The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-06-25 00:00:00

The Times has published the following letter :

Sir,—The considerations which you adduce respecting the
Channel Tunnel must have occurred to every thinking per-
son, and certainly they are not new to soldiers. But you
very much understate the case as to the dangers with which
we should be threatened through the execution of such a
work. There would be no necessity whatever for
the sea passage of any part of a hostile army. The
tunnel, .as proposed, would be a road from France
into England, always open and entirely unguarded.
In three hours a cavalry force might be sent through to seize
the approaches at the English end. In eight hours an army
of 25,000 men might be marched through to hold the place
for the passage of an indefinite number. This might be done
with the greatest ease any day or night. If, then, the
tunnel be made, it will at least be absolutely necessary that
our end of it should be commanded by a strong fort, well
garrisoned, impregnable to any sudden assault, and provided
with apparatus for at once blocking, or, if necessary, flooding
the tunnel. On no other conditions could any prudent
Government allow the work to be executed.—Your obedient
servant, MILES.
"M. P." also writes to The Timcs

Sir,—There may be danger from the Channel Tunnel to
the navvies who construct it, to the travellers who use it,
and to the companies who pay for it; but none whatever, I
will be bound, to the good people of Kent, or the other
loyal subjects of the Queen.
Is there any soldier of weight and experience who will
endorse the theory that it could ever be used as a military
road for the invasion of England? Consider its position.
The, opening to it on this side must be some distance
inland, in order to obtain a proper gradient. It must
be within a short distance of Dover, where there is
a garrison, and of Shorncliffe, where there is a camp.
Within three hours' notice of any alarm, several thou-
sand troops of all arms from Loudon, Woolwich, and
Portsmouth could be on the spot. Supposing war to have
been declared the day before and the French to have made
previous preparations for such an enterprise, how much time
and what force would it require to effect a landing upon the
coast in the neighbourhood of the tunnel's mouth, and to
construct a fete du tunnel able to cover the invasion of the
French army through the tunnel itself I think we may
dismiss the idea of the preliminary cavalry reconnois-
sance in force, as suggested by your correspondent,
" Mlles," is simply incredible. Unless every tele-
graph clerk, every nailway servant, every soldier at Dover
were asleep or drugged, such an inroad as that might be
stopped, as Sir Edward Watkin suggests, by a pound
of dynamite or a keg of gunpowder. Of course, in the
absence of duo precaution, anything is possible, whether
in peace or in war. But it is quite certain that a
couple of small forts near the mouth of the tunnel
would render any such enterprise, whether by sea or
tunnel, absolutely impossible. I am speaking, of course,
of a coup de main, for that is the danger propounded.
Of course, if our supposed enemy had the command of the
sea and were in a position to land 100,000 men upon our
shores, the possession of the tunnel would give him an im-
mense additional advantage. but, as a practical matter, it
appears to me that the only question which either the pro-
moters of the tunnel or the public need ask is, "Will it
pay ? ' not "Will the French invade ?"

In a leader on the projected Channel Tunnel the
Daily Telrgraph observes :—The advantages arising
from the abrogation of the short but miserable sea,
passage from Dover to Calais would be almost incal-
culably beneficial. It may be justifiably assumed
that "the silver streak," so dear to poetry and to
patriotism, every year practically prevents thousands
of English people, especially ladies, from visiting the
Continent. We suffer less, perhaps, from sea-sickness
than any other nation in the world; and for one
English lady who can throughly enjoy a passage across
the Atlantic, and cheerily report herself' at the
captain's table at breakfast, luncheon dinner, and
tea, there are probably ten American ladies who pass
their ten days and nights on shipboard moaning and
groaning in their narrow state-rooms. Yet is sea-
sickness not unknown among us, all hardy
and seafaring from our earliest youth as we
habitually are, and even case-hardened travellers
and old sailors by profession dislike, if they
do not dread, the Channel passage. The
railway companies do what they can ; praise-
worthy efforts have been made to improve the
steamers; ampler harbour accommodation may be
eventually provided on the French side; yet the
Channel passage can scarcely fail to remain what it
is, and what it has ever been, the most miserable of
ordeals. The mere embarkation and debarkation, the
transhipment of the luggage, the hanging about the
station until the train starts, are in themselves pro-
ductive of discomfort, annoyance, and irritation ; and
these are aggravated to the intolerable degree when
the weather is tempestuous and the boats are
crowded. The construction of the Channel Tunnel
would, again lead to a much better feeling between
the peoples of the two countries now separated
by "the silver streak." The working classes of
France and England at present know comparatively
little of one another ; but could the journey between
Charing-cross and the Gare du Nord be accomplished
in a six hours' railway run, with no dolorous trial of a
sea-passage, immense numbers of tradespeople and
working folk in London and Paris respectively would
be brought in frequent, and, it is to be hoped, into
fraternal contact. Surely the final cause of the
Channel Tunnel should be the furtherance of the inte-
rests of peace. Once completed, the neutrality and
integrity of so thoroughly a cosmopolitan work should
be a cknowled2ed and guaranteed by the whole
civilised world, and it should not be more inter-
nationally warrantable to destroy or injure the
Channel Tunnel than to bombard the Parthenon
again or pull down the Pyramids.