Page:Shall we have a Channel tunnel?.djvu/31

25 mountain barriers and barriers of different kinds. All I can say is, that I will undertake in half-a-dozen different ways, to enable you or the War Office, or anybody sitting at your desk, and touching a common button, to destroy a Tunnel or an enemy if you like. You can very easily build up in the wall a material, of which I will send you a piece, made of bitumen and sand, and one or two other things, which are perfect non-conductors, and you may have as many miles of wire as you like, and you may put in a false brick of this material, explosive material, and you may touch a button at the Horse-Guards and blow the whole thing to pieces" (p. 199).

"I think there are very few men in England who know what the general opinion of the public in England is better than I do, and there is not a man in a million, I believe, who entertains those ideas about the danger of having a Tunnel; but if you want to destroy it, I can show you many ways. In addition to that, you could drown it in five minutes or five seconds, and in addition to that, by hydraulic arrangements you could close it up, and if you unship the machinery, nobody on earth could open it again for months. It is just as if you had^a descending floor, and you closed it up (p. 200).

"There should be between the two Governments and other Governments, a convention by which this Tunnel should not be used in time of war."

"Admitting the whole question, admitting that we are beaten in the Channel, admitting that an enemy has landed and got the mouth of our Tunnel, then I say I can show you some dozen different ways, either by water, or by steam, or by explosives, or by stoppage, of rendering it absolutely useless, and not only that, if your enemies come in you may kill them all before you have done with them, if you would like to do so" (p. 200). And in reply to the question which immediately follows, "Could you do that from a distance?"; the answer is—"Yes, from any distance you like."

With regard to the time it would take to go through the Tunnel, Sir E. Watkin says:—

"I am sanguine enough to believe that we shall work through the Tunnel in less than half-an-hour," as against the