MR. GLADSTONE ON THE CHANNEL TUNNEL.
IT is rather a superfluity of malice in the Times to suggest that Mr. Gladstone's statement, in his Welsh speech of Tuesday, that he approved Sir Edward Watkin's scheme for tunnelling the Channel, was made in order to purchase for his Irish policy the support of the South-Eastern Railway. What- ever that support may be worth, it will certainly be worth less than the political influence which Mr. Gladstone may probably alienate by his support of a scheme for diminishing the safety of England from invasion. We should attribute his quite needless and supererogatory remark at the laying of the first cylinder of the Dee Bridge, to sincere sympathy with Sir Edward Watkin's enterprise on the one hand, and, on the other hand, to a certain impulsive indifference to the political consequences of what he says which has brought Mr. Gladstone into many a scrape, though it has also disposed those who know him well, to expect from him so deep a dislike to a prudential reticence, that they take comparatively little account of his political obiter dicta, and do not resent what they might resent from a more carefully calculating states- man. But though we think the suggestion of the Times both unfair and unfortunate, we cannot help asking Mr. Gladstone to reconsider the opinion which he has formed in favour of the Channel Tunnel, since it appears to us to be entirely out of keeping with his well-known desire not to spend more on the Army and Navy Estimates than it is essential for the well- being of our Kingdom to spend. We need not say that we do not pretend to write from the point of view of a military expert. We are aware that from that point of view opinion is divided,—that while a very great number of our military autho- rities earnestly deprecate the Channel Tunnel, some at least of considerable authority, notably Sir Andrew Clarke, take the opposite view. But is it not perfectly clear that while the opinion of military authorities is divided, as divided it is,—indeed, so far as we know, divided in very unequal proportions, much the greater number of our military authorities regarding the proposal as dangerous,—the only proper course for the House of Commons, and for civilians generally, to take, is to be guided by the opinions of those who regard such a funnel as a danger I and, therefore, either to veto the Channel Tunnel altogether,—which involves no new expendi- ture, but only the sacrifice of a calculated commercial gain,— or, if the Tunnel is to be made, to follow the counsels of the most cautions of those who think that special measures should be taken to neutralise the danger which it would produce ? If Mr. Gladstone assures us that the military alarmists are trading on what he terms "the luxury of terror,"—in which the British public is, as he tells us, eager to indulge, —surely it is the simplest thing in the world to refuse to stimulate that luxury of terror by giving it a new and most conspicuous excuse for fresh violence. Besides, how are we to tell whether the military cautions which we receive are due to a certain sympathy with that luxury of terror, or to a sincere impatience of the proposal to remove a very real safeguard ? There are not a few who assure us that if we dismissed our standing Army and paid off all our ships- of-war, we should nevertheless be perfectly safe ; that so long as we do not meddle in other people's concerns, no Englishman need sleep less comfortably for knowing that a hostile force might land upon our shores without meeting the slightest opposition. And those who hold this opinion will probably assert that it is only the disposition of Britons to revel in a "luxury of terror " that prevents them from saving the whole of our Army and Navy Estimates at one blow. Now, what would Mr. Gladstone say to such an opinion as this ? He would, of course, regard it as insane. He would tell us that the world is not yet so honest or so peaceful that we can afford to regard the danger of invasion, in case we strip off all our defences, as a chimerical danger. Very well ; but what is the Channel, so long as it remains untunnelled, except one of the most useful and effective of the military and naval advantages which we possess,—a natural defence which enables us to feel safe with less than half the army which would otherwise be essential for our protection ? If our military men are such fools as to imagine, without any justification for so imagining, that a Channel Tunnel
would diminish our security and greatly increase the number of troops necessary for our protection, how can we trust them for any purpose whatever ? Civilians must either defer to military opinion in these matters, or refuse to defer to it. If we defer to it, then it is perfectly clear that we must not make the Channel Tunnel without giving orders for works which would vastly increase the expense of both Army and Navy,— which is just what economical statesmen deprecate. If we do not defer to it, then on what principle are we to neglect it which would not justify, and equally justify, our neglecting all the other precautions against invasion which military counsels have provided for us ? If Mr. Gladstone should reply that common-sense will assign the proper limit to military pedantry, and that it is perfectly easy for the people to con- vince themselves that a hole in the ground may be adequately watched so as to prevent soldiers from issuing from it, we should reply that military science largely consists in devising the right and adequate means of avoiding surprises springing from gaps which it is undesirable or impossible to fill up, and that just the very point on which the military science of an invader would concentrate itself, would be the beet means of surprising and holding this particular gap, if ever we suffered it to be made. Surely it cannot be reasonably maintained that skilled'advice should not be taken for protecting ourselves, while skilled advice should certainly be taken for attacking others ? Yet, if we defer to good military advice, we should involve ourselves in a very lavish expenditure which would be absolutely avoided by not making this tunnel at all.
Probably what Mr. Gladstone really thinks, though he has not confessed it, is that it is cowardice to stop a work which, in the vague language of the day, civilisation and commerce demand. But civilisation and commerce might, in precisely the same sense, be said to demand the sacrifice of those costly armaments of ours, which undoubtedly run away with a very large portion of the savings of the people of the United Kingdom, and absorb those savings in preparations for the destruction of our fellow-creatures. Civilisation and commerce are not every- thing in this world. Indeed, civilisation in the true senile, that sense in which it expresses all that makes a good citizen, implies the safeguarding of the State from hostile attack, at least as much as it implies scientific culture. We cannot become true citizens, as all history shows, without being shielded from constant danger, without being to some extent even protected against ruinous taxation ; and it is because our insularity saves us from the one that we are also protected from the other, and so insured the kind of tranquillity which is most favourable to both moral and intellectual progress. The last thing that we can understand in genuine economists is the wish to take away any security by which we are saved from those conscript armies, and that immense loss of our citizens' time and money in learning the drill of war, to which the nations of the Continent are condemned just because they have no natural moat round their Kingdoms such as Providence has given to England. If we avail ourselves of that security so long as the various nations of the world show the disposi- tion which they show at present to encroach on each other, we are not resisting the tide of civilisation, but rather securing for civilisation one more safe harbour of refuge, one resort where there will be fewer scares, and more tranquil progress than is granted to most of the nations of the earth. Surely, in contending for such a security, there is neither cowardice nor distrust of progress, but only common prudence and a preference for making sure of the progress we have gained in the past, before we advance into a hazardous and unknown future.
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