THE POSSIBILITY OF INVASION.
WE have often wondered how men who have read the history of wars, with all their surprises and successful accomplishments of apparently desperate feats, should have the mental temerity to declare that the invasion of Great Britain is impossible. We admit that it would be very difficult, but in war the unexpected so often happens that one is inclined to transpose two con- trary terms, and say that the unexpected should really be the expected. Even men who are not temperamentally given to unequivocal assertion will often tell you without reserve that the invasion of our island is rendered impossible by the Navy, and that from any military point of view the risk is not worth considering. We remember that Mr. Balfour, who is ordinarily most sensible and sound in all matters of defence, and to whose high moral courage and coolness at the worst time of the South African War the country owes a very considerable debt, announced once that the risk of invasion might be ignored. To tell the young men of any country that they may sleep safely in their beds because they will certainly never be called upon to defend their homes and families is to bid them enter into a state of lethargy, and, in effect, to unman them. In our opinion no one has a right to tell his fellows that the risk of invasion does not exist. No human being can say such a thing with certainty. What should we think of an insurance company which refused to insure a piece of property against some danger which, let us grant, might occur only once in two hundred years, but when it did occur would not merely injure the property, but utterly destroy it ? We should say that the policy offered by that eompany was not satisfactory, and we should go elsewhere to be insured.
The Government insures the nation against the risk of destruction by foreign invasion. It does so, primarily and rightly, as we all agree, by means of the Navy ; but there is a secondary risk against which even the most powerful navy in the world could not provide—the risk that in the temporary absence of the Fleet when employed in its first duty of searching out the enemy and destroy- ing him, or in a fog through which even the thousand eyes of a watchful Navy cannot penetrate, a consider- able number of hostile troops might escape challenge or observation and bear down upon our coast. The only way to meet that danger in a way worthy of a self-respecting nation is to have the whole able-bodied youth of the nation trained to arms. We want no conscript regular army. But what we do want is the Swiss system of compulsory military training as advocated by the National Service League—. say four months' careful drill followed by short and easy periods in subsequent years. This system would serve a double, nay a treble, purpose. First, it would compel every trained man to defend his country if there really were an invasion. Secondly, it would provide valuable material from which to accept voluntary service with the expedi- tionary force abroad ; the volunteers for foreign service would be worth having instead of such well-meaning but useless fellows as the second draft of yeomanry in South Africa. Thirdly, it would improve the handiness, the resource, and the health of every man who underwent the training. It would be unfair to no one, since all would be under compulsion. The present plan is in effect an odious undemocratic system of privilege, since the man who chooses to stay by his office, shop, or works rather than to give any service to his country actually enjoys a commercial advantage over his more nobly minded neigh bour.
The possibility of invasion was proved once again, so far as we can learn (though really no proof is necessary to the cogency of our argument), by the recent naval manoeuvres. Various and rather contradictory accounts of the manoeuvres—at which no correspondents were allowed to be present—have been published in the news- papers. We need not assume the exact truth of any of them. But, roughly, what happened seems to have been as follows :—The " Red " Fleet, under Sir George Callaghan, had to try to effect a landing, and the " Blue " Fleet, under Prince Louis of Battenberg, bad to defend the North-East coast where the attempt was to be made.
According to the rules, no landing could be made south of Flamborough Head, and from that point almost to Norway a line of Blue ships was drawn across the North Sea.
The Daily Telegraph account says that each of the Blue cruisers patrolled a distance of about twenty miles, destroyers were placed between the cruisers, and there were supporting battleships. Helped by fog the Red ships passed through this formidable line. They no doubt suffered considerable losses, as they were chased and there was a running engagement. At one time, however, a part of the Red Fleet had some hours of complete immunity from attack while an imaginary landing was effected near Filey. Perhaps this period did not last longer than four hours. Still, even in four hours something always could be done, especially if landings were effected at different places. A Japanese officer when discussing the problem of invasion once said that if his countrymen wished to invade Great Britain they would drive their transports head on to the beach at high tide and simply abandon or destroy them after the troops and their equip- ment had been dropped over the sides. A landing of that kind would be carried out in a very short time indeed. And why should it be impossible ? There is nothing whatever impossible in it; and probably one could think of similar get-there-quick plans. The sacrifice of the transports, in view of the object to be gained, would of course be as nothing. Even in 1800, when military science was much less advanced than now, Sir Ralph Abercromby landed 16,000 troops in Aboukir Bay in the course of a single day, simply using the ships' boats. For six weeks beforehand he had practised dis- embarkation, so that every man knew his place in the boats and what he bad to do. We fancy that one might search the pages of military history in vain for an example of a failure to land when once an ade- quate fleet has arrived at a suitable landing-place. The ships' guns covering the landing can make such a hell of the beach by way of preparation that no defender can live on it. Of course the troubles of the invaders will come afterwards, but that thought would not trouble an invader of Great Britain very much if he could be sure of landing safely with his arranged number of troops. Look at the Italians in Tripoli. The easiest of all their operations have been the landings. To return to the manceuvres. When the Red landing was discovered Admiral Callaghan had to do his best to escape, as he had an inferior number of ships. Apparently he took the bold course of sacrificing a considerable part of his fleet—the sixteen-knot battle squadron of six Majesties—in order to get his best ships away. The Majesties, it is said, fought a delaying action, and if so, they were no doubt annihilated. Apparently several Red cruisers and destroyers were also lost, but the best Red ships safely reached their base, bringing the transports with them. The force landed may have been small ; the Red losses may have been even greater than is said ; but the fact would remain that the invader did land troops and did get his important ships and his transports away. How could one possibly predict that fog, or some hitherto unpractised method of disembarkation, might not enable the enemy in real war to do on two or three times the scale what the daring Red Fleet has just done in the manceuvres ?
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