The Invasion.
by William Le Queux.
PREFACE.
"I sometimes despair of the country ever becoming alive to the danger of the unpreparedness of our present position until too late to prevent some fatal catastrophe."
This was the keynote of a solemn warning made in the House of Lords by Earl Roberts. His lordship, whilst drawing attention to our present inadequate forces, strongly urged that action should be taken in accordance with the recommendations of the Elgin Commission that "no military system could be considered satisfactory which did not contain powers of expansion outside the limit of the regular forces of the Crown."
"The lessons of the late war appear to have been forgotten. The one prevailing idea seems to be," said Earl Roberts, "to cut down our military expenditure without reference to our increased responsibilities and our largely augmented revenue. History tells us in the plainest terms that an Empire which cannot defend its own possessions must inevitably perish." And with this view both Lord Milner and the Marquis of Lansdowne concurred. But surely this is not enough. If we are to retain our position as the first nation of the world we must be prepared to defend any raid made upon our sh.o.r.es.
The object of this book is to ill.u.s.trate our utter unpreparedness for war from a military standpoint; to show how, under certain conditions which may easily occur, England can be successfully invaded by Germany; and to present a picture of the ruin which must inevitably fall upon us on the evening of that not far-distant day.
Ever since Lord Roberts formulated his plans for the establishment of rifle-clubs I have been deeply interested in the movement: and after a conversation with that distinguished soldier the idea occurred to me to write a forecast, based upon all the available military knowledge--which would bring home to the British public vividly and forcibly what really would occur were an enemy suddenly to appear in our midst. At the outset it was declared by the strategists I consulted to be impossible. No such book could ever be written, for, according to them, the ma.s.s of technical detail was far too great to digest and present in an intelligible manner to the public.
Lord Roberts, however, gave me encouragement. The skeleton scheme of the manner in which England could be invaded by Germany was submitted to a number of the highest authorities on strategy, whose names, however, I am not permitted to divulge, and after many consultations, much criticism, and considerable difference of opinion, the "general idea,"
with amendment after amendment, was finally adopted.
That, however, was only a mere preliminary. Upon questions of tactics each tactician consulted held a different view, and each criticised adversely the other"s suggestions.
One way alone remained open--namely, to take the facts exactly as they stood, add the additional strength of the opposing nations as they at present are, and then draw logical conclusions. This, aided by experts, was done: and after many days of argument with the various authorities, we succeeded in getting them in accord as to the general practicability of an invasion.
Before putting pen to paper it was necessary to reconnoitre carefully the whole of England from the Thames to the Tyne. This I did by means of a motor-car, travelling 10,000 miles of all kinds of roads, and making a tour extending over four months. Each town, all the points of vantage, military positions, all the available landing places on the coast, all railway connections, and telephone and telegraph communications, were carefully noted for future reference. With the a.s.sistance of certain well-known military experts, the battlefields were carefully gone over and the positions marked upon the Ordnance map. Thus, through four months we pushed on day by day collecting information and material, sometimes in the big cities, sometimes in the quietest and remotest hamlets, all of which was carefully tabulated for use.
Whatever critics may say, and however their opinions may differ, it can only be pointed out, first, that the "general idea" of the scheme is in accordance with the expressed and published opinions of the first strategists of to-day, and that, as far as the forecast of events is concerned, it has been written from a first-hand knowledge of the local colour of each of the scenes described. The enemy"s Proclamations reproduced are practically copies of those issued by the Germans during the war of 1870.
That the experts and myself will probably be condemned as alarmists and denounced for revealing information likely to be of a.s.sistance to an enemy goes without saying. Indeed, an attempt was made in the House of Commons to suppress its publication altogether. Mr. R. C. Lehmann, who asked a question of the Prime Minister, declared that it was "calculated to prejudice our relations with the other Powers," while the late Sir H.
Campbell-Bannerman, in a subsequent letter apologising to me for condemning in the House a work he had not read, repeated that it was likely to "produce irritation abroad and might conceivably alarm the more ignorant public at home."
Such a reflection, cast by the late Prime Minister upon the British nation was, to say the least, curious, yet it only confirmed the truth that the Government are strenuously seeking to conceal from our people the appalling military weakness and the consequent danger to which the country is constantly open.
To be weak is to invite war: to be strong is to prevent it.
To arouse our country to a sense of its own lamentable insecurity is the object of this volume, which is somewhat compressed from the form in which it originally appeared, and that other nations besides ourselves are interested in England"s grave peril is proved by the fact that it has already been published in the German, French, Spanish, Danish, Russian, Italian, and even j.a.panese languages.
WILLIAM LE QUEUX.
Speaking in the House of Lords on the 10th July 1905, I said:--"It is to the people of the country I appeal to take up the question of the Army in a sensible practical manner. For the sake of all they hold dear, let them bring home to themselves what would be the condition of Great Britain if it were to lose its wealth, its power, its position." The catastrophe that may happen if we still remain in our present state of unpreparedness is visibly and forcibly ill.u.s.trated in Mr. Le Queux"s new book which I recommend to the perusal of every one who has the welfare of the British Empire at heart.
29. Nov. 1905 Roberts, FM
THE INVASION.
BOOK I.
THE ATTACK.
CHAPTER I.
THE SURPRISE.
Two of the myriad of London"s nightworkers were walking down Fleet Street together soon after dawn on Sunday morning, 2nd September.
The sun had not yet risen. That main artery of London traffic, with its irregular rows of closed shops and newspaper offices, was quiet and pleasant in the calm, mystic light before the falling of the smoke-pall.
Only at early morning does the dear old City look its best; in that one quiet, sweet hour when the night"s toil has ended and the day"s has not yet begun. Only in that brief interval at the birth of day, when the rose tints of the sky glow slowly into gold, does the giant metropolis repose--at least, as far as its business streets are concerned--for at five o"clock the toiling millions begin to again pour in from all points of the compa.s.s, and the stress and storm of London at once recommences.
And in that hour of silent charm the two grey-bearded sub-editors, though engaged in offices of rival newspapers were making their way homeward to Dulwich to spend Sunday in a well-earned rest, and were chatting "shop," as Press men do.
"I suppose you had the same trouble to get that Yarmouth story through?"
asked Fergusson, the news-editor of the "Dispatch," as they crossed Whitefriars Street. "We got about half a column, and then the wire shut down."
"Telegraph or telephone?" inquired Baines, who was four or five years younger than his friend.
"We were using both--to make sure."
"So were we. It was a rattling good story--the robbery was mysterious, to say the least--but we didn"t get more than half of it. Something"s wrong with the line, evidently," Baines said. "If it were not such a perfect autumn morning, I should be inclined to think there"d been a storm somewhere."
"Yes--funny, wasn"t it?" remarked the other. "A shame we haven"t the whole story, for it was a first-cla.s.s one, and we wanted something. Did you put it on the contents-bill?"
"No, because we couldn"t get the finish. I tried in every way--rang up the Central News, P.A., Exchange Telegraph Company, tried to get through to Yarmouth on the trunk, and spent half an hour or so pottering about, but the reply from all the agencies, from everywhere, in fact, was the same--the line was interrupted."
"Just our case. I telephoned to the Post Office, but the reply came back that the lines were evidently down."
"Well, it certainly looks as though there"d been a storm, but----" and Baines glanced at the bright, clear sky overhead, just flushed by the bursting sun--"there are certainly no traces of it."
"There"s often a storm on the coast when it"s quite still in London, my dear fellow," remarked his friend wisely.
"That"s all very well. But when all communication with a big place like Yarmouth is suddenly cut off, as it has been, I can"t help suspecting that something has happened which we ought to know."
"You"re perhaps right, after all," Fergusson said. "I wonder if anything has happened. We don"t want to be called back to the office, either of us. My a.s.sistant, Henderson, whom I"ve left in charge, rings me up over any mare"s nest. The trunk telephones all come into the Post Office Exchange up in Carter Lane. Why not look in there before we go home? It won"t take us a quarter of an hour, and we have several trains home from Ludgate Hill."
Baines looked at his watch. Like his companion, he had no desire to be called back to his office after getting out to Dulwich, and yet he was in no mood to go making reporter"s inquiries.