: The Tunnel Under the Channel by Whiteside Thomas - Tunnels English Channel

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A couple of thousand armed men might easily come through the tunnel in a train at night, avoiding all suspicion by being dressed as ordinary passengers, and the first thing we should know of it would be by finding the fort at our end of the tunnel, together with its telegraph office, and all the electrical arrangements, wires, batteries, etc., intended for the destruction of the tunnel, in the hands of an enemy. We know that ... trains could be safely sent through the tunnel every five minutes, and do the entire distance from the station at Calais to that at Dover in less than half an hour. Twenty thousand infantry could thus be easily despatched in 20 trains and allowing ... 12 minutes interval between each train, that force could be poured into Dover in four hours.... The invasion of England could not be attempted by 5,000 men, but half that number, ably led by a daring, dashing young commander might, I feel, some dark night, easily make themselves masters of the works at our end of the tunnel, and then England would be at the mercy of the invader.

General Wolseley conceded that an attack from within the tunnel itself would be difficult if even a hundred riflemen at the English end had previously been alerted to the presence of the attackers, but he doubted that the vigilance of the defenders could always maintain itself at the necessary pitch. And he put it to the committee: "Since the day when David secured an entrance by surprise or treachery into Jerusalem through a tunnel under its walls, how often have places similarly fallen? and, I may add, will again similarly fall?" General Wolseley also found highly questionable the efficacy of the various measures proposed for the protection of the tunnel. He declared that "a hundred accidents" could easily render such measures useless. Thus, for example, he found fault with proposals to lay electrically operated mines inside the tunnel ; proposals to admit the sea into the tunnel by explosion ; and proposals to flood it by sluice-gates at the English end . Then, after pointing out all the frailties of the contemplated defenses, General Wolseley went on to assert that the construction of the tunnel would necessitate, at very least, the conversion of Dover at enormous expense into a first-class fortress and that it could very well make necessary the introduction into England on a permanent basis of compulsory military service to meet the increased threat to Britain's national security.

Surely John Bull will not endanger his birth-right, his property, in fact all that man can hold most dear ... simply in order that men and women may cross to and fro between England and France without running the risk of seasickness.

Sir Garnet reinforced the arguments against the tunnel in personal testimony before the committee. In this testimony he emphasized, among other things, his conviction that once an enemy got a foothold at Dover, England would find herself utterly unable "short of the direct interposition of God Almighty"--an eventuality that Sir Garnet did not appear to count on very heavily--to raise an army capable of resisting the invaders. And the inevitable result of such a default, Sir Garnet told the committee, would be that England "would then cease to exist as a nation."

Sir Garnet's fears for Britain were not shared in a memorandum submitted to the committee by another high Army officer, Lieutenant-General Sir John Adye, the Surveyor-General of the Ordnance. Sir John gave his opinion that "a General in France, having the intention of invading England, would not, in my opinion, count on the tunnel as adding to his resources." He maintained that the argument that the English end of the tunnel might be taken from within could be safely dismissed, as invading troops could be destroyed as they arrived "by means of a small force, with a gun or two, at the mouth of the tunnel." As for the possibility of a hostile force landing on British soil to seize the mouth of the tunnel, he questioned whether "an enemy, having successfully invaded England, turn aside to capture a very doubtful line of communication, when the main object of his efforts was straight before him." General Adye thought that the invaders "would probably feel a much stronger disposition to march straight on London and finish the campaign."

Under these circumstances of increasing controversy, the attitude of the Board of Trade toward the tunnel project became one of further reserve. In February, the Board informed the War Office that the military question of the tunnel had assumed such magnitude that a decision on it should be taken not on a departmental level but on the higher governmental policy level, and it suggested that the War Office start its own investigations on the military aspect of the matter.

Bogie! The Italian Government are so struck by the alarm exhibited by Sir Garnet Wolseley at the prospect of a Channel Tunnel, that they have closed the Mount Cenis and St. Gotthard Tunnels, and left travellers to the mountain diligences. Their reason for doing this is the fact that Napoleon really crossed the Alps, while he only threatened to invade England.

As for reactions in Germany, the British charg? d'affaires in Dresden reported in a dispatch to the Foreign Office that he had questioned the Chief of Staff of the 12th Corps--"an officer of high attainments"--on his attitude toward the possible invasion of England through the Channel tunnel, or through sudden seizure of the English end from the outside.

He wrote that General von Holleben, the officer in question, had observed, in connection with the practicability of landing a Continental force and taking the British end, that although such an operation was not impossible, "that would succeed in the face of our military and moral resources, railways and telegraphs, he should believe when he saw it happen."

General von Holleben then remarked that the idea of moving an Army-Corps 25 miles beneath the sea was one which he did not quite take in. The distance was a heavy day's march; halts must be made; and the column of troops would be from eight to ten miles long. He was unable to realize all this off hand, and he did not know but what we were talking of a chimoera.

I observed that no one appeared to have asked what would happen to the air of the tunnel if bodies of 20,000 or even 10,000 men were to move through at once. The General said that this atmospheric difficulty was new to him, and it did not sound very soluble.

But the fears of the War Office were not stilled by such observations 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.

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