Page:The Channel Tunnel, Ought the Democracy to Oppose Or Support It?.djvu/10

 said by the late Richard Cobden, speaking on this very question of a tunnel between England and the Continent: "It is not enough to put the Government and the higher classes of each country on a friendly footing; that good feeling ought to penetrate the masses of the two nations; and it is our duty to multiply all the means for an incessant contact, which will certainly put an end to superannuated prejudices and old ideas of antagonism."

The horribly increased and always augmenting European army and navy expenditure of the last twenty-five years, the British share of which Lord Randolph Churchill now strongly denounces, can only be efficiently checked by concurrent and decided peace action on the part of all European peoples. The great need for early disarming is admitted. The peaceful co-operation of France and England would enable each, relying on the other's good will, to waste less money in warlike preparations. It is in this interest that I support the proposed submarine pathway between this island and the Continent. I believe that increased facilities for friendly intercourse would promote and secure the peaceful co-operation I desire.

Something has already been done towards showing that the Channel betwixt Kent and the Pas de Calais can be tunnelled. Last year I visited the works, near Shakspere's Cliff, on the west of Dover, and penetrated under the sea to the place where the engine, worked by compressed air, had bored from England through the greyish clay chalk 1¼ miles in the direction of France. I found the piece of tunnel already executed quite dry; the air was perfectly pure, the ventilation being provided by the compressed air which works the boring machine; and the work of tunnelling—which under the supervision of a Government official was allowed