THE DEFENCE OF THE EMPIRE

II.-IS NOT INVASION POSSIBLE?

MR. ARNOLD-FORSTER, the Secretary of State for War, when introducing the Army Estimates on the 28th of March in the House of Commons, is reported to have made the following statement. He said:

The Prime Minister has simply echoed what is, so far as I am able to ascertain, the view of every single naval and military authority of any competence whatever on this subject of invasion. He has said that the question of the invasion of these islands in such a force as to inflict a fatal blow or threaten our independence is impossible. In that he speaks with the absolute and undivided authority of the Committee of Defence, and I want to know who is the honourable member who is going to question this? The naval view is that the crew of a dinghy could not land in this country in the face of the Navy.

He then goes on and recounts some of the impressions he formed from his own military and naval experiences on Clacton beach this last summer, when 13,000 men were landed in two days and re-embarked in four, and he states that from these experiences he is absolutely convinced of the entire immunity of this country from the dangers of invasion.

Bold words, indeed! Most reassuring and comforting, if well founded! Unfortunately it has occasionally happened, not only in the history of the past, but also in the common occurrences of life, that opinions and assertions equally decided, and declared with almost equal dogmatic assurance, have proved absolutely fallacious. The fact of his being 'cocksure' does not prove that a man is right, even although this individual is a Minister of War, backed up, as we must believe he is backed up, since he says so, by the undivided support of his Council of Defence, presided over by the Prime Minister. There was once another Minister of War, by name Leboeuf, who was equally dogmatic, equally cocksure,' who assured Napoleon the Third, on the eve of the '70 war against Prussia, that the French army was fully ready and prepared, even to the last button on the soldiers' gaiters.' No doubt this most confident person also had, so he must have believed, the undivided and

unanimous support of his Council of Defence, such as it was.

Let

us not, therefore, put too much confidence in those who are so confident and so dogmatic, so convinced of the soundness of their own view in what, in any case, can only be a matter of opinion, or, at the best, one of calculation.

Let us, however, first test the correctness of Mr. Arnold-Forster's statement that 'every single naval and military authority of any competence' shares his opinion.

Our thoughts naturally recur to some letters written by the great Duke of Wellington in 1846 and 1847 calling attention to the dangers of invasion, more especially one to Sir John Burgoyne, to which attention has recently been called in the House of Lords by that most distinguished and evergreen veteran of our Volunteer Force, the Earl of Wemyss.

The letter is too long to be quoted in its entirety, although the whole of it is worthy of the most careful attention and study by those who desire to form their own judgment of this new theory, recently propounded by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for War, and which is apparently based on the experiences of last year's manœuvres. A few paragraphs, however, are sufficient to illustrate, and, it would seem, enforce our point. The Duke writes:

You are aware that I have for years been sensible of the alteration produced in maritime warfare and operations by the application of steam to the propelling of ships at sea. This discovery ultimately exposed all parts of the coast of these islands, while a vessel could approach at all, to be approached at all times of the tide and in all seasons by vessels so propelled, from all quarters. We are, in fact, assailable, and at least liable to insult and to have contributions levied upon us on all parts of our coast. . . .

I am accustomed to the consideration of these questions, and have examined and reconnoitred over and over again the whole coast from the North Foreland, by Dover, Folkestone, Beachy Head, Brighton, Arundel to Selsey Bill, near Portsmouth, and I think, except immediately under the fire of Dover Castle, there is not a spot on the coast on which infantry might not be thrown on shore, and from which such a body of infantry so thrown on shore would not find, within distance of five miles, a road into the interior of the country through the cliffs practicable for the march of a body of troops; that in that space of coast (that is, between North Foreland and Selsey Bill) there are no less than seven small harbours, each without defence, of which an enemy, having landed his infantry on the coast, might take possession and therein land his cavalry and artillery of all calibre and establish himself and his communication with France.

The French Army must be altered indeed since the time when I was better acquainted with it if there are not now belonging to it forty Chefs d'État-Major, generals capable of sitting down and ordering the march to the coast of 40,000 men, their embarcation with their horses and collecting at the several French ports on the coast, their disembarcation at named points on the English coastthat of the artillery and cavalry in named ports or mouths of rivers, and the assembly at the named points of several columns, and the march of each of these from stage to stage to London. Let any man examine our maps and roadbooks, consider the matter, and judge for himself.

The Duke goes on to urge the necessity of having a properly organised force, partly composed of regular troops, ready to meet and defeat such a force should the invasion occur.

No doubt it may be, and almost certainly will be, urged that, thanks to recent advancements in science, the conditions of warfare have entirely changed since the days of the Duke of Wellington. In a great measure this is true. The rapidity with which ships can steam has been more than doubled; their size and power of carrying troops, as well as their numbers, have been augmented in almost equal proportion. Physical appliances for embarking and disembarking troops have likewise improved, and, above all, the range and power of ships' guns, under cover of which an invading force would naturally effect its landing, have been increased in a manner that would appear incredible to our forefathers. We ask our readers to use their own judgment. Do these vastly altered conditions favour an invading force or the reverse? It would seem that this question is absolutely incontestable even by Mr. Arnold-Forster and those who would support him; the advantage all lies with the invader. The only one point at issue is, how far would an opposing fleet, on which, according to these new ideas, we are to stake all our hopes of protection, be affected by the conditions of modern warfare?

Let us turn from the Duke of Wellington to more recent times. We have before us the evidence given before the Norfolk Royal Commission on the Militia and the Volunteers taken less than two years since; the witnesses were selected from those who were supposed to be the most capable from their experience and ability of affording the best information available in this country. The question of a possible invasion was not unfrequently referred to, and the trend of the opinion was entirely in contradiction to the recent declaration of Mr. Balfour and Mr. Arnold-Forster. There is not space in these pages to give even a selection of the mass of evidence given by various witnesses which bore directly or indirectly on the point we are discussing; perhaps they might not be regarded as 'authorities of any competence'; it will suffice to give a few extracts from the evidence of Lord Wolseley, who has had more experience of war than any living soldier. Should our present War Minister question his competence, it will be for the country to decide which of these two authorities they will trust, which they will believe, since their opinions are absolutely irreconcilable.

On the 9th of June, 1903, Lord Wolseley, when questioned as to the possibility of invasion, said:

I eliminate the action of our Navy from this calculation, for of course the invasion of England is only possible after a heavy naval defeat, or when our Navy has been decoyed from the Channel, and I believe that both are contingencies to be provided against. I know how difficult it is to win a battle on shore, and what the dangers and the risks are pro and con. on land, and how much greater they always have been, and always will be and must be, on the

sea; and I therefore think it would be living in a fool's paradise were the English people to depend exclusively on the Navy for the defence of this country from invasion. We have the greatest and the best Navy in the world. Napoleon had the finest and the greatest army in the world, and yet it was entirely destroyed at Waterloo.

In answer to another question he says:

I have no doubt our Navy is better than it ever was before-in my own heart I think that, and I think that we have every reason to believe that, but I base my opinion simply on history and the study of the possibilities of invasion and the opinion of the great men who have studied this subject before. . . . But the fact of 15,000 men arriving in Bantry Bay on board a large sailing fleet direct from Brest without any opposition from the large British fleet then cruising off Brest, or without being seen by it, is the best answer that I can give to the Navy when they say it is ridiculous to imagine that this country can ever be invaded so long as our fleets are effective.

As regards the general effective action of our Navy in the event of a great war, such as protecting our commerce, ensuring our food supply, and dealing a crushing blow on the naval forces of our opponent, it would be as well if those adherents of what are termed the Blue-water School should ponder over the following remark of Lord Wolseley. He says:

Another point is this. Supposing we adopted our present system, which, let us assume, is inadequate for defence against the invading force, and that we relied practically for our defence upon the fleet, does it not appear that this is tying our fleet down to our coasts or their vicinity, which might possibly interfere with their efficient employment in their other natural duties? I think, taking England as a fighting man, it would be like tying one of his arms to his side if you tied our fleet down to the Channel. After all, one of the greatest elements of our fighting power is that in our fleets we possess the means of being able to strike the enemy at a distance from our shores.

Our readers may well ask, how does it happen that, in the face of such recent evidence not only from Lord Wolseley but from other witnesses, whom perhaps impartial and unprejudiced people might regard as competent, quite apart from the Duke of Wellington, the Council of Defence, composed as it is of military and naval experts, now on the active list of the army and the navy, should have given their adherence to the amazing and entirely novel doctrine, which has suddenly been sprung on the public by recent utterance in the House of Commons? Without wishing in any way to impugn the credibility or good faith of those who are responsible for the statement that the Council of Defence has given its absolute and undivided authority' to this so-called 'blue-water' doctrine, it would certainly seem desirable, for the satisfaction of the public in a matter of such vital importance to the safety of the nation, that some clearer and more explicit evidence should be placed before it regarding the individual and personal opinion of each separate expert member of this so-called Council of Defence.

Even, however, should each individual member of this Council be as confident, decided, and dogmatic on this point as Mr. ArnoldForster himself, then the writer and the very many who agree with him would wish to associate themselves entirely with the following reply of Lord Wolseley, which is the last we shall quote:

The answer I should give if the Navy said that to me would be that, while I have no doubt that the men who gave it were very able men, there are other admirals and generals still more illustrious, who have taken a diametrically opposite view, and for whose opinion I am bound to have a greater respect than for any admiral or general now alive, I mean Lord Nelson and Collingwood, both of whom believed in the absolute possibility of the invasion of this country, as did also the greatest of all human beings in my opinion, Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington. All these great soldiers and sailors believed in the possibility of this country being invaded by a French force. If you have bigger admirals nowadays than Nelson and Collingwood and greater generals than Napoleon and Wellington to gainsay what they said, I have no answer to make them beyond quoting the experience of history, which is on my side.

In the various quotations from expert opinions, as given above, reference has only been made to the possibilities of an invasion from France, no doubt from the fact that French territory lies nearest to the coasts of England, and that hitherto France has been the only neighbouring Power which has possessed any naval strength of real importance. Of recent years, however, the situation has assumed another aspect from the rapid growth of the German navy, and from the intention of the Government, as publicly announced in the Reichstag, to go on augmenting the navy and increasing its strength until it is capable of holding its own with 'the greatest naval Power'— in other words, with ourselves.

On a recent occasion German newspapers displayed a remarkable amount of sensitive alarm because the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, in what was intended to be a perfectly harmless speech to his constituents, while endeavouring to explain to them the measures recently adopted to increase the efficiency of the navy, made some remarks as regards possible enemies, which might be deemed as having reference to the Germans: at least, our Teutonic neighbours took these observations to themselves, or, in other words, the cap fitted.' Such strange sensitiveness certainly appears rather out of place on their part, as year by year, when justifying an increase of the German army and the addition of fourth battalions to various regiments, comparison was regularly made with the forces which were then, or would soon be, at the disposal of France, and that not quietly in a chance speech by a subordinate official, but openly in the Reichstag by the Minister for War.

No one in his senses could suggest that Great Britain would ever willingly go to war with Germany, or that such a conflict, were it unfortunately to occur, would not be a gigantic calamity for both nations. We must, however, not blind ourselves to facts; we must