1.13..E DEBATE ON THE CHANNEL TUNNEL.
WE rather regret, for one reason, that the Government did not leave the Channel Tunnel an open question. They were quite right from a constitutional point of view, for the Tunnel is an undertaking affecting the national defence ; but we should not have been altogether sorry had the original rumour been correct. A smash of Sir E. Watkin by an instinctive vote of the House when unguided. and out of hand, would have been a greater blow to that dangerous projector than the partly official majority of 142 by which he was crushed for the year. As it is, he has partly attained his object, which is to induce one of the two great parties in the State to identify itself in prin- ciple with his scheme, and so remove the only official obstacle. There is none, be it remembered, on the French side, for the French Government is shrewd, and perceives the immense advantage which the Tunnel would confer upon it. It has only, when irritated with Great Britain, say about the New Hebrides, or the Egyptian Debt, or affairs in Morocco, to order a corps d'armee to its own end of the Tunnel, and it will create a panic over here, arrest enterprise, disturb parties, and compel the Government to spend a few millions in new, and it may be useless, pre- cautions. Granting all that the advocates of the Tunnel allege as to its uselessness for military purposes, the British people will neither understand nor believe their arguments; and it is the people, not their representatives, who fall into panics, any one of which may cost us more in taxes than we shall make by any extension of trade. The advocates of the Tunnel are, however, using unfounded arguments. Sir E. Watkin, for instance, says that armies cannot come through a tunnel in face of a force on this side any more than through a doorway, and_ quotes Count von Moltke as endorsing that opinion. Who said they could ? The point is whether, if our end of the long cave were seized, the French could. send an army through, and that is a question men of common-sense can decide just as well as experts. If men in black and thousands of tons of goods can be sent through the Tunnel—which is Sir E. Watkin's postulate, when he is talking of the commercial utility of his scheme—so can men in red and thousands of tons of military material. Nobody affirms that the loss of Dover would be the loss of England ; but with the Tunnel in working order, the loss of it would be the loss of our only means of cutting off the invaders' com- munications. A nearly unarmed people would. be invaded at their leisure by an armed one. Mr. Gladstone, whose imagination has been struck by the commercial advantages of the Tunnel, and who, we fancy, when he resisted it in office, yielded reluctantly to his Cabinet, says we are quite safe, because while in 1815 we were only ten millions against twenty-two millions of Frenchmen, we are now thirty millions against thirty-five ; but what is the force of that argument ? That it is perfectly possible, indeed easy, so to organise Great Britain that a French army of even half-a-million could. not invade her, is true enough ; but then, it is the first object of our policy to avoid the necessity for that organisation. Englishmen want to be safe without a conscription, not with one—that is, they want to be protected by a Navy, and not an Army— and it is confidence in that scheme of national life which the Tunnel would impair. If the people will submit to a conscription, there is no earthly objection to the Tunnel except that its coat might possibly be more usefully ex- pended than in facilitating a vast daily immigration. As for the allegations that France would not attack us, and that the Tunnel itself would bind. the nations together, they are opposed to all the evidence of history. France is no worse than other Powers ; but, like other Powers, it gets periodically into fits of rage ; and when it is in one, it invades, just as it did in 1870. As to communications creating friendship, they do not create it. There is no frontier but some posts between Ger- many and Russia, and there was no frontier at all between North and South; yet Teuton and Slav, Northerner and Southerner, have hated. one another to the death. Increased intercourse means increased hatred as often as increased love, and Germany and France would be twice as friendly if they were divided by a Channel. Sir E. Watkin says the military Powers of the Continent do not object to international tunnels, and he says truly ; but why in the world should they object? They cannot get rid of Nature, and the tunnel under Mont Cenis is no worse for Italy than the pass over the mountain. If France were mistress of the seas, Englishmen would have no fear of the Tunnel, because it would be, comparatively speaking, of no importance. Would France not object to a tunnel from Germany into France under her line of fortifications ? Our line of fortifications is the ironclad fleet in the Channel.
It is perfectly childish to abuse Mr. Gladstone for his change of opinion about the Tunnel, and talk about the Thanet election, and the rest of his motives. He said long ago in Wales that he had. changed his opinion, when no elec- tion was thought of, and his duty on a question so large is to state his opinion, as that opinion now is. We entirely admit his uprightness, but cannot believe in his judgment. His comparison of the relative strength of England and France is not true, if strength for a battle-field is intended, as it must be ; and his argument that England is honourably bound. to permit a tunnel to be made, because in 1874 she agreed with France that the subject should be considered, is far-fet,ched to the last degree. No pledge was given to France, or could be given except subject to the ratification of Parliament, and Parliament has not ratified anything of the kind. As to his statement that a land frontier has, as compared with a sea frontier, "enormous advantages," we are utterly at a loss to understand its meaning, unless, indeed, intercourse is all-important, and independence valueless. Suppose for a moment that the Channel had continued, as it was once, dry land, would England, as a peninsula, ever have been a State at all ? Is it because she is nearly an island that Sweden is afraid of Russia, or because she is joined. to Russia by a strip of land over which armies can march ? Mr. Gladstone may mean that, with a land frontier, we should gain the power of invasion, and so be stronger; but we should gain it only by the sacrifice of that exemption from the con- scription which, to all who value the industrial form of society—and Mr. Gladstone does value it—should be the dearest of blessings. The truth is, he thinks the English timidity a little absurd, and that, tunnel or no tunnel, England can defend herself easily enough. "I believe," he says, "that the invention of steam and the great revolu- tion that we have seen in shipbuilding have enormously increased our means of defence as compared with those of France. I believe that our defensive power in times of crisis would develop itself with a rapidity, to an extent, and with an efficiency that would surpass all previous examples and would astonish the world.' We cannot agree, believing that, under the new conditions of warfare, nations are defended. partly by scientific organisation and partly by a certain hardness of disposition which enables them to shoot men if they will not enlist, both of which guarantees this country has temporarily lost; but we will admit the statement, and then ask one question. If Mr. Gladstone thinks, as he says, that the new methods of communication by water have increased our defensive power, why does he wish to supersede them by a communication by land ? Sir E. Watkin will answer, Because there is money to be got by an increase of trade ;' but Mr. Gladstone has governed an Empire.
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