The Times of Thursday contains a striking letter from Lord
Sydenham on the Channel Tunnel. Lord Sydenham begins by meeting the point that, though we can trust the French, other nations beside the French might conceivably gain access to the southern end of the tunnel. Even the blindest of Governments served by the most incompetent of officials would in the imagined circumstances have superabundant time in which to render the tunnel useless. Lord Sydenham next takes up the argument that we should be depriving our- selves of the supreme advantage of being an island State. " Can it," he asks, "be seriously contended that the construc- tion of two holes 18ft. 5in. in diameter under the sea would place us in the same, or even approximately the same, position" as a Continential Power which, say like France has its frontier crossed by thirty railways in daily use and by innumerable roads and paths ?
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