as these. On February 23, the War Office announced that it was
appointing a Channel Tunnel Defense Committee, headed by Major-General
Sir Archibald Alison, the chief of British Army Intelligence,
to collect and examine in detail scientific evidence on "the
practicability of closing effectually a submarine railway tunnel" in
case of actual or apprehended war.
The Board of Trade, in the meantime, did its best to hold Sir Edward
Watkin and his project off at arm's length. On March 6, 1882, the
secretary of the Board of Trade, which had been keeping an eye on
newspaper accounts of the progress of the tunnel, wrote to remind Sir
Edward of the vital fact that all the foreshore of the United Kingdom
below high-water mark at Dover was "_prima facie_ the property of the
Crown and under the management of the Board of Trade," and that while
the department did not wish to impede progress it distinctly wished to
give notice that the Government "hold themselves free to use any powers
at their disposal in such a matter as Parliament may decide, or as the
general interest of the country may seem to them to require." In other
words, the Board told the Submarine Continental Railway Company that it
could not drive its tunnel toward France without trespassing on Crown
property extending all the way from high-water mark to the three-mile
limit of British jurisdiction—the traditionally accepted limit of the
carrying power of cannon.
The claim of the Crown to the foreshore in this case was, however, one
that Sir Edward Watkin disputed. He claimed that through an arrangement
with a landowner near Shakespeare Cliff, and by certain purchases
of land from the Archbishop of Canterbury as head of the Church of
England, the tunnel proprietors had come into possession of ancient
manorial rights, originally granted by the Crown itself, that permitted
them to exploit the foreshore at Shakespeare Cliff as they saw fit,
including the right to tunnel under it. Sir Edward had claimed that he
was having made an extensive legal search of the title in question,
which would take a little while.
But the notification from the Board of Trade was an ominous development
for Sir Edward and his scheme; and even more ominous signs were to
follow. During March, anti-tunneling forces in Britain circulated a
great petition among prominent Englishmen against the scheme, for
presentation to Parliament. The petition, recording the conviction of
the signatories that a Channel tunnel "would involve this country
in military dangers and liabilities from which, as an island, it has
hitherto been happily free," was published in the April issue of _The
Nineteenth Century_, and it was signed not only by military people
but by many of the most diversely eminent literary, scientific, and
ecclesiastical men of the day—including Robert Browning, Alfred, Lord
Tennyson, Herbert Spencer, Professor T. H. Huxley, Cardinals Newman
and Manning, and the Archbishop of York—as well as a great cloud of
names from the nobility and the landed gentry. In an eloquent article
accompanying the petition, the editor of _The Nineteenth Century_,
James Knowles, implicitly added the name of William Shakespeare to the
list of anti-tunnel signatories by invoking the John of Gaunt speech
from _Richard II_:
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-Paradise,
This fortress built by Nature for herself
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands....
The editor went on to declare, more prosaically, that "To hang the
safety of England at some most critical instant upon the correct
working of a tap, or of any mechanical contrivance, is quite beyond the
faith of this generation of Englishmen."
Almost at the instant that the heavy blow of the petition in _The
Nineteenth Century_ fell upon the tunnel promoters, the Board of Trade
sent down a real thunderbolt upon their heads. On April 1, the Board of
Trade wrote Sir Edward Watkin that, whatever might be the title to the
foreshore at Shakespeare Cliff, there was no doubt as to the title of
the Crown under the bed of the sea below low-water mark and within the
three-mile limit. It informed him that according to the department's
calculations, based on a tracing of the tunnel route previously
obtained from the Submarine Continental Railway Company, the boring
of the tunnel now must necessarily be close to the point of low-water
mark. And, as a consequence, the Board of Trade instructed the company
that, pending the outcome of the Government's deliberations on the
military security of the tunnel, it must suspend its boring operations
forthwith and give the Government assurances to that effect.
[Footnote 1: An Anglo-French Joint Commission formed to set up
agreements on the jurisdiction of the two countries over the Channel
tunnel in 1876 actually drew up a protocol for a channel-tunnel treaty
between England and France. The Commission agreed to the jurisdiction
of each government ceasing at a point to be marked in the center of the
tunnel and it recommended that the tunnel be regulated by a specially
appointed international body.]
[Illustration: Four]
All at once, it seems, the entire British press was in an uproar of
criticism against the Channel tunnel and its unfortunate promoters. The
_Sunday Times_ pretty well expressed a common reaction of newspapers
and periodicals to the latest developments when it said, in an
editorial, "We confess to experiencing a feeling of relief on hearing
of the interdiction of [Sir Edward Watkin's] progress" in his "working
day and night to put an end to that insular position which has in past
times more than once proved our sheet anchor of safety. We sincerely
hope that Sir E. Watkin's project will shortly receive its final _coup
de grâce_. No doubt," it added presciently, "he will not yield without
a resolute struggle."
Some hard things were said in the press about the great tunnel
promoter. He was accused in various publications of "adroit and
unscrupulous lobbying" and of dispensing "profuse hospitality ...
persistent and continuous" in pursuit of his scheme. In the May issue
of _The Nineteenth Century_, which contained a further number of
attacks on the tunnel, Lord Bury reported bitterly on the softening
effect that Sir Edward Watkin's public-relations technique had had on
a friend of his. Asked if he had signed the great petition against
the tunnel, the friend was said to have replied, "No, I have not; I am
strongly against the construction of the Tunnel, and I told Watkin so.
But he gave a party of us, the other day, an excellent luncheon, and
was very civil in showing us everything; so I should not like to do an
unhandsome thing to him by signing the protest."
An editorialist in a periodical called _All the Year Round_,
which formerly had been put out by Charles Dickens, wrote of the
"extraordinary vigor" with which Sir Edward was pushing his tunnel.
The editorialist dwelt in satirical fashion on the manner in which
prominent persons were "perpetually being whisked down to Dover by
special trains, conducted into vaults in the chalk, made amiable
with lunch and sparkling wines, and whisked back in return specials
to dilate to their friends (and, incidentally, to the public) on the
peculiar charm of Pommery and Greno consumed in a chamber excavated
far under the sea." The writer found Sir Garnet Wolseley's argument,
that the English end of the tunnel could be seized, "on reflection to
be perfectly feasible." He asked, "Can anyone suppose that if such
a government as that which was formed by the Communists were by any
chance ... to rule France, the danger that the temptation to make such
a grand coup as the conquest and plunder of England would be too much
for them would not be a very real and very present one?" And he wound
up by warning "that French troops might checkmate our fleet by simply
walking underneath it, and ... take a revenge for Waterloo, the remote
possibility of which must make every Englishman shudder."
The probable future effects of the Channel tunnel upon the nervous
systems of Englishmen were the subject of intense speculation in
most of the press, as a matter of fact. Almost without exception,
the prognosis of this hypothetical nervous condition was grave. If,
nowadays, the capacity to maintain extraordinary spiritual fortitude
under conditions of national emergency has come to be regarded almost
as a basic characteristic of the British people, it is a characteristic
that the Victorian British press seemed not to be aware of. Almost
unanimously, the press warned that part of the price of constructing
a tunnel would be the occurrence of wild periodic alarms among the
population. "Perpetual panics and increased military expenditure are
the natural result of such a change as that which will convert us from
an island into a peninsula," an editorial in _John Bull_ declared. The
London _Daily News_ demanded to know whether "anyone who is in the
least acquainted with English character and history" could deny the
country's susceptibility to periodic panics. The _Daily News_ dwelt
apprehensively on the inevitable result of panics arising out of the
construction of a Channel tunnel:
We should be constantly beginning expensive and elaborate schemes for
strengthening the defences according to the fashionable idea of the
day.... They would be about half carried out by the time the next
panic occurred, and then they would be obsolete.... Now it would be
elaborate fortifications at Dover itself; now a great chain of forts
to hem it in from inland; now the old scheme of the fortification of
London; now the establishment of forts out at sea over the tunnel....
Is it worth while to run the chance...?
The most diverse arguments were advanced in the press against the
construction of the tunnel. In the May issue of _The Nineteenth
Century_, Major-General Sir E. Hamley raised the question of whether
the French, invading Britain by train through the tunnel, might not
seize some distinguished English people and carry the captives along
on the engine as hostages, so that however thoroughly the officer in
charge of the defensive apparatus at the English end were alerted to
their presence, "still he might well be expected to pause if suddenly
certified that he would be destroying, along with the enemy in the
Tunnel, some highly important Englishmen." Another writer, referring to
the responsibility and possibly also to the character of the officer
in charge of the tunnel defenses, observed thoughtfully that "the
commandant of Dover would carry the key of England in his pocket."
Still another commentator wondered if responsibility for making a
decision to blow up the tunnel might not be too much even for an
English Prime Minister:
The Premier might think himself justified in destroying twenty
millions of property ... but also, he might not. He might be an
undecided man, or a man expecting defeat by the Opposition, or a man
paralyzed by the knowledge that the tunnel was full of innocent people
whom his order would condemn to instant death, in a form which is at
once most painful and most appalling to the imagination. They would
all be drowned in darkness. The responsibility would be overwhelming
for an individual, and a Cabinet, if dispersed, takes hours to bring
together.
In his article in _The Nineteenth Century_ Lord Bury, going under
the assumption that a Prime Minister in a period of gravest national
emergency would indeed be able to haul his Cabinet colleagues and
military advisers together in reasonable time to consider having the
tunnel blown up, asked his readers to conjure up the painful scene at
Downing Street:
Imagine him for a moment sitting in consultation. His military
advisers tell him that the decisive moment has come. "I think,
gentlemen," says the minister, turning to his colleagues, "that we are
all agreed—the Tunnel must be immediately destroyed. Fire the mine!"
"There is one other point," says the officer, "on which I request
instructions—at what time am I to execute the order?" "At once, sir;
telegraph at once, and in five minutes the blasting charge can be
fired." "But," persists the officer, "trains laden with non-combatants
are at this moment in the Tunnel. They enter continuously at twenty
minutes' intervals; there are never less than four trains, two each
way, in the Tunnel at the same time; each train contains some three
hundred persons ... I could not destroy twelve hundred non-combatants
without very special instructions."
And Lord Bury asked, "What would any minister, under such
circumstances, do?"
As for the proposed defensive measure of flooding the tunnel in case
of invasion, General Sir Lintorn Simmons, writing in the same issue of
_The Nineteenth Century_, considered it to be a dubious one at best,
since, he observed, "it is not to be believed that a great country like
France, with the engineering talent she possesses, could not find the
means" of pumping all the flood waters out again.
An assertion by Dr. Siemens, the electric-lighting expert, that the
tunnel could easily be rendered unusable to invaders if its British
defenders would pump carbonic-acid gas into it to asphyxiate the
intruders, was similarly challenged, in the correspondence columns
of the _Times_, by a scientific colleague of his, Dr. John Tyndall.
Dr. Tyndall offered to wager Dr. Siemens that the latter could in six
hours devise countermeasures that would enable troops to pass unscathed
through the tunnel, gas or no gas. Dr. Tyndall illustrated his point
by describing an experiment he said he had made on the very day of his
letter, while coming down home from London by train, on a part of the
South-Eastern line where the speed was thirty miles an hour:
I took out my watch and determined how long I could hold my breath
without inhalation. By emptying my lungs very thoroughly, and then
charging them very fully, I brought the time up to nearly a minute
and a half. In this interval I might have been urged through more
than half a mile of carbonic-acid gas with no injury and with little
inconvenience to myself.
Dr. Tyndall concluded, firmly, "The problem of supplying fresh air
to persons surrounded by an irrespirable atmosphere has been already
solved by Mr. Fleuss and others."
Then there were even more disturbing objections. Could the defenders
at the English end always be relied on as absolutely loyal Englishmen?
_The Field_, without naming any names, wrote of "proof that in the
United Kingdom itself ... there are numbers of daring and reckless
persons" who, "to gain their sinister ends ... would not hesitate
to sacrifice the independence of the country." Frankly, the paper
feared possible acts of treachery in the tunnel by "a handful of
unprincipled desperadoes." And the _Spectator_, visualizing the thing
in more detail, suggested that its readers "consider ... the danger of
treachery ... the rush on the tunnel being made by Irish Republicans in
league with the French, while the wires of the telegraph were cut, and
all swift communications between Dover and London suddenly suspended."
Taking all the risks of the tunnel into account, the _Spectator_ said
it could not bring itself to believe that "even in this age, with its
mania for rapid riding and comfortable locomotion, such a project will
be tolerated." The _Sunday Times_, for its part, pointed out that, as
things stood, "the silver streak is a greater bar to the movements of
Nihilists [and] Internationalists ... than is generally believed."
But, it added, "with several trains a day between Paris and London,
we should have an amount of fraternising between the discontented
denizens of the great cities of both countries, which would yield very
unsatisfactory results on this side of the Channel."
Meetings and debates to discuss the tunnel menace were held all over
England, and even at a meeting of so progressive an organization as
the Balloon Society of Great Britain, which was held in the lecture
room of the Royal Aquarium at Westminster, the subject was discussed
with "some warmth of feeling ... on both sides." There was a wide
circulation of sensational pamphlets, written in pseudohistorical
style, that purported to chronicle the sudden downfall of England at
the end of the nineteenth century through the existence of a Channel
tunnel—Dover taken, the garrison butchered, the English end of the
tunnel incessantly vomiting forth armed men, London invaded, and
England enslaved—all of this in a few hours' time.
In contrast to these manifold cries of alarm among the English, it
seems never to have occurred to anybody in France at the time seriously
to suggest that if a tunnel were to be constructed, a hostile English
force, supported by an English navy in control of the Channel sea,
might suddenly seize the French entrance by surprise and use it as a
bridgehead for a general invasion of France. A few French commentators
did, however, remind the anti-tunnel forces in England that while the
English had set hostile foot on French soil some two or three times in
as many centuries—not to mention her having kept physical control
over the port of Calais for over two hundred years following the
Battle of Crécy—English soil had remained untouched by France. Most
of the French newspapers appeared to be unable to fathom the cause of
the whole tunnel commotion, which was generally put down to English
eccentricity. Several French journals, surveying all the fulminations
on the other side of the Channel, even took an attitude toward the
English of a certain detached sympathy. One of the more interesting
French commentaries on the uproar in England appeared in the _Revue
des Deux Mondes_. In this article, the author expressed some doubt
that British military men who denounced the dangers of the tunnel were
really convinced of the reality of those dangers. For them to do so, he
suggested, one would have to presuppose, on one side of the Channel, a
"France again a conqueror with, at her head, a man gifted with ... an
incredible depth in crime; a secret, an almost incredible diligence in
preparation as in execution," and, on the other side, "a governor of
Dover who would be an idiot or a traitor, a War Minister who would not
possess the brain of a bird, a Foreign Minister who would allow himself
to be deceived in doltish fashion." How could the French possibly
assemble perhaps a thousand railway carriages in England without
arousing the suspicions of British Intelligence? How could the vanguard
of the French invaders get through the tunnel with all their required
ammunition, horses, and supplies, and get them all unloaded in a few
minutes—would this vanguard sally forth without biscuits? The author
found no solution to these particular problems. Instead, he devoted
himself to the larger issue:
The day the inauguration of the Submarine Tunnel will be celebrated,
England will no longer be an island, and that is a stupendous
event in the history of an island people.... Islanders have always
considered themselves the favorites of Providence, which has
undertaken to provide for their security and independence.... They
congratulate themselves on their separation from the rest of the world
by natural frontiers over which nobody can squabble. They feel that
they hold their destiny in their own hands, and that the effect of the
follies and crimes of others could not reach them.... Their character
is affected by this. Like Great Britain, every Englishman is an island
where it is not easy to land.
And the article asked, wonderingly, "What would an England that was not
an island be?"
The deliberations of the scientific investigating committee appointed
by the War Office and presided over by Sir Archibald Alison lasted from
the latter part of February until the middle of May. In the committee's
report of its findings to the War Office, the complexity and solemn
nature of the questions laid before it were indicated by their
mere classification and subclassification. Thus, the contingencies
for rendering a Channel tunnel absolutely useless to an enemy were
considered under the headings of:
I. Surprise from Within
II. Attack from Without
And the committee reported that it had considered measures to secure
the tunnel against (I) under such subcategories as:
1. Fortifications
2. Closure or temporary obstructions
3. Explosion by mines or charges
4. Flooding
a. Temporary
b. Permanent
After reviewing the situation in great detail, and from every aspect,
the committee suggested a long list of precautionary measures that,
it said, it would be necessary to use, singly or in combination, to
protect and seal off the tunnel against any enemy attempts to invade
England directly through the tunnel or by seizing the English end
from the outside and using it as a bridgehead for invasion. The list
included these recommendations:
The mouth of the tunnel should be protected by "a portcullis or other
defensible barrier."
A trap bridge should be set in connection with this portcullis.
Means should be provided for closing off the ventilation, and for
"discharging irrespirable gases or vapors into the tunnel."
Arrangements should be made for rapidly discharging loads of shingle
into the land portion of the tunnel, shutting it off.
The land portion of the tunnel should be thoroughly mined with
explosives capable of being fired by remote control exercised not only
from within the central fort at Dover but also from more distant points
inland, so that even if the protective fortress fell to the enemy, the
tunnel still could be permanently destroyed.
In addition, a truck loaded with explosives and equipped with a time
fuse should be kept ready by the entrance, so that it could be sent
coasting down into the tunnel for some distance, there to explode
automatically.
Arrangements should be made for temporarily flooding the tunnel by
means of culverts operated by sluice valves. ("If by chance the sluice
valves should not act, Measure XVIII could be resorted to, or the
tunnel could be blocked by one or more of the means ... mentioned in
Measures VIII, IX, X, XI, and XII.")
The tunnel should emerge inland, out of firing range from the sea. And
it was imperative that it emerge under the guns and "in the immediate
vicinity of a first-class fortress, in the modern acceptation of the
term, a fortress which could only be reduced after a protracted siege
both by land and sea."
And so on.
Even after drawing up all these elaborate precautions for closing the
tunnel from the English end, the Channel Tunnel Defense Committee was
left with some nagging doubts about their adequacy. In a concluding
paragraph of its report, the committee pointed out that "it must always
be borne in mind that, in dealing with physical agencies, an amount of
uncertainty exists," and that it was "impossible to eliminate human
fallibility." As a consequence, the members stated cautiously, "it
would be presumptuous to place absolute reliance upon even the most
comprehensive and complete arrangements."
The committee also agreed, almost as an afterthought, that the Channel
tunnel proposed by Sir Edward Watkin could not be sanctioned in the
form envisaged, on the grounds that it did not meet the committee's
conditions for emerging inland, out of firing range from the sea, and
in the immediate vicinity of a first-class fortress. It also rejected,
on the first of these grounds, a proposal by the lesser Channel Tunnel
Company for a tunnel that would start from within Dover and for the
sake of easy destructibility run right under a nearby corner of Dover
Castle—and on the grounds that this entrance would be _too_ much in
the vicinity of a fortress. And the committee objected that since the
proposed entrance would emerge "in the heart of the main defences and
in the midst of the town" any fire from these defenses "would inflict
great injury on the town and its inhabitants, and the general defence
would be much embarrassed."