THE END OF THE CHANNEL TUNNEL N OTHING is certain now-a-days,—therefore
we will not say that we have heard the last of the Channel Tunnel. But it seems safe to predict that we have heard the last of it for some time to come. The revolving years may one day bring to light a second Sir Edward Watkin, and when this blessed revelation has been vouchsafed to man, it may turn out that part of the price to be paid for it is another plan for making the invasion of England easier. But this can hardly happen just yet. The controversy of the last two years has put the matter in a very clear light, and the
latest detailed examination of the arguments for and against the scheme is excellently suited to build up and sustain a working conviction unfavourable to the Tunnel. The document we have in view is the Draft Report sub- mitted to the Joint Committee by its Chairman. It is true, Lord Lansdowne did not himself intend his report to have the effect here attributed to it. He meant to argue, and wrote in the full belief that he was arguing, in favour of a Channel Tunnel. It is the guilelessness of this conviction that gives its value to the draft. What must not be the force of the reasoning against the project, if the reasoning for it is sufficient to show that it ought never to be sanctioned?
Lord Lansdowne begins by inverting the usual order of the considerations which present themselves in connection with the Tunnel.. Most people would first have asked,—Is it safe ? and then, having satisfied themselves that it was safe, would have gone on to consider whether it would be profitable. Lord Lansdowne shows that he is entirely free from that contempt for trade which is so often, and in modern times so mistakenly, attributed to aristocracies. His first in- quiry is,—Will it be profitable ? The question of its safety is relegated to the second place. Consequently, by the time he comes to the question of safety, his imagina- tion has been fired by the pictures presented to it by successive traffic-managers. He has mused so much on the trains—to the number, perhaps, of four in each hour—which would bring the wealth of the world to our doors, that he is scarcely quali- fied to look at the other side. He makes a gallant effort to do so. He sets out painfully and conscientiously the Military arguments against the Tunnel, but when he has set them in array, they seem to him to have no real weight. Yet they are there, nevertheless, and we shall be surprised if, to cooler minds, they do not convey a conclusion very different from that which Lord Lansdowne founds on them.
"We share," he says, "with the Military witnesses, their opinion that the existence of a Tunnel under the Channel would in some respects modify the conditions under which the defence of this country would have to be undertaken.
We agree with them in believing that its pos- session, either during the progress of operations, or during an occupation of English soil, would be highly ad- vantageous to the invading force, and possibly dis- astrous to the invaded nation." Strange to say, Lord Lansdowne is prepared to run this risk. He is aware that many of the highest Military authorities are of opinion that the conditions under which the defence of the country must be undertaken after the Tunnel has been made, will be very much less favourable than those under which it would be undertaken if there is no such Tunnel, but he is not in the least disturbed by this knowledge. Other authorities think differently, and Lord Lansdowne is seemingly quite con- tent that the safety of England should depend on the accidental correctness of one of two conflicting opinions. He is in the position of a man who, while protesting that nothing will induce him to risk his life in mountaineering, undertakes an ascent which the majority of the most experi- enced guides tell him is very likely to be fatal. He quotes, for example, the words of Sir Archibald Alison,—" I am not inclined to fear it as much as I know many military men of great experience do." Sir Archibald Alison is working out a problem in military science, and this is the solution he arrives at. But Lord Lansdowne had to consider whether he shall accept this solution as conclusive, in face of the fact that " many military men of great experience" have arrived at the opposite solution. Surely, in presence of this difference, it is but com- monly prudent to take the safer course of the two. If Sir Archibald Alison is wrong, the Tunnel would give us money, and deprive us of what is of infinitely more importance than money. If Lord Wolseley is wrong, the absence of the Tunnel will at worst make us somewhat less rich. How any man can, in cold-blood, advise a great nation to barter certain profit against a contingent insecurity, is beyond our comprehension. Lord Lansdowne dismisses the hundred and more cases in which hostilities have begun without a previous declara- tion of war, with the remark that in a large majority of these cases 4 hostilities, though not preceded by formal warning, addressed to the Power against which they are directed, never- theless took place at times when, owing to international com- plications, the continuance of a state of peace could not have been expected." To reason in this way is to forget how differently things look after and before they have happened. When war has once begun, it is easy to see how events had been leading up to it. It is not equally easy to do this when
all hopes of maintaining peace have not been given up. "The Franco-German war," says Lord Lansdowne, "broke out with unexpected rapidity, but not so suddenly that either party possessing a single weak point., like the Channel Tunnel, would not have had ample time to place all its defences in working order." Surely a more unfortunate instance could not have been picked out. At least once in the week that preceded the declaration of war, there was an apparent revolution in the intentions of the two Powers. The storm seemed to have completely blown over within four-and-twenty hours of the moment when it burst. There is one most important consideration applying to this part of the subject to which Lord Lansdowne pays no atten- tion. When the relations between two countries are at all strained, any display of distrust or alarm on the part of one of them may hurry the other into war. Each means to fight, if the other means it, and only if the other means it ; and each, therefore, is closely watching the other, to see if there is anything in his action which indicates such an inten- tion. Naturally, therefore, each is unwilling to do anything which will make it appear that he accepts war as probable. Now, the destruction, even the temporary destruction, of the Channel Tunnel would make this appear in the most startling and suggestive fashion. There would be no possibility of explaining it away. The result would naturally be that the English Government would be justly unwilling to do anything that, by disclosing its own conviction that war was inevitable, might lead the French Government to show that they, at least, had no wish to avoid it. Thus the very existence of "international complications" making a continuance of peace improbable, might indispose a Government to take the one step which would make the con- tinuance of peace impossible. Supposing that the Tunnel were already in working order, would Lord Lansdowne have had the Government blow it up on the afternoon that the news arrived from Tamatave? We feel sure that he would not have advised this. Yet incidents of no more apparent importance than this have often been looked back to as marking the beginning of a time "when, owing to international complications, the continuance of a state of peace could not have been expected." When they hap- pened, they seemed to wear a quite different aspect. They were mole-hills, out of which no wise Government would manufacture a mountain. Afterwards, they have been recog- nised as mountains, which an unsuspecting Government mis- took for mole-hills. At what precise point between these two extremes would the destruction of the Channel Tunnel seem a precaution implying no distrust, and so conveying no offence ?
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