Page:Shall we have a Channel tunnel?.djvu/42

36 from within might not be made. Such a seizure might be carefully arranged to take place precisely at the moment when the passions of a foreign country were so excited against us that any means might be deemed justifiable to attain so great an object.

"When, in addition to these risks, I consider the actual experience of the French War of 1870, where, even after war had been already some time commenced, the Vosges tunnels were left intact from an unwillingness to destroy such splendid engineering works, and when, in consequence, the invading armies, despite all arrangements that had been made for destroying those tunnels, were able freely to employ them, I feel it to be my solemn duty to warn Her Majesty's Government of the great risk and danger which will be entailed upon the country by permitting, under any circumstances, and even though all precautions have been taken, any tunnel to be constructed.

"I do not think that this conclusion depends at all upon the single possibility of a rupture with France. I should especially urge upon the attention of Her Majesty's Government the peculiar geographical position of Calais. That town lies in so isolated a position on the extreme north of the French coast line, and the boundary between France and Belgium falls away so rapidly to the south from near Calais, that Antwerp and Brussels are both much nearer to Calais than Paris is.

"Any power, therefore, which, when at war with France, had taken possession of Belgium, would find it possible to seize Calais, and might find it convenient even to punish an alliance of ours with France by a sudden seizure of Dover.

"When once it is realised that if this tunnel were constructed we might, despite all our precautions, very possibly some day find an enemy in actual possession of both its ends, and able at pleasure to pour an army through it unopposed, I cannot believe that the people of this country would consent to accept this positive danger for any problematic amount of commercial profit.

"The military force in Great Britain is not large enough to contend against the army which any of the great continental