4 NOVEMBER 1916, Page 13

On Thursday week Mr. Asquith received a deputation on the

subject of the Channel Tunnel, and in assenting to their view that the war had changed everything he promised that the matter should be reviewed by the War Committee or the Committee of Imperial Defence. We need not go into the long history of the tunnel scheme. We used to oppose the project on the ground that we ought not to give away our insular advantages and gratuitously create a source of military scares, however ill-founded the scares might be. But the war has wholly changed our opinion. The first need now is to secure our cross-Channel traffic as far as possible from attacks by air and from under the water. We hope that there will not only be a Channel Tunnel, but an Irish Tunnel. From the mere standpoint of the traveller the future glitters with attrac- tions. He will be able to take train from Paris to, say, Blacksod Bay with " stop-over privileges " in London, as the Americans put it. And Blacksod Bay will be a huge point of departure and arrival for all Europe. The Irish Tunnel will be a tremendous benefit to Ireland.