Page:Can Germany Invade England?.djvu/68

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CAN GERMANY INVADE ENGLAND?

authoritative witnesses, Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge, and Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur Wilson, late First Sea Lord, have to say on the subject, now that Germany has taken the place of France in the popular mind.

In his work on The Art of Naval Warfare,Sir Cyprian gives a crushing reply to the extraordinary theory in support of which Lord Roberts has invoked General von Schellendorff's authority.

"Continental soldiers contemplating the invasion of an island State may," so he writes, "be ready, as some say that they are, to sacrifice their escorting fleet to the presumably stronger insular Navy," but how could they imagine that this sacrifice "would render the voyage of the invading troops practicable?" Even "if, in sacrificing itself, the escorting or protecting fleet had managed to put out of action a portion of the insular naval forces equal to itself, . . . the survivors of the stronger Navy would have the now