantage of the 'silver streak' about which Gladstone himself had written so eloquently ten years before. That may be called sentiment; and sentiment, though it governs the world, is much derided by the unwise. My reasons for opposing the Channel Tunnel are not sentimental. Nor are they commercial. Of engineering difficulties I say nothing, for I know nothing. That the Tunnel, once it was made, would pay I am quite willing, for the sake of the argument, to admit. But national security is a good deal more important than commercial profit, and I believe that our security would be endangered by the success of this scheme. It is not necessary for my purpose to argue that England could be invaded through a tunnel. Soldiers differ on this point, as on most others connected with strategy and the art of war. It is, however, quite certain that a tunnel would increase the fear of invasion to an indefinite extent. Fancy a tunnel in 1802 or in 1858! Our relations with France are now such that we can laugh at the fears of 1858, though the apprehensions of 1802 were no laughing matter. We have a fleet, I know. There is a large and influential class of persons who think that they add to your stock of information by telling you that business is business, or that they belong to the bluewater school. We all admit that business is business, and we all belong to the blue-water school. But panics are not the result of reason, nor are they got up by reasonable men. Nothing could be less rational than to suppose that Louis Napoleon meant to invade

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