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CAN GERMANY INVADE ENGLAND?
selected ports and there embarked in much shorter time than Mr. Balfour had calculated for French soldiers.[1] Disembarkation, thanks to big liners and modern mechanical appliances, would also, so he asserted, be much easier than was generally supposed, and, even if the enterprise failed as a surprise, a few vessels, sent in this direction or that, would be likely so to divert our Admirals' attention from the real German objective that the great fleet of transports, favoured perhaps by fog, might sail unseen across the North Sea, and land their living cargoes before the mistake could be discovered, and our deluded fleets rush back to prevent an already accomplished fact.[2]
- ↑ Mr. Balfour's speech in 1905, on the possibility of a French invasion of this country, involved the assumption that what was impossible to the State nearest to our shores was a fortiori impossible in the case of Germany. —H. B. H.
- ↑ "If our naval forces are to be fooled by so unsurprising a surprise as this, or by so time-honoured a ruse de guerre I confess I do not see the use of our having an Admiralty or a Navy at all. No one would do Lord Roberts the
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